Serbia
Radomir Putnik
1847–1917 Chief of the Serbian General Staff and field commander
Putnik was a brilliant strategist who had led Serbia to victory in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and became the country's first field marshal (voivode). Frail and suffering from lung trouble, he was taking the cure in Austria when war began; he was arrested and then released by order of Franz Joseph himself, and returned home through Romania. Short of men, rifles and, above all, shells, he husbanded his resources and chose his counterattacks carefully, winning at Cer and on the Kolubara. In the winter of 1915 he was carried through the mountains of Albania during the great retreat, and he died in exile in France in 1917.