FALLS, Cyril Bentham

Cyril Bentham Falls (1888-1971), Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, was a British military historian. He was born in Dublin and died in southeast England. Known mainly for his twenty or so works on the First World War, he was Professor of Military History at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1954.

In this two-volume work, Falls records in journal form the developments on the Macedonian Front during the Great War, citing also documents from the War Office. The analytical description of military operations on the Macedonian Front is completed by detailed graphs and precise maps, drawn by Major Archibald Frank Becke, as well as photographs from the combatants’ positions and rare shots of the manmade and the natural environment.

As Falls notes in his introduction, he considered it important to correlate military operations with diplomatic developments and consequently to describe the broader political frame of the time. The first volume opens with a geographical description of Macedonia, followed by a historical overview from antiquity to the modern age and a consideration of the population’s ethnic composition, where Greeks predominate mainly in urban areas and the Chalcidice Peninsula.

Apart from the description of the military operations, the author dedicates separate chapters to the Fire in Thessaloniki in August 1917, waterworks in Macedonia, the medical and veterinary services of the British Army, an outbreak of malaria among the troops, and other subjects. In his conclusions, he makes mention of the erroneous moves of the British authorities in distributing their military units and stresses the contribution of the Greek Army, which accelerated the last phase of the War.

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou