"Albanian Golgotha" Trail

Comemorating WWI , Melbourne based historian Bojan Pajic crossed the "Albanian Golgotha" much like the Serbian Army did 100 years ago! -The purpose of the expedition was to honor my ancestors, in celebration of what they did and sacrificed for our future, said Bojan in an interview to SBS Serbian.

Alex, Marko and Bojan in Albania Source: Bojan Pajic

Following the October of 1915 invasion of Serbia during WWI  at the hands of German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies, started the Serbian army retreated through Albania, an event sometimes called the Albanian Golgotha. Albania was then an ally of Serbia, because Esad Pasha allowed the Serbian army to pass through Albania.

During the retreat, approximately 243,000 Serbs perished in the Albanian mountains and thousands more perished once they arrived on the Greek island of Corfu. Because of the massive loss of life, the Serbian army's retreat through Albania is considered by Serbs to be one of the greatest tragedies in their nation's history. Every third man died during the retreat. At that time, it was a third of the male population in the country

The survivors of the retreat were so weakened that thousands of them died from sheer exhaustion in the weeks after their rescue. While the main camps of the recuperating army were on the island of Corfu itself (a contingent was sent to Bizerte as well, and many of the civilian refugees were accepted by France), the sick and dying, mostly soldiers, were treated on Greek Island Vido to prevent epidemics. In spite of Allied material help, the conditions of both the improvised medical facilities and many of the patients on the island resulted in a high fatality rate. Due to the small area of the island and because of its rocky soil, it soon became a necessity to bury the dead in the sea (by binding rocks to the corpses to prevent flotation). More than 5,000 Serbs were buried in such a manner in what became known as the Blue Graveyard (Plava Grobnica), near the Greek island of Vido.

Related Music and Poetry

Kreće se lađa francuska – A World War I song that was written by Branislav Milosavljević on Corfu.

Tamo Daleko – There, Far Away , Serbian song which was composed on the Greek island of Corfu in 1916 to commemorate the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania during World War I.

Serbian soldier Milutin Bojić wrote a poem called Plava Grobnica or Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb  to commemorate his fallen comrades. Ultimately, Bojić himself succumbed to tuberculosis and was buried in the "Blue Graveyard", as well.