Soldiers' Roadside Monuments in the Community of Arilje

Zoran Cvetković

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 44 (2024) no. 1.

Résumé

Starting in 1912, Serbia was compelled to take part in three consecutive wars: The First and The Second Balkan Wars, and The First World War. In each war, the number of civilian and military casualties was extremely high in comparison to the total population. Soldiers perished in battles, during the retreat through Albania, in enemy camps, and in hospitals where they were being treated for war wounds and severe epidemics. The deceased were seldom buried in their hometowns. Most often, they remained on battlefields, military cemeteries, and cemeteries of enemy camps. Therefore, their families frequently constructed specific monuments to keep a spiritual bond with their perished ones and to pay tribute to them. These memorials, commonly referred to as cenotaphs, were empty graves, typically placed along roads. In Serbia, they were known as "krajputaš", meaning a monument beside the road. This paper presents research results on the roadside military monuments discovered and documented throughout the villages of Arilje, a community in Western Serbia.