Jovo Đ. LUČIĆ

JOVO LUČIĆ, son of ĐURO, born on November 1, 1920, in Hodbina near Mostar. He was a farmer. His mother died when he was three years old. He completed elementary school in Hodbina and “took up the hoe” on his father Đuro’s estate, known as Djed. The beginning of the war found him in the uniform of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the Albanian front. A few months later, he was “thrown into an Ustasha prison in Buna, from where he narrowly escaped by pure chance.” He was a member of SKOJ (League of Communist Youth). He was part of a group that recruited volunteers from Mostar to join the Partisans and fill their ranks. He became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in 1943. He refused to join the Chetniks, who had a strong presence in his village. In early April 1944, he was sent to the “Savo Belović” detachment, where he was appointed as a political delegate and later as a company commissar in the 3rd Battalion of the 13th Brigade. He was the political commissar of the 1st company of the 3rd Battalion and died on December 19, 1944, in a battle against the Germans near Kamena. On that occasion, three company commissars were killed: Antun Kordić, assistant commissar of the Support Company of the Third Battalion, Branko Mihić, commissar of the Third Company, and Jovo Lučić, commissar of the First Company, as well as several fighters: Omer Veledar, Mirko Glavaš, Božidar Dorkić, and Avdo Bijavica.

EXCERPTS FROM LITERATURE:

Mensur Seferović recorded the following about Jovo’s death:

“So, on December 19, 1944, after a battle that lasted the entire day at the positions of the Third Battalion of the Thirteenth Brigade, a report arrived stating: ‘During this event, 20 enemy legionnaires were killed, and there were multiple injuries. We had 5 casualties, including 2 company commissars and 1 assistant company commissar. These leaders were killed due to their carelessness in not using cover… They rushed out of houses into the darkness and encountered German soldiers and Ustashe, whom, it was later revealed, were brought a day earlier by a defected legionnaire captured in the battles for Trebinje and held as a cook in the battalion. He knew the positions and movements of the patrols of the three companies, and it was not difficult for him to lead a strong enemy group to the kitchen where he worked. However, their expectations were not fulfilled. Although momentarily surprised, the fighters recognized their opponents even in the darkness, and after a two-hour whirlwind around houses and fences, engaging in individual and group battles, with the first light of dawn, they pushed back and pinned down the enemy on the hill above the village. The entire battalion regrouped and advanced towards the fortified hill, but machine gunners mowed them down and claimed their victims. Commissar Šukić and several other fighters were wounded. At that moment, Commissar Antun and soldier Milko tried to approach the bunkers on the hill, but Antun was killed, and a few moments later, Commissar Branko and Skojec Omer fell beside him, mowed down by gunfire. The encirclement was nearing its end: hand grenades and mortars were hitting with increasing precision, hand bombs were exploding, cries echoed one after another. Driven by determination and the desire to eliminate the remaining Ustashe and legionnaires on the rocky hill as quickly as possible, Jovo Lučić, the commissar of the first company, stood on a stone fence with a machine gun in his hand and thundered a call to charge, disregarding the warnings of Kosta Đurica, the battalion’s party leader, that he would lose his life so quickly. And a few steps further, he fell when he rose to throw his last grenade. He became the seventh casualty of the Third Battalion, in addition to the wounded fighters.”

Jovo was struck by two bullets in the abdomen and one in the spine. (…) “Two hours after being wounded, as the fight with German soldiers and Ustashe moved further away from the village, lying on a stretcher, using his last strength, he begged his comrades who were carrying him towards Šćepan Krst, while under fire from an enemy machine gunner, to protect their own heads and not his… A small group of warriors did not obey the commissar. They brought his lifeless body to Šćepan Krst (…) Jovo was buried next to soldier Mirko Glavaš, and the next day, Jovo’s father Đuro carried both bodies ‘on stretchers, without a word, towards their village Hodbina,’ and buried them ‘in a single grave.’ It was said about Jovo Lučić: ‘Not only in that battalion, but also in his native village, he was known as an exceptionally daring warrior, a fearless commissar whose bravery inspired many in the company to undertake great feats. The news of his death both stirred and deeply moved the village.’”

Jovo’s childhood friend, Stevo Stević from Buna, described his memories in a letter to the journalist Mensur Seferović in 1980:

“The day was beautiful, like spring, and many people gathered at the funeral, including almost the entire company of the First Battalion, whose commissar delivered a speech (…). Then Đuro, Jovo’s father (who had passed away a few years earlier), stood above the open grave. With tears in his eyes but his head held high, he began to speak: how much Jovo meant to him as his first child, how he respected and loved his father and others, how he couldn’t comprehend that he would never see him again, how he was supposed to live in freedom, but now he was gone. In the end, he said, ‘I mourn you as my son, but I bear the wounds more easily knowing that you fell for the freedom of our country, that you fell in battle against the enemy.’ Then a group of partisans saluted their comrade Jovo with a volley of gunfire. The words of Djed, Jovo’s father, at the funeral of his son – a young man of twenty-four, a commissar of the partisan company – left a strong moral impression on everyone present. As the day was sunny and visibility was clear, the enemy located in Buna began firing into the crowd at the cemetery – at the funeral. Our fighters responded through the barrels of their weapons. The fact that Jovo Lučić was highly regarded and left a profound impression on us as a great warrior is evident by the fact that when a peasant working cooperative was formed in 1949, it was named SRZ ‘Jovo Lučić’ (…).”