EVERY SERB MUST CLIMB KAIMAKCHALAN ONCE! This is where Thessaloniki warriors kissed comrades’ skulls and WEPT!

“You will go down long roads, you will see the ends of the rainbow, bring a flower from here, let everyone see, let the world know. This is Serbia, speak the graves of the warriors from glorious times…” the Serbs are singing as one before St. Elijah’s Chapel atop Kaimakchalan.

We plod our way across the Greek border, and along Lake Vegoritida. Surreal sights. The small Greek towns are starting to wake up. Morning coffees at taverns. Cow herds grazing. We start the ascent. Right alongside us is the cable railroad, as a popular winter resource is located here. Among the dry grass - Natalie's ramonda, the symbol of our suffering and resurrection – is sprouting up. A tiny flower that defies all and rises from the ashes like a phoenix. Just like the Serbian Army in the First World War. Just like Serbia.

The Serbian tricolours are unfurled on the climb to Kaimakchalan. Serbian songs are echoing.

“Into the fight, heroes one and all…”

Kaimakchalan is strewn with the remains of the trenches even a hundred years on.

“There it is! There it is!” cries out one of the pilgrims as he holds in his hands a bullet casing. It has been there for over a century.

“Here’s a shrapnel piece,” another says.

We are virtually keeling over. The sun is getting warmer. We walk a bit and then take a break. Then we have some candy to boost up our energy levels. Using the shortcuts, some six kilometres to the top. The clouds are beginning to form. We pass through them as well.

After an hour and a half of walking at a rapid pace, it reveals itself – the chapel, white and standing proud, atop Kaimakchalan. The sun’s rays shine through. The final push. Nothing is difficult anymore. Everyone is at full tilt.

We reach the very top. Unreal. The craggy rocks boast a staggering view. This is where they fought with canons, and then hand to hand. A slaughter.- “This is where our guys pushed the Bulgarians into the abyss from,” says a man to a friend of his at the edge of the rock.

The trench holes are covered with grass. There also two border stones there. The side overlooking Macedonia still has “SFRY” markings. How symbolic. Serbs were slain here, and then they went on to liberate the rest of what was to become Yugoslavia. Then they formed it.

“To my lionhearts, intrepid and loyal, whose bodies opened the door to freedom and stayed here as eternal guardians of their homeland’s threshold,” the inscription above the entrance to the chapel, from which King Alexander’s signature has disappeared, says.

Inside, there are icons. And a vase which used to hold the heart of the famous friend of the Serbs – Dr Archibald Reiss. Until it was ripped out, as the story goes, by the Bulgarians in the Second World War. To take revenge on him after his death. On the windowsill – Reiss’s Albanian memorial.

It is still not crowded, as many are still climbing to the top. A memorial service will be held later, but I nonetheless open the small cupboard behind the door. There are candles there. I light two – for the heroes and for the one close to me who has been gone for three years now. He loved and respected those who had stayed here.

Serbia officially celebrates the Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag on 15 September in memory of the day of breaking through the Thessaloniki Front Line 105 years ago. Following that, a country liberated in a blink of an eye. And it had all started two years earlier. On this top, when the gates to freedom were opened.

“The Republic of Srpska is here, everyone, the Republic of Srpska is on Kaimakchalan,” Nenad Stevandić, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska, says as he reaches the summit, out of breath but delighted, grabbing a Serbian tricolour. Because this national holiday is celebrated on both sides of the Drina.

Igor Mirović and Zoran Gojković

‘The credit goes to these lionhearts for us in the Serbian Vojvodina enjoying the freedom we have today’

The President and Vice President of Vojvodina, Igor Mirović and Zoran Gojković, also pay their respects to the heroes. They both have a personal and an official reason to come here:

“The credit goes to these lionhearts for us in the Serbian Vojvodina enjoying the freedom we have today. After the breaking through of the Thessaloniki Front Line in 1918, after the bloody battles here, on Kaimakchalan, Belgrade was liberated 46 days later, and Novi Sad on 9 November. As early as 25 November, 1918, The National Assembly in Novi Sad proclaimed the unification of Vojvodina with the Kingdom of Serbia,” Mirović, who has published a poem about Kaimakchalan, said, adding:

“My great-grandfather Ilija Mirović was in the Montenegrin Army, which fought alongside the Serbian Army in the Battle of Bregalnica in 1913, during the First Balkan War. He had come on foot from his village, situated some ten kilometres north of Budva, crossing about 600 kilometres. His unit was at the Rajčanski Rid elevation, according to the writings of the French journalist Henri Barbi.”

Many of Gojković’s ancestors were here too.

“I’m glad to be here as a member of the Provincial Government, as well as personally, to pay my respects to the heroes and ancestors. I’m originally from Šabac and many of my kith and kin passed through here,” said Gojković.

Nikola Selaković, Minister of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy, reaches the top too. He did not want to sit in an SUV. Respects are paid when you climb Kaimakchalan on foot. Respects paid to everyone, including the two members of the Selaković family who never returned from The Great War.

“All Serbs must try to climb Kaimakchalan at least once in their life and go up this path of struggle and glory. The people that we are paying respects to today have deserved it. If we hadn’t come, their sacrifice would have been in vain. Our coming here, our prayers for their souls, the singing of our national anthem at this place shows that they truly triumphed,” said Selaković before the chapel, adding:

“There is no place more beautiful, where Serbia should embrace the Republic of Srpska in the presence of all our brothers from Montenegro, North Macedonia, all the Serbian lands, as well as other continents, than this particular one, which lit up all the future victories and without which there would have been no future Serbian victories at all.”

The Minister then teaches a history class:

“Before the 1916 fights, the Voras Mountains were 2,524 meters high, but three meters were shaven off by the artillery fire, and the top now stands at 2,521 meters high. As you were climbing up, you could see how the front line had been moving. Sometimes by a meter and a half, sometimes by a meter only. Half a meter underneath this grass is solid rock and the trenches couldn’t be that deep. As many as 4,643 great men perished here. We don’t know all their names, but they are great men. They climbed to this top, fought, and managed to get to Bitola in less than two months, which was to all intents and purposes the capital of Serbia for the following two years. Our Supreme Command was located in the village of Bač near Bitola.”

Among many people gathered here are the Vajagić family – Predrag, a history teacher from Bačka Palanka, and his 14-year-old son Mihailo.

“We are the descendants of the volunteers who came from the US in 1917, joined the Serbian Army, and fought – not here, though – but they took part in the breaking through of the Thessaloniki Front Line. Our ancestor Risto Vajagić captured a Bulgarian soldier as a volunteer just before breaking through the front line. They needed someone who could speak the language. They stormed the Bulgarian trenches, took the Bulgarians prisoner, and for that the King bestowed him with the Order of Karađorđe's Star,” Predrag tells us, adding that over 20 members of their broader family left Bosanska Krajina for Gary, near Chicago, where they worked in the mines and the US Steel mill, which still exists:

In late 1917, the nine Vajagić brothers volunteer. They fought in the Danube Division of the I Serbian Corps and all nine of them survived the war. They were subsequently granted households by King Alexander – some in Vojvodina, others near Virovitica.“

Miroslav Stojanović from Niš also came with a picture of his great-grandfather.

“Grandpa Nikola from the village of Donje Dragovlje near Niš fought here in the famed Morava Division’s Iron Regiment. He survived Kaimakchalan and all the battles that followed, and liberated his homeland. And now I’ve come to Kaimakchalan with my grandfather,” Stojanović says.

“Jelena! Jelena!” someone cries out.

“Do you remember me?” a brunette says as she approaches.

Jelena Stanković from Niš. She works at the Asylum Centre in Vranje. She had welcomed us last year when we were working on a story about the Ukraine refugees. At the Železničar Mountaineering Club. They know what respecting one’s ancestors means.

We climb down a little bit. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia collected the bones of the heroes from these craggy mountain tops and placed them in an ossuary in 1935. Zoran Žugić, Bitola’s legendary figure and President of the Serb Community in North Macedonia, tells us this story about it:

“In the early 1970s, some forty Thessaloniki fighters came to Kaimakchalan. The group was led by my late father Tomislav Tomo Žugić, an officer of the former Yugoslavian National Army, riding in ten or so Pinzgauers. He ordered two soldiers to go down into the tomb, and two soldiers to stay up; the latter lowered down our Thessaloniki fighter, who walked using crutches, into the tomb. And then this old man weeps, kisses, and strokes the skulls. Saying good-bye to his friends. Everyone in the tomb wept like children. Even today, when I talk about this event with anyone who comes to Kaimakchalan, we cry together.

I am leaving. With tears running down my face and pockets full of stones from this holy land...

Kurir.rs/Jelena S. Spasić