In 1912, call-up papers arrived at the Savić household for the First Balkan War. They were addressed to Milunka's brother — who was ill with tuberculosis and in no state to fight. So Milunka, then about twenty, made a decision that would define her life: she cut her hair, dressed in men's clothes, took her brother's place, and reported for duty. By the time anyone in the Serbian army realized she was a woman, she had already proven she could fight.

The discovery, when it came, was almost comic in its outcome. Wounded and treated, her identity revealed, she was brought before a commanding officer who faced an awkward problem: she was plainly an excellent soldier. The story goes that he offered to transfer her to the nursing corps; she refused and asked to stay in the infantry. He told her he would think it over — and she replied that she would wait, at attention, for his answer. He gave it in under a minute. She stayed.

The French would come to call her the "Serbian Joan of Arc." She earned the comparison the hard way.

The bomber of Kolubara

When the First World War broke out, Savić fought in the great defensive battles of 1914. At the Battle of Kolubara she charged across open ground and, by the accounts that survive, single-handedly took an enemy trench and around twenty Austro-Hungarian soldiers prisoner. Her accuracy hurling grenades over long distances earned her a nickname — "the Bomber of Kolubara" — and her first Karađorđe Star with Swords, Serbia's highest decoration for valor.

Two years later, at the Battle of the Crna Bend on the Salonika front in 1916, she captured some twenty-three Bulgarian soldiers on her own and won a second Karađorđe Star. By the war's end she had been wounded nine times. Her decorations stacked up across nations: the French Légion d'honneur — twice — the Russian Cross of St. George, the British Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Miloš Obilić medal, and, uniquely among women, the French Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 with the gold palm. No other woman in recorded history has been decorated so heavily for combat.

The quiet decades

What happened after the war is, in its own way, as striking as the medals. Demobilised in 1919, Savić turned down the chance to move to France and collect a comfortable army pension. She chose Belgrade instead, and a string of ordinary jobs — postal worker, and for years a cleaning lady at a bank. The most decorated woman soldier in the world scrubbed floors in near-anonymity. She raised a daughter and, by various accounts, fostered and supported other children on almost nothing.

Only late in her life did the city seem to remember who lived among it. In 1972, after public complaints and a newspaper article drew attention to her circumstances, the Belgrade authorities finally granted her a small apartment. She lived in it for about a year before she died in 1973. Today she is honoured across Serbia — but her story carries a quiet warning about how easily even the bravest lives slip out of public memory.

For the classroom

Savić's life opens up questions about gender and war: why did she have to disguise herself to serve, and what changed once she couldn't be ignored? How do nations choose which heroes to remember — and why was she nearly forgotten for fifty years? The Learn page has discussion prompts and source material.

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