Royalist Chetniks were displaced, left their native country and came to live at camps in Shropshire. Toby Neal tells their story.

A line-up outside Captain Krsmanovic's office at O Camp, Donnington. The date is unknown.

Those of a more inquiring mind may have wondered from time to time why so many people in the Trench and Donnington areas of Telford have strange foreign-sounding surnames which, typically, end in “ic”.

Two or three generations down the line they speak like true Salopians and are as Salopian as anybody these days.

But they are part of a community who were left high and dry by the shifting tides of history – Serbians, for whom the end of the war in 1945 was not the end of their problems.

They were left without a home to go to. And, in the post-war period, some of them ended up in Britain, where they were housed in special camps, some of which were in Shropshire.

It is a period of the county’s history which has been the subject of continuing research by Telford historian Phil Fairclough.

“Some very strange events occurred at the end of the war in 1945,” says Phil.

“One of the strangest was the fate of the Royal Government of Yugoslavia. Its fall started a chain of events that was to intimately involve our part of east Shropshire, the shadow of which is still present in the quiet streets of Trench and Donnington.”

When Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, the country quickly fell. But two resistance groups, the royalist Chetniks, and the Communist partisans led by Tito, fought a guerrilla campaign against the occupiers – and a bitter civil war against each other.

Britain and America ultimately threw their backing behind Tito’s partisans. It meant that when war’s end came the Chetniks were left with nowhere to go.

They crossed into Italy and were put in camps for displaced persons, in which they stayed for months turning into years.

This is a Serbian community centre and church hall at Donnington.

“The youngest and fittest Chetniks and those who had been in German prisoner of war camps were allowed to come to Britain under a scheme called the European Voluntary Workers scheme,” said Phil.

“Many laughed when they heard the title. It was not really voluntary, as the only other choice was to stay in a DP camp. In all, about 100,000 displaced Europeans came here under this scheme, of whom 10,000 were from Yugoslavia.”

Phil has interviewed several of them and their descendants as part of his researches.

“Marko Jakovljevic, who lives in Donnington, remembers his father, Ciro, who was a prisoner of war in Germany. When he came on the EVW scheme, he first arrived at the large EVW camp at Childs Ercall and afterwards he worked all over north Lincolnshire on various farms for £2. 14s. a week.”

Tomislav Tomovic’s father was wounded in battle and went back to his farm. His life was hard under Communist rule, and in the end he managed to get to England sponsored by a relative who was already on the EVW scheme.

Nikola Novkovic, from Trench, was taken to an Italian DP camp, living in tents with 20 men in each.

“I was accepted on the EVW scheme to work in England and was given a choice of occupation – agriculture or coal mining. I had some experience of forestry work in Germany, so I chose to do that,” said Nikola.

However, when he got to an EVW camp in Cambridgeshire, his group were told they would be working down a coal mine. The men refused, and he was sent to northern Scotland for forestry work.

A visit by members of the Yugoslav royal family to O Camp, Donnington, probably in the 1950s or 1960s.

Phil said: “They all now live in Trench and Donnington. The reason they came was the creation of a special camp for them in Donnington. Initially it was called O Camp when it was established in 1951. There was also a second large EVW camp in Wellington, near the present Blessed Robert Johnson School, housing a whole variety of Europeans, Serbs, Ukrainians, Romanians and those from the Baltic states.

“The EVW scheme wound down in 1951 and these Serbian refugees had nowhere to go until O Camp was established. Most wanted to go back to Yugoslavia, but the political situation there made return impossible.

“Life in O Camp was quite good. Most worked on the military base and made a reasonable living. The Nissen huts housed two men in each and were heated by a central stove. The camp was only for men. If any man married, they had to leave for alternative local accommodation.

“The leader of the camp was a very talented man called Captain Miodrag Krsmanovic. He had been captured in the early days of the war and like many of his Serb colleagues spent a long time in a German prisoner of war camp. He became the link between the British Army who ran the base and the camp inhabitants.

“Over 500 people passed through the camp between 1951 and 1963.”

Krsmanovic became friendly with Brigadier Barclay, the commanding officer of COD Donnington, who supported the construction of new accommodation on the site of the Nissen huts. This new accommodation was named Barclay Lodge.

Phil added: “Those who founded the original community are getting old now, but they meet together still in the two Serbian Orthodox churches in Telford, and in a social centre where there is a plaque to the work of those EVWs who came here to solve Britain’s labour shortage after the war.”

• Phil wants to hear from anyone with further information about the EVW camp in Wellington. He can be contacted on 01952 417633.