Elez Dervišević

When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, the 91st Czech Infantry Battalion was ordered to Soča. The teenaged Dervišević volunteered to help the Czech infantry at Soča supplying food for the battalion. The Czech officer stationed there, Alois Martinek, asked the local Protection Corps commander to help guide him via the river Sava and the region of Slavonia, to which he agreed. However, Dervišević abandoned his task to jump on the train with the army to become a soldier. He was discovered only after he got to Soča. After hearing of this, Martinek ordered him off the front line. At first, Dervišević was a courier. Then a commander brought him to see the Bosniak forces in action. From a safe distance he watched as the Third Regiment of the Bosniak attacked and overran the Italian positions. Dervišević and an officer captured three Italian soldiers, and because of this the boy was promoted to corporal. At fourteen he was the youngest soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After nineteen months of service Dervišević was hit by shrapnel in the lower jaw and Martinek sent him to a hospital in Vienna. When he recovered he was stationed in Wielburg castle. He took care of the Ernsthaler family, who enrolled him in cadet school in Bratislava.

At the end of the First World War, Dervišević returned to Bijeljina. The new Kingdom of Yugoslavia wanted to promote peace and unity, thus any demobilised Bosniak soldier of the Austro-Hungarian army, which had attacked the Kingdom of Serbia without a probable cause, was given clemency, meaning that they were allowed to return to their homes without any hindrance, and would be treated as Yugoslav subjects. Upon arriving he was greeted by the mother and the brother of Osman Munevera. In 1925 he visited the Ernsthaler family and the Archduchess Isabella who lived in Hungary. As a gift from her, he received 5,000 florins. He used the money to start an agricultural export company. He became a successful entrepreneur in Kingdom of Yugoslavia and his business flourished until the Second World War. After the end of war, he went to Syria, where he took the rank of major in the reserves of the Syrian Army. He died in Syria in 1988. He was buried in Damascus. He was survived by two daughters and two sons.

Elez Dervišević (1901 – 1988) was a Bosniak soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Army and one of the youngest soldiers in the First World War.

He was born in 1901 to a prominent Bosniak merchant family in Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His parents were Sulejman and Munevera. He had two brothers, Osman and Mehmedalija and one sister, Safija.