be delivered against the German Eleventh Army, which by now consisted almost entirely by Bulgarian units at Dobro Pole, with secondary attacks to the west around Bitola and to the east against the Bulgarian First Army at Lake Doiran . In September 1918 the First Army had the following order of battle: For the operations against the Bulgarian First Army the Allied command designated the forces of general Milne. Those consisted of 4 British and 2 Greek infantry divisions or about 66 battalions with 300 artillery pieces and 400 machine guns. General Milne decided to deliver his main blow against the 9th Division while a secondary attack was planned against the 1st brigade of the 11th Infantry Division. The Allied Vardar Offensive opened on 15 September 1918 with the Battle of Dobro Pole and after a relative short struggle a breakthrough was achieved. On the next day at Lake Doiran the Allies began a two-day artillery barrage in which more than 300,000 ordinary and gas shells were fired on the Bulgarian positions. Unlike at Dobro Pole, however, the troops in the Doiran sector preserved their high morale due to the personal inspection of the battlefield that the army commander general Nerezov made and the skilful leadership of the commander of the division general Vladimir Vazov. In addition the two commanders had regrouped their forces in such a way that a sufficient reserve of two regiments was immediately available. The modern and well build fortifications also made the casualties from the barrage extremely low. So when the Allied infantry began advancing the Bulgarians were ready to meet them with all their available forces. The result was a two-day bloody battle in which the British and Greeks suffered a heavy defeat. In fact the victory was so encouraging that general Nerezov was preparing for a counter-attack with his army supported by the neighboring Second Army which until now had remained completely inactive. In addition he could also rely on the Fourth Army, further down the Struma. In this decisive moment on 19 September the acting commander-in-chief general Georgi Todorov met with general Friedrich von Scholtz to decide what to do. The question of a counter offensive with the right wing of the Eleventh Army and the Bulgarian First Army was put forward but was quickly dismissed by the Germans as impossible. In addition no real reinforcements from them were going to arrive