Laying of Wraths on the occasion of Military Veterans’ Day

Tuesday, 4.12.2018 | Culture and traditions

On the occasion of marking 4 December – Military Veterans’ Day, the Ministry of Defense and the Serbian Armed Forces are paying tribute and laying wreaths on several locations.

Delegation of the Ministry of Defense and the Serbian Armed Forces, with the Head of the Logistics Department of the General Staff, Brigadier General Željko Ninković laid a wreath near the Memorial ossuary of soldiers killed in the Serbian-Turkish and Serbian-Bulgarian Wars, the Memorial ossuary to the Defenders of Belgrade in the Great War and at the central commemoration ceremony at the Memorial to the Liberators of Belgrade in World War II.

Head of the Department for Tradition, Standard and Veterans of the Human Resources Sector, Colonel Sladjan Ristić, led a delegation of the Ministry of Defense and the Serbian Armed Forces, who lay wreath at the Memorial to War Victims and Defenders of Homeland 1990-1999 on the Sava Square and paid tribute to all the members of our armed forces who had fallen in the armed conflicts towards the end of XX century.

In addition to the delegation of the Ministry of Defense and the Serbian Armed Forces, representatives of numerous tradition and veteran associations also paid tribute to the fallen Serbian soldiers.

Minister of Defense, Aleksandar Vulin and Chief of the General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Milan Mojsilović, will host a reception for the representatives of military veterans in the General Hall of the Houses of the Guards at Topčider.

After the reception, a ceremonial academy will be held in the Congress Hall of the Houses of the Guards on the occasion of the Veterans' Day.

On 4 December 1912 an armistice was signed in the First Balkan War between the allies Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria on one side and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) as the defeated side on the other. For this reason, the date was selected as the Day of the Military Veterans. At that time, 400.000 warriors of the Army of the Kingdom of Serbia were awarded the title of “senior warriors”, viz. military veterans.

By choosing this date as the Military Veterans’ Day, the continuity of the veteran tradition from the Balkan wars was ensured, when Serbia, in addition to establishing a military alliance with its neighbors, engaged approximately 12 percent of the population in the war, along with all the material and financial reserves in an effort to gain a lasting freedom from the Ottoman rule.