Vinko Misur

Vinko Misur was a soldier in the second world war. He lived in a coastal village in the country then known as Yugoslavia (now Croatia) and worked as a stonemason. In 1941 when he was 24 he and his two brothers were forced to join the militia of the Ustashe government who were fighting with the Nazis against the Allies. Vinko’s brothers vanished in the fighting and the exact location of their death is unknown.

In 1944 Vinko was shot in the shoulder and there was an attempt to evacuate wounded soliders on a small boat over the Adriatic Sea to Italy which had dropped out of the war several months before. But the boat was machine-gunned at night. All the dead men on the boat, including Vinko, were buried on a nearby island called Vis. There is a stone monument and a list of the dead soldiers’ names which you can still visit today.