European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

As the Soviet units marched on towards Germany,

we cleaned up behind as the German units got dispersed in the forests and we had to clean them up.

We crossed Romania, the Carpathian Mountains, and mostly we kept moving at night.

To get enough sleep at night, the entire company would gather together

and a rope would be tied to the cart and horse and then we each tied that rope around our waists,

so we walked and slept. You would sleep while walking.

If anybody in front of you fell down there would immediately be ten in a pile. That’s how we crossed the Carpathians.

Then we came to Turnseverin. That was the Romanian – Yugoslavian border at the time.

We crossed the Danube into the former Yugoslavia, or rather, occupied Yugoslavia.

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.