51st Vojvodina Division

51st Vojvodina Division

(Pedesetprva vojvoÄ‘anska divizija)

History

Fifty-first division was formed on 31 October 1944 in Novi Sad from 7th, 8th, 12th and 14th Vojvodina brigades. Participated in Batina operation and defense of Virovitica bridgehead. During final operations of Yugoslav army participated in liberation of Osijek, ÄurÄ‘evac, Koprivnica and Ptuj as well as destruction of enemy concentration at Dravograd.

Freshly formed division barely had time to reequip with Soviet armament before it was thrown into combat at Batina. Although it received enough small arms it had very little artillery and worse it had almost no anti-tank guns and had to relay on obsolete anti-tank rifles to knock out tank tracks with lucky shot, even standard infantry gear like entrenching shovel were missing. To make matters even worse numerous volunteers that joined division didn't have even the basic military training while most of the officers were veteran partisans they had little knowledge and experience with open warfare.

All these factors contributed to horrendous casualties at Batina. Initial operational casualties reports listed 271 killed, 850 wounded and 207 missing most whom drowned in Daunbe in initial landings by 12th Brigade with fishing boats. But these reports didn't cover numerous volunteers which were joining division before and during battle. Nikola BoÅ¾iÄ‡ in his book "Batinska bitka" first published in 1978 brings incomplete list of 648 names of killed and missing, his second edition published in 1990 bring 856 names and even this isn't definite figure.

These losses were further deepened by losses of veterans and officer cadre as high as 70% making division unable to exploit final Soviet breakthrough and collapse of German front line.

References

Vojni leksikon

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