Nada U. JANJIĆ

NADEŽDA NADA JANJIĆ, daughter of UROŠ, born on June 20, 1929, in Mostar. Student of the Civil School. Member of the Communist Youth League (SKOJ) since 1942. Joined the People’s Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments in September 1944, in the 1st (Mostar) Battalion of the 13th Herzegovinian Brigade. Fighter, nurse in the 1st Battalion, killed in the battles at Ivan-sedlo on March 28, 1945.

The moments of Nada Janjić’s death are recorded briefly in several sources:

“On the same day, 27th and 28th of March, in the mountains, on Mali Ivan, which the enemy attacked on the night of March 26th and 27th, and during the day, ‘simultaneously exerting pressure towards points 1284 and 810 from Rudno Hill and the village of Korča,’ as reported by the Headquarters of the 29th Division to the 2nd Corps of the Yugoslav Army, stating: ‘In a fierce battle, the enemy managed to capture Mali Ivan, which changed hands several times. The battle lasted the whole day of March 27th. No shots were heard for a long time. The mountain frost was gripping, eyes were vigilantly watching and peering into the darkness, it seemed that the night would pass without a fight, like several previous ones when suddenly, at 9 pm, hundreds of hand grenades exploded in a wide area of Mali Ivan, illuminating the forest, clearings, and sparse thickets with rockets and rows of machine gun fire, when the enemy pushed back the 2nd Battalion and gained control over a larger area of the Mali Ivan stronghold. The Headquarters of the 1st Battalion sent one company to support the defense and attack of the 2nd Battalion and regain the lost position. In addition to fifteen wounded, including the severely wounded company commander, the assistant commissar of the 1st Company of the 1st Battalion, Lieutenant Mladen Vukanović, and the company nurse Nada Janjić were killed.”

“Similarly, on March 27th, 1945, (machine gunner Džanko Nuhić) found himself on the forward part of the 1st Battalion’s position on Mali Ivan when, even in a lull of the battle, he had bitter moments. ‘I listened carefully: a female voice reached me more like a groan, and I found Nada Janjić, a nurse from Mostar, wounded in the stomach, buried in the snow in the bushes. She whispered in my ear not to leave her because the Ustaše would find her and kill her,’ remembered Džanko Nuhić. ‘I carried her, and a few meters away, I came across the seriously wounded company commander, Rašid Hodžić, who asked me to go back and get him, either me or someone else. I handed Nada over to Commander Lazo Čvor and went back for Commander Hodžić. He was wounded in the thigh bone. Nada breathed her last, and Rašid remained a severely disabled person. But, it was the next day that things got worse, it couldn’t get any worse. German soldiers repelled us again in the attack on Mali Ivan, and we, scattered, made our way down the sparse forest, accompanied by mines and grenades. I found a fallen rotten beech tree and lay down there (…)’”