Mladen U. AVDALOVIĆ

MLADEN AVDALOVIĆ, son of UROŠ, born on July 7, 1923, in Gornji Drežanj near Nevesinje. He was a student at the Gymnasium in Mostar. He became a member of the League of Communist Youth (SKOJ) in 1941 and joined the Mostar Battalion as a fighter. In the summer of 1941, he set out together with his brother Boro and the first group of volunteers, consisting of 28 Mostar communists, to the area of eastern Herzegovina to work on developing the uprising. The detachment, led by Savo Medan, started after 9 o’clock in the evening from the neighborhood of Bjelušine, armed with 16 rifles and 150 rounds of ammunition for each rifle. Each fighter had a revolver and at least two “Kragujevac” rifles.

However, Mladen quickly returned from the detachment due to exhaustion: “Late at night, Gojko Samardžić and Mladen Avdalović returned from this detachment. They came to our house. Gojko carried Mladen more than he led him because, according to his words, Mladen became exhausted during the journey. They rested for a while until Mladen recovered and regained his strength, and then we escorted him down the garden while Gojko went towards his own house.” After that, Mladen escaped to Serbia where his parents were already located. He joined the Resava Partisan Company, 2nd Šumadija Detachment, in August 1941. He was captured by the Nedić forces on September 30, 1941, in Bobovo near Svilajnac and was executed on October 2, 1941. In the same Resava Company, there was Radoslav Kovačević, who died on October 22, 1941.

Pavle Neimarević, a refugee from Mostar in Belgrade in 1941, was quite surprised when he “already heard that some of our Mostar people died in the Partisans – Rako Kovačević, a tailor, and Mladen Avdelović, captured in battles near Svilajnac. So I wondered: when did Mladen come and leave for the Partisans, and he returned to Mostar exhausted from the first detachment.”

From a newspaper article from 1945, we learn from Mladen’s mother, Jelena: “Mladen, who had only completed six grades of high school, couldn’t endure the hardships of the journey and returned to Mostar. After a few days, upon learning that his parents, after being robbed of everything, were expelled to Serbia, he also set out. In Serbia, he made contact with his comrades and became a partisan. When the partisans withdrew from Svilajnac, they were attacked by the Nedić forces between Kušiljevo and Bobovo. While Mladen was rescuing a severely wounded comrade, a burst of machine gun fire passed through both of his legs. The Nedić bandits threw him into a cart, assaulted him with heavy weapons, and brought him to Svilajnac. Mladen was already dead. They buried Mladen, and the girls of Svilajnac planted flowers on his grave and wrote to Mladen’s mother: ‘Our garden is thriving.’ However, the enemy came and tore the flowers from Mladen’s grave, scattering the soil. ‘But the girls who decorated my son’s grave are alive, and one day they will show me where Mladen lies,’ says the mother.”

In the National Liberation War (NOB), Mladen’s sister Radmila Avdalović and brother Boro Avdalović were also killed. The newspaper “Borba” published a touching interview with their mother Jelena in the “Our Heroic Mothers” section in 1945. You can read the article here.

Mladen’s name was recorded on the memorial plaque at Mostar Gymnasium after the war. The plaque disappeared without a trace during the war events of 1992-1995.