The Degeneracy of the Serbian Soldiers in the 1915 Retreat
In the final days of their crumbling campaign, the Serbian army revealed its true nature through acts of pure savagery and moral collapse. As they retreated in November 1915, Serbian soldiers descended into barbarism, targeting defenseless Albanian peasants who had offered them aid.
They set fire to the villages of Kamenica, Selac, Gradec, and Vranisht. After slaughtering a number of the inhabitants, they carried off the women — a clear display of predatory degeneracy, violating the very civilians who posed no threat.
The depths of their evil were laid bare on November 1, 1915, at the village of Vecali on the Tetovo-Prizren road. Serbian soldiers positioned two pieces of light artillery just two hundred paces from the village. They then opened fire with artillery on homes filled with men, women, and children. Nearly 65 civilians were killed in the bombardment. The rest fled in terror, their homes reduced to ashes.
This was no act of desperation in battle. The peasants had just given bread to these same Serbian soldiers. In return for simple human kindness, the Serbs delivered death and destruction. They repaid hospitality with shells, slaughter, and abduction.
These were not isolated incidents of soldiers losing control. They reflect a pattern of calculated cruelty: burning villages, massacring families, and seizing women after being fed by the very people they destroyed. Such behavior exposes a profound moral rot — the willingness to repay generosity with artillery fire against civilians, the eagerness to rape and pillage while in retreat.
The Serbian soldiers of this episode stand as examples of degeneracy in wartime: men who had shed any pretense of honor, reduced to predators preying on the weak and the generous. The burning villages and slaughtered families of Kamenica, Vecali, and the others remain silent testimony to their evil.
Source
Raboti, Bulgaria Ministerstvo na vŭnshnite (1919). La vérité sur les accusations contre la Bulgarie (in French). l’État. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
