Members of the crew of the Montenegrin Navy training ship "Jadran", Petty Officers Dušan Tomasović, Darko Bulatović and Boris Knežević, yesterday thoroughly cleaned and decorated the monument to national heroes Milan Spasić and Sergej Mašera in the Great City Park in Tivat.
They did so ahead of today's commemoration at the monument, which will mark the 84th anniversary of the feat of Spasić and Mašera, who sacrificed their lives on April 17, 1941, and blew up the Royal Yugoslav Navy destroyer "Zagreb" in the Bay of Tivat.
The two officers did this by refusing to carry out the order to surrender the "Zagreb" to the Italian occupiers, who were entering the Boka Bay after the capitulation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the April War of 1941.
Because of that defiant and humiliating act, in which Spasić and Mašera laid down their lives, in 1973 they were proclaimed national heroes of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as the only officers of the Royal Army of Yugoslavia to receive that honor.
Incidentally, the crew of the training ship "Jadran", which returned from Bar to its permanent base in Tivat yesterday after completing work on the rigging, has a special connection with these two heroes, because Milan Spasić served as a navigation officer on the "Jadran" in 1938.
For this reason, the crew of this sailing ship has a special reverence for these two naval heroes, maintains their monument in Tivat, and regularly participates in commemorations that honor Spasić and Mašera and the destroyer "Zagreb" every year on April 17th in that city.
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