The Final Months

Combat after action report of 15. Apr. ’45
“After a heavy artillery barrage the enemy attack in the sector of the 13th SS and 297th Divisions in battalion and up to regimental strength, supported by tanks. The fighting was extremely bitter, some positions changed hands upwards of six times, and losses were bloody on both sides.”
“Our troops, particularly the 13th SS Division “Handschar,” have fought outstandingly well in the face of a vastly superior foe. Despite two enemy breakthroughs, the main battle line is in our hands. The fighting continues. One enemy tank has been destroyed.”

The choice to stay in Bosnia or to fight on for the Germans had split many families apart. Jager Husein Mujkanovic (on the right) was KIA in Hungary sometime in April of that year.

When the official news of the surrender were announced, many Bosnians remaining with the battle group opted to go back south whatever the consequences might’ve been. Many however would join the Germans in the Allied POW camp in Rimini, Italy, and some of those would spend the rest of their lives in exile. The partisans were taking reprisals on the members of the 13th and especially the 7th SS divisions. A couple thousand were rumored to have been murdered in a mineshaft in Slovenia on 24. Apr. but the events simply do not correlate. Some years later the veterans of the 13th Division were joined by former Ustasas (of the Crusader resistence movement) and others unwanted by the Yugoslav government and sent to the Middle East to take part in the 1948 war.

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