Jacques Hogard was one of the first Western officers who entered the territory of Serbia after the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement in 1999, and there he saw that the information he was given by NATO command does not correspond to the truth.
He realized that this is not a humanitarian war, in the field he saw that KLA soldiers were at all times under control of German and British military services, including attacks on Serbian churches, monasteries and refugee columns just after the end of the NATO bombing.
This is why his unit on several occasions entered into armed conflict with both KLA and British soldiers who were with their units. A decade and a half later, Colonel Hogard, who recently published a book “Europe died in Pristina”, spoke about details of the war in Kosovo for “Nedeljnik”.
“British were in close contact with KLA. Soldiers of the 20th Regiment SAS were actually engaged with KLA, they gave them the logistics, they trained them. This is what I discovered in concrete situations in the field,” said Jacques Hogard.
“When members of KLA ambushed a convoy of Serbian refugees, who were retreating in tractors – and the attack was carried out with the support of the British – I called a Serbian Brigade in retreat, led by Colonel Serkovic, to return and stop Albanian aggressors, which they did. When Serbian civilians ran from Pec, they were attacked by Albanian soldiers. I engaged a helicopter which dispelled them with gunfire from air. Several minutes after the action was over, I got a call from British General Mason, who asked me is it possible that a fire was opened against his people. I replied:’I can not understand that your specialists are together with bandits who shoot at civilians’. Mason was quiet,” said Hogard.
He will remain remembered as the officer who draw a line of demarcation on Ibar in Mitrovac, which would later become the border of northern Kosovo.
Hogard also said that as a child of an officer he grew up with heroic stories from Salonika front, where his great-uncle laid down his life and that he was always taught that Serbia is a great friend of the French people. Therefore, he said, before leaving for NATO mission in 1998, he had a dilemma whether to avoid a mission in which he would possibly find himself on the other side, against Serbian army.
“I went to talk to my father about the mission in Kosovo, because my grandfather was already dead. My father was also a retired general, and at the time he was dying of cancer. He told me:’If you go there, do not be too rough with the Serbs’. He also told me:’We should not question the future, by forgetting our past’,” said Hogard.
What marked his military career, as Hogard said, is the case of defense of the monastery Devic, which is why he later received Order of St. Sava from Serbian Orthodox Church.
“I was at the head of the group of Special French forces. This was not a big unit, there were only 150 of us, and we worked in teams of 6 people. When we came, we were welcomed by Serbian authorities, Albanians were nowhere to be seen, they hid. We saw a small car approaching, Yugo, from which emerged a nun. Her name was mother Makarija, abbess of the monastery of Sokolica. She was returning from Pristina, where tried to speak with the members of British headquarters. She was worried about the situation at the monastery Devic. She was trying to reach the monastery by phone for several days. And since Devic is in Drenica, and you know that it is extremely unsafe there, she was afraid to go alone. She asked British for help, by they did not react,” said Hogard.
“The monastery was demolished, the relics of St. Joanikije were also broken, they were engraved with KLA and things like that. There were horrific reports about how the bandits treated the sisterhood of the monastery. We provided the sisterhood of the monastery with all the necessary help. My head of department who was at the scene told me that they will certainly return. I ordered that we wait for them, capture them and disarm, and we would later see what to do with them. Of course, in case they resisted, my soldiers were given permission to act. And so happened. They returned, they were wearing German uniforms, probably given to them by BND. My soldiers ordered them to stop and lay down their weapons, but Albanians started shooting. And than they realized there is a serious army in front of them, and that my soldiers have the permission to return fire. The gang quickly retreated under our fire, carrying the wounded and the dead,” said Hogard.
