“JUST GO FORWARD AND NEVER GIVE UP”: Miladin cut off his own leg during the war to survive, today he educates children and achieves sporting successes!

Miladin Cvijic, a hero from Prijedor, survived a wartime tragedy and cut off his own leg. His story is a symbol of strength and the will to live.

There are people whose life stories transcend the boundaries of ordinary human strength. People who, faced with the most difficult trials, have shown how much a person’s heart can be stronger than pain, fear, and destiny. One of them is Miladin Cvijic – Cvijo from Prijedor, a hero who lost both legs in the war but never lost the will to live.

Born 57 years ago, specifically on May 10, 1969, in the town of Novi Grad, Miladin lived a peaceful life before the war. He worked at “Krajina promet” and the “Impro” meat industry, and served his military term in the JNA in Vinkovci in 1988/89.

When the war days arrived, he did not stay on the sidelines. First, in 1991, he participated in the defense of the people of Krajina in western Slavonia as a member of the JNA reserve forces, and from its very founding, he was part of the Army of Republika Srpska.

As a member of the reconnaissance platoon of the First Battalion, and later the brigade scouts of the legendary Fifth Kozara Brigade of the First Krajina Corps, he went through many battlefields and participated in the toughest battles fought by the heroes of Kozara.

And then came August 4, 1992.

On the borders of Republika Srpska toward Gradacac, he was seriously wounded. An explosion destroyed both of his legs. One remained hanging by torn tissue. Alone, between life and death, at a moment when many would have lost all hope, Miladin did something that seems unthinkable – he cut off his own leg to try and survive.

And he survived.

Later he said that in such moments, a person doesn’t even know what is happening.

“Only later, when it was all over and when I woke up in the hospital, did the question come – why couldn’t at least one leg remain… But I accepted it. I accepted it easily,” Miladin told the media a few years ago.

He was only 23 years old when he lost his legs, but this tragedy did not break him. He began a completely new life. A life in which there was no room for surrender.

He started a business, worked, created, provided for his family, and educated his children. Today he lives in Prijedor as a first-category disabled war veteran, but he never wanted to call himself disabled.

“Just forward and forward. Never surrender and never allow anyone to call you disabled. I am not disabled! What can he do that I cannot? The only thing I can’t do is run, but I’ll go with him in the wheelchair,” he said through a smile to the media.

For his merits in the defense of Republika Srpska, he was decorated with the “Gavrilo Princip” Medal for Bravery, but those who know him say that his greatest decoration is not the medals – but a heart that never stopped helping others.

After the war, he remained active as the president and player of the “Kozara” Sitting Volleyball Club from Prijedor, gathering fellow soldiers who left parts of their bodies in the war, but not their dignity and love for life. He is also active in fishing, and his energy still amazes the people around him today.

His wife Daliborka has been by his side the whole time, with whom he had a daughter Snjezana and a son Stojan, and today he is a proud grandfather of three grandchildren.

Those who know him say that Miladin Cvijic is much more than a war hero. He is a symbol of unwavering will, a man who defeated fate when it seemed there was no way out.

Because there are wounds that break a person. But there are also people like Cvijo – whom even the deepest wounds cannot defeat.