Exactly 110 years ago, on September 30, 1916, after 18 days of non-stop fighting, the Serbian army finally took the summit of Kajmakchalan. In Bitola, a two-day commemoration of the battle opened with fresh flowers laid at the Serbian Military Cemetery, organised by the Community of Serbs in Macedonia - Bitola.

The battle was fought from September 12 to 30, 1916, between Serbian and Bulgarian forces, as part of the Monastir Offensive on the Salonika Front. The summit of Mount Nidzhe, at 2,524 metres above sea level, was the key to controlling the Pelagonia basin and the road to Bitola. Soldiers fought in fog, icy winds and snow, and because the layer of soil was so thin, they built their barricades out of stone slabs. The peak changed hands between the two armies several times. The price: around 5,000 dead, wounded and missing. On the Serbian side fought Colonel Krsta Smiljanic's Drina Division and the volunteer detachments of Vojvoda Vuk.

"You all know what Kajmakchalan is, you know what the Serbian military cemetery here means, where the bones of our heroes lie. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be here either," said the Community's president, Zoran Zhugic, recalling that thirty years ago far fewer people came to the commemoration.

The strongest words came from Belgrade. Serbia's Minister for Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs, Milica Djurdjevic Stamenkovski, called the cemetery a shrine and proof of the "eternal brotherhood" between Macedonians and Serbs, adding that 110 years on "we find ourselves in situations where we have to hold back when we say we are closest to one another." Bitola's deputy mayor, Marina Krstic, also laid flowers, and the programme continued with an academy titled "110 Years Since Kajmakchalan" at the Officers' Club.

For Macedonia, Kajmakchalan is part of a bigger and harder story. The Salonika Front was a time when foreign armies fought on Macedonian soil and the local population paid the price of a war it did not start. Remembering the fallen is dignified and legitimate. The question is a different one: when will what this land lived through, while others fought over it, be commemorated with the same care?