Four photos from the Great War

"We became a nation the day we landed at Gallipoli", with these words an Australian veteran described the sentiment that would Australians i New Zealanders arise from the famous battle. Landing on this peninsula in Turkey and skirmish in The First World War, where they fought for the first time under national flags, took place 110 years ago, on April 25, 1915.

Most of the soldiers recruited into the Australian Imperial Army at the outbreak of war in 1914 were sent to Egypt to protect the interests of the British Empire against the threats of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, around the Suez Canal. Military training near Cairo lasted for four and a half months, and then they were put on a ship that led to the Gallipoli peninsula, together with troops from New Zealand, Britain and France. The aim of the undertaking was to support the British naval operation, control the strategically important Dardanelles and capture the Turkish capital of Constantinople.

The Battle of Gallipoli, one of the bloodiest in the First World War, ended with many casualties on both sides. April 25th is celebrated by Australia and New Zealand as a national holiday, ANZAC Day, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims and the giving of mail to the fallen fighters of the war.

Almost a hundred years after the battle that defined modern Australia, it was discovered that Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) fighters, soldiers and medical personnel, in addition to Gallipoli, the Western Front and Palestine, were also in Serbia, in Vrnjačka Banja and Mladenovac. More than a thousand and a half Australian and New Zealand soldiers, together with doctors and nurses, went through Golgotha ​​side by side with Serbian soldiers, from the beginning of the war in 1914 until the breakthrough of the Thessaloniki front. Among the soldiers was a woman who was given the rank of sergeant in the Serbian army.

The likelihood of them remaining lost in the hazy memories of their descendants was considerable. Not even the best Australian historians knew about the Balkan odyssey of part of their army. It was necessary for some of our people, almost a century later, to cross the road in the opposite direction, from Serbia to Australia and, colliding with pieces of history and human destinies, complete the mosaic.

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That's how it was created Kajmakchalan (By Far Kaymakchalan), a feature-length documentary film by Boris Trbić and Dragan Gavrilović, based on the idea and book of historian Bojan Pajić, as a historical-artistic testimony about this point of joint struggle, told precisely in the words of descendants of soldiers and medical personnel of ANZAC, and with an abundance of exclusive archival material and the interpretation of experts. The story of Kaymakchalan is a story about chance and persistence, about fate and people's alliance in the fight for a better world, but also about diaspora and patriotism, the desire to do good. At the same time, Kajmakchalan brings to life carefully preserved photos, letters, testimonies, reconstructed military maps, campaigns and plans, while military experts and historians from Australia and Serbia talk about the complexity and importance of the entire operation, which was the struggle of the Serbian army against the militarily superior Austria-Hungary. The one-hour Australian-Serbian documentary was filmed over a year in four countries - Australia, Serbia, North Macedonia and Greece. The film was shown in December last year at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia, and plans for its domestic premiere are underway.

It all started with one invitation. Boris Trbić, a playwright and professor of film history who has been teaching in Australia for years, received an invitation from a friend in March 2023 to visit the ceremonial celebration at the Tomb of the Unknown Hero in Melbourne. There he meets Bojan Pajić, an Australian historian of Serbian origin. Raised in Adelaide, where he arrived at the age of eight, Bojan Pajić, a descendant of Serbian officers, has always had a love for history. He had a distinguished career in the Australian administration, serving as trade commissioner in diplomatic missions. He was an officer in the Australian Army Reserve. During his professional career, he received interesting stories about Australian and New Zealand soldiers and medical personnel from the Great War who found themselves in Serbia through the Red Cross, the Scottish Women's Hospital or the Serbian Support Fund. He started researching and taking notes. The work was not easy at all, the research lasted about fifteen years. He came up with a number of 1700 names, Australians and New Zealanders, mostly women, whose fates were intertwined with Serbian soldiers. He found descendants through the Genealogical Society of Victoria. Pajić published the results of what he encountered in three books. One of them, called Our forgotten volunteers - Australians and New Zealanders with Serbs in the First World War, was released in 2018 and served as the basis for the film Kajmakchalan.

The ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Hero in Melbourne where Boris Trbić and Bojan Pajić met was dedicated to marking the anniversary of the First World War, where an exhibition was held in honor and memory of Australian fighters.

"In addition to the official representatives of the two allied countries, Australia and Serbia," director Boris Trbić tells us, "the exhibition was attended by descendants of ANZAC fighters, as well as representatives of our emigration. They remembered their ancestors, fighters from the First World War, and that left quite an impression on me. After a few days, Bojan contacted me with the idea of ​​forming a team and making a film. I was interested in dealing with history in an affirmative way, to make an educational-historical film that can serve as a reference when it comes to the common past."

They started working without money. Boris's friend Dragan Gavrilović, a documentarian and cameraman from Melbourne who dealt with our people in Australia in his two documentaries, Wongar, about Merry Christmas to Wongar, our writer from Australia and Wasteland (The Waste Land ), about opal miners from Cooper Piddy in the center of Australia, immediately accepted the idea and a team of eleven people, professionals - friends and acquaintances will spend the next eighteen months in the exhaustive process of reviving an important point in our history. Cameraman Dragan Belja Đorđević followed Bojan Pajić and descendants of Australian nurses on their way through Serbia, Greece and North Macedonia. The curator of the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, Jelena Tucaković, with whom Boris Trbić wrote two books, worked on military maps and marketing material for the film.

In Australia, another group of film professionals worked in parallel: composer John Roy did sound design, Pete Pilley was in charge of color correction, and Bethany Young, Boris's former student and expert in visual effects, managed to create an interesting animated approach to the film archive. Alexandra Aker, professor of music at RMIT University in Melbourne, famous Melbourne interpreter of music from the Balkans, with her band Anya and Zlatna she recorded three music tracks for the film Kajmakchalan. One of them, a liturgical song I sing about you. Stevan Mokranjec's performance by Aleksandra begins with the first shots of the film shot at the foot of Kajmakčalan. The movie story ends with a song Far away performed by the choir of priests of the Eparchy of Banja Luka.

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Behind the documentary Kajmakchalan two countries stand on an equal footing.

"We were supported by the Embassy of Serbia in Australia and the Embassy of Australia in Serbia," says Boris Trbić, "and in addition to them, seventy-two other organizations, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, members of parliament, experts such as John Pern, the chief surgeon of the Australian army who appears in our film, or David Horner, one of the most influential Australian historians. Feel confident when they tell you that you are doing a good job. When Bojan started working, he often contacted the Australian historians and asked them if they would consider the fact that Australian forces and volunteers were in contact with the Serbian army in addition to Gallipoli. He would receive the answer that this is not possible, that there was no evidence that there was contact during the First World War. Now, in our film, these experts speak side by side with the descendants of these soldiers and nurses, which is a very important form of support." For Australia, this gives a special footnote to the most important national narrative related to the First World War, that of Gallipoli.

"When 14.000 people wait for dawn to commemorate what happened in 1915, as Australians do every year at the Gallipoli commemoration, then you can have an idea of ​​what kind of event it is," says Boris Trbić. "You can say that they came to help the Empire out of a sense of duty, but it is a very important day for Australians and their national identity. When you talk to those people and quietly mention that before Gallipoli some of those Australian soldiers and nurses were in Vrnjacka Banja and Mladenovac, in the country from which you came to Australia, it is a nice feeling."

And he concludes:

"We are living in a time where geopolitical reality has constantly marginalized some historical facts in our area. Despite the fact that there are only four photographs in which Australian and New Zealand soldiers and nurses are together with Serbian officers, what we saw and felt from letters, photographs and testimonies of descendants is that these people were connected to Serbia and the Serbian people in a specific way. And that energy exists even today. Of the three Australians in the team who had never been to Serbia, I could often hear just one thing – this story must be told.”

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If I don't come back to you

Although woven from historical material, Bojan Pajić's book, based on which Kajmakčalan was created, turns into a romance novel in some places. "If I don't come back to you, I leave this world first, alone, I don't ask you to be faithful to me, nor to turn your head when you see someone else...", are the opening lines of the song that Olive King from Sydney dedicated to Serbian army officer Milan Jovicic, her love from the Thessaloniki front. Olive King arrived in Serbia via the Scottish Women's Hospital. There he joined the army as an ambulance driver and received the rank of sergeant. Her brother-in-law, Milan Jovicic, was a Serbian liaison officer with the British Army headquarters in Thessaloniki. Their romance in the most difficult circumstances is interrupted by the departure of officer Jovicic to London. Olive King stayed in Serbia until 1920. He organized seventeen mobile canteens with the intention of feeding and supporting the hungry and suffering. Two years after returning home, Sergeant Olive King receives an invitation to be a guest at King Alexander's wedding. He meets his love from the war again and it will be their last meeting. They never saw each other again, although they corresponded for years. Oliv will keep a photo of his beloved near the headboard, with the dedication: "My dear, with sincere love, Milan (Jovi), April 21, 1921." Sergeant Olive King was awarded the Order of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, along with one hundred and fifty of her compatriots.