First Serbian Volunteer Division

First Serbian Volunteer Division
Nicholas II reviewing the First Serbian Volunteer Division in Odessa (May 1916)
Founded	June 1916[1]
Disbanded	1918
Allegiance	Serbia
Branch	Royal Serbian Army
Type	Ground Forces
Size	18,000 [1] 42,000 (early 1917)[2]
Part of	47th Russian Army Corps First Serbian Army
Garrison/HQ	Odessa, Russian Empire (1916–17) Salonika, Greece (1918)
Engagements	World War I Eastern Front (World War I) Battle of Bazargic Vardar Offensive
Commanders
Chief of Staff	Colonel Vojin Čolak-Antić
Notable commanders	Colonel Stevan Hadžić
Merged into	Yugoslav Division
Allies	Army of the Orient British Salonika Army Romanian Land Forces Imperial Russian Army
Opponents	Austro-Hungarian Army Bulgarian Land Forces Imperial German Army Ottoman Empire Army

The First Serbian Volunteer Division (Serbian: Srpski dobrovoljački korpus) or First Serbian Division, was a military formation of the First World War, created by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, and organised in the city of Odessa in early 1916. This independent volunteer unit was primarily made up of South Slav Habsburg prisoners of war, detained in Russia, who had requested to fight alongside the Serbian Army. It also included men from South Slav diaspora communities, especially the United States.

Even though the Serbian volunteers greatly outnumbered all the other ethnic group, a large number of the division's officer corps was made of former Habsburg reserve officers of Croat and Slovene descent. In April 1917 the name of the division was changed to the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes Volunteer Corps. The force holds a particularly significant place in World War I history due both to its intermingling of different Slavic ethnic groups as well as its role in the final military operations of the Salonika front.^[3][4]