That night, five Serbs were killed and the Albanian terrorists under the code “Dracula” did horrible things.

NATO bombing in 1999, Photo: NATO bombing in 1999

A page in the war diary reminds us of the painful death of five young soldiers, of which there was not much talk in 1998.

They were killed in Košare, but before the bloodiest battles, which followed during the NATO aggression.

This text was published on the Čojstvo portal and is dedicated to the families of the fallen soldiers, and they are: Vladimir Radoičić, Miladin Gobeljić, Ilija Pavlović, Miroslav Jocić and Miloš Pavlović.

The text, in which one of the soldiers describes a terrible day from the battlefield, is transmitted to them in its entirety:

After the hot summer of 98 of the operations carried out in the Kosara watchtower area, there was a slight lull in the fighting. With the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, VJ’s special forces had to withdraw from the border. I felt a chill when they left the soccer field. playgrounds, dismantling of tents and transport equipment.

The sounds of the wind that cleared the ground in that place, created a feeling of coldness and sadness of that fraternal struggle where we successfully defended the border from terrorist gangs and where almost the entire border was covered. Remembering the death of Major Ostojic and three others who died on July 28, and the commotion at the watchtower due to the death of September 30, when their pincers were ambushed by Albanian terrorists. The deaths of 2 Pirot contractors at elevation 501 were also ambushed by terrorists who died on the way to the hospital.

On September 28, two guys from Belgrade approached me and found out that I was their compatriot and that I had been depressed for a long time. They wanted to know what the situation was like and if it had calmed down, because they heard various stories about the watchtower and the fighting that was heating up. I saw in them a feeling of discomfort and concern, I gave them a little hope that he was calm, that they would gradually get used to it and not worry.

At the end of September, that group of scout-saboteurs of the June party came to our aid to the border guards, with the purpose of exploring and any other support in those dark times.

Changing the soldiers according to the contract of the special units that spent the summer in Košare, I fell into an ambush, thinking of those who had just arrived at me, where March 1999 was far away.

September 30 came, the ambush went according to plan. It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze that disturbed the tranquility of the forest. Suddenly, one detonation can be heard in the distance, and immediately the other in the direction of the pinch road leading to elevation 601 Rasa Košares. Corporal Robert, who was closer to the scene and who was leading the patrol at Rasa Kosarez at the time, reported to us with a Motorola that horrific detonations and gunfire were heard and it seemed to him that they were calling for a surrender in our language.

The patrol led by Robert at the time numbered four or five because Rasa Kosarez was an observatory during the day monitoring the Padez watchtower on the Albanian side and the border roads to Tropoja and Bajram Curia. The same elevation will only later become an ambush, important vantage points in the events to follow in 1999.

Sergeant Šarančić Aleksandar, who was the leader of the ambush in 502, when he heard the message from the Motorola corporals, he jumped up and said: “Half the people are chasing me, take the equipment and weapons, and half should remain in ambush! “

The seven of us are moving: Šarančić, Stojke, Grubić, Draža, Ostoja, Jan (the leader of Crno) and Matori …

I jumped myself and grabbed a combat vest, put on two trombones and two pumps and immediately followed him. It seemed to me that we flew over that part, but it turned out that we were too late. As we got closer, I smelled gasoline and gunpowder. Sergeant Šarančić, who was also a member of the special units that participated in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was the first to move faster, just behind Jan and Crni.

The scene was impressive …

We approached the pint carefully and saw the young soldiers killed in an ambush. When I got to the pint, it was all smashed. The two soldiers who tried to get out through the back door got tangled up at the exit, as if saying goodbye to earthly life. The other two were also brutally killed in a terrorist ambush not far from the vehicle. I took my pulse in the hope that at least one of them was showing signs of life … I didn’t even think that the driver in the pint was pretending to be dead while the terrorists removed the equipment and valuables of the dead brothers.

The tent immediately moved forward a bit to make sure that by chance one of the terrorists was not around. We secured the land around the pint waiting for help from the watchtower. We didn’t even know there were eight people in the vehicle. That Ensign Drazic jumped out of the vehicle immediately after the attack and hid from the terrorists, that Captain Loznica was wounded and went down the hill where Jan and Crni found him, who unfortunately gave the order to leave the vehicle unaccompanied despite the exit ban. vehicles on land.

Before the ambush itself, there was a discussion among the officers about the vehicles that were leaving the field, due to the previous ambushes by terrorists, as well as the growing threat of terrorists in that area.

Securing the ground along the border line, help arrived but was only able to determine five dead, three young soldiers and two contractors, Captain Loznica wounded and Ensign Drazic who passed unharmed … Eager to finish as soon as possible, we were ordered to search for land, to get help back to the watchtower. They found my outrage at the part of the people who were ambushed in 502, which we left without help and that they could be exposed, and that a group of people who arrived for an investigation from the watchtower were able to search the field!

Carp calmed the situation, as we were all nervous …

The people who came to do the investigation left, and we walked the border line and searched the land. Behind one of the trunks we found German biscuits, Czech cans, ammunition cartridges and individual boxes of trombone mines. It should be noted that in the previous day and a half two white OSCE jeeps were sighted, which in summer were on the border line on their side, following the movements of our troops and which provided logistical and military assistance to the terrorists, who later it would become a criminal assault. NATO pact.

It is the Ramadani terror group that has been waiting in ambush for several hours since the early morning.

We returned to the ambush angry, sad and disappointed because because of a man, of a vain character, they sent me a pinch without an escort with a high risk of terrorist attack, with a young army that had yet to know the terrain …

All night, the terrorists broke into our relationship under the codename “Dracula”, threatening and joking about the dead brothers.

The next day, an ambush that took place on our shift, we ran into an anti-tank mine that was washed away by the rain, in a slightly more remote place, where the terrorists mounted a silent ambush. A few days later a group of terrorists was seen with the equipment that they took from our people on September 30 … “

These are facts for which the media of the time wrote very little, the group of soldiers who died at that time received only a small “corner” in the newspapers. Children, the soldiers did serious work in the Košare area, but nowhere was there written about violations of the state border, about an act of terrorism, about attacks on our regular army, which carried out daily orders like everyone else in the world.