European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We were already liberating them at the time. We then joined in the combat at Cacak.

Things were really bad at Cacak. Up to here the brigade counted 1000 or 2700 men.

An extravagantly dressed man then came to Cacak, he rode a horse.

He said his armed forces – we called them Tchetniks

and that was also their formal name – surrendered to our soldiers.

Because we were from all over Slovenia and from Croatia, and there weren’t any of these locals in our brigade.

That’s basically how they saved their lives.

There were also Partisans from Cacak and they knew these people;

but the Partisans and Tchetniks didn’t really got well on together at the time. This man brought some plans to Mesic.

Before he got to see Mesic though, he was stripped naked and searched by our guards;

we had to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons before he was allowed to see our commanding officer Mesic.

He handed him a letter. It was written in the letter that on such and such a day our artillery was to fire

from such and such a position at particular locations where the Germans were best organized.

It also was written that the Tschetniks, the Serbs, would surrender to our unit.

Our commanders, Mesic fell for it;

and so our troops began with the preparations and then with the attack on those particular stated locations.

Well, there were no Germans there.

The Tschetniks attacked us from behind and they massacred the Partisans from behind.

We lost 700 men in one night and one day in that slaughter.

When it was all over, I wasn’t in the headquarter brigade at the time yet,