The Third Army — War Diary, Book 1
Seventy-Eight Days in the Embrace of the “Merciful Angel”
The war diary of General Nebojša Pavković, commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, from January 1999 to the 46th day of the NATO bombing — including the entry of 3 April 1999 at Reljan.
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The war diary of General Nebojša Pavković, commander of the Third Army of the Yugoslav Army during the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Book 1 covers the months before the bombing, from January 1999, and the first 46 days of the air campaign, to 8 May 1999. The entries are kept day by day and often hour by hour, and are interwoven with orders, combat reports, maps and photographs, with a foreword by Nikola Šainović.
Among them is the entry of 3 April 1999 near the village of Reljan, where Pavković came within a metre and a half of a damaged 30-millimetre round identified as depleted-uranium ammunition. That episode is at the centre of the lawsuit his children, Marija and Darko Pavković, have brought against NATO, described in the book “The War That Never Ended – We Sued NATO”.
Format: PDF e-book, 1,368 pages. First published by the author, Belgrade 2017. Electronic edition: Legal Smart Media, with the consent of the heirs.
Language note: this e-book is currently in Serbian (Latin script). The full English translation is in preparation.
First chapter
The First Day of Hell, 24 March 1999
(Priština, Command of the Priština Corps, 07:00)
I arrived at the command post of the Priština Corps a little before seven. General Lazarević was already there, together with Lieutenant General Slobodan Kovačević, head of the Armoured and Mechanised Units Directorate of the General Staff. General Lazarević reported that during the night the 243rd Mechanised Brigade had begun an operation to break up the ŠTS in the border belt, around the villages of Straža and Kotlina and along the road from Doganovići to Globočica.
My aide, Drašković, reminded me that a meeting had been called with the officers of Forward Command Post “3” and the Priština Corps. We set off at once. In the large conference room there were some fifty officers. I greeted everyone, Drecun in particular, and asked him jokingly where his uniform was. Diagrams, charts and Gantt charts had been put up on the boards and the walls…
From 10:45, with the inner circle of the Third Army and Corps commands, we went through the information that had reached Forward Command Post “3”. The most important was that at its meeting in Brussels on 23 March 1999 the NATO Council had decided to begin the aggression against the FRY with its air forces. The operation had been given the name “Merciful Angel”.
At 12:00 the Army Chief of Staff, Major General Stojimirović, reported to me that the transfer of Main Command Post “3” from Kuršumlija to the Niš area had been completed. The command post had been spread over several locations.
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