It has been 26 years since the bloody April of 1999, when more than 100 Serbian soldiers lost their lives in the Battle of Košare. The Košare outpost was the most difficult point to defend in Kosovo and Metohija against the incursion of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Young men serving their mandatory military service were sent there that year. They were sent to Košare at the ages of 19, 20, and 21. Young, full of heart, and—most tragically—without any combat or war experience.
Although more than two and a half decades have passed, the heavy memories of war are still alive for Vladimir Ilić, who endured that Golgotha with his comrades.
“When we first arrived at the outpost, we were met by visibly exhausted border guards who hoped we could help them. And we thought the same, not knowing that on the other side was a much stronger and more numerous army. Still, we didn’t back down. We kept moving forward,” begins this Košare hero in an interview with RINA.
In rare moments of rest at the Valjevo barracks, Vladimir began to keep a diary, unaware that it would become the only record of what he and his fellow soldiers went through in that fateful year defending their homeland.
“We were as one, we shared everything we could—ammunition, food, wet clothes and shoes—this is what saved us. We weren’t such great heroes as much as we were comrades and friends. What saved us was that we looked out for one another. We had a clear goal: to survive, to defend the outpost, and to save the soldiers stationed there. Sadly, on just the second day we lost a platoon leader. We later tried to retrieve his body because we didn’t want it left behind up there, and from Easter to St. George’s Day it took to recover it. I relive those days constantly; I dream of them at night, and it’s very hard,” says Vladimir.
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Although war was an unknown for the young soldiers, they fought bravely and without giving up. Today, Vladimir revives the memories of that sorrowful spring and the friends with whom he spent the hardest moments through his stories.
“I decided to write a book just the way I wrote back then. As a twenty-year-old who knew nothing about writing or war. I now feel it will be the only honest book about the battle. In it, I’ll write everything—about the great friendships and the courage of those young soldiers,” Vladimir concludes.
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Source: RINA, Foto: RINA