Monument to Milunka Savić
In Honor of all the Forgotten Heroes
On the centenary of the end of the First World War, the municipality of Inđija solemnly unveiled a monument to Milunka Savić, the most decorated woman soldier of the First World War, symbolically on the day of her birth on 28 June, and one of the biggest Serbian holidays, Vidovdan. The monument is located in the sports and recreational zone of Inđija “Leje”, on the regional road Belgrade – Inđija.
The author of the monument to Milunka Savić is Jelena Božović-Đorđević, a sculptor from Belgrade. The monument is 2 meters and 35 centimeters high, cast in bronze on a pedestal 170 centimeters high, by Miodrag Jaksić, who also designed the ground floor solution around the monument.
On the pedestal there are the decorations that Milunka Savić was decorated with during the six years of war, and they are: Golden Karađorđe star with swords, Gold medal for bravery “Miloš Obilić”, Albanian Commemorative Medal, Memorial of the War for Liberation and Unification 1914-1918, Jubilee Memorial of the Salonica Front, the Legion of Honor of the 4th degree – officer, the Legion of Honor of the 5th degree – knight and the Croix de guerre with a silver-gilt palm.
The words of Milunka Savić are also engraved on the monument: “What helped me the most was that I had an innate feeling to throw the hand grenade where I intended, and that was quite far, because I was very strong. Everyone was amazed at that, and I, in fact, didn’t even learn how to throw a hand grenade. We shepherds played a variety of games, and one of my favorites was marker shooting. We would take an object, a stone or something … stick it in the meadow and throw a stone from a distance. I almost always won. That’s where my grenade-throwing skill came from. And I was young and strong.”