One man and his dog: Dynamic duo trek through Balkans

A Labrador dog and its Dublin owner have walked 2,000km through the Balkans to remember a “forgotten part” of Irish involvement in the first World War.

Businessman Mark Keating and his dog Pajo have also raised more than half their target of €20,000 for Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, and the children’s cancer department in Belgrade’s University Hospital.

Mr Keating, who has a background in the water- treatment industry, was inspired by an Irishman's Diary in The Irish Times and the wartime experiences of his great-grandfather and his grandfather-in-law, who was from Serbia.

His wife’s grandfather, Dobrosav Petrovic, survived an event known as the Great Serbian Retreat, when 240,000 Serbs lost their lives in a march through Albania, after the German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces invaded Serbia in late 1915.

Many of the retreating Serbs, including up to 30,000 young boys, were attacked by Albanians, in revenge for atrocities committed several years previously by the Serbian army.

It is estimated that about 155,000 Serbs eventually made it to the Adriatic coast, having experienced cold, hunger, thirst and disease en route through Montenegro and into Albania.

Western front

Petrovic was one of those survivors – though he caught typhus when he eventually reached Corfu and was left for dead. After he was rescued by a friend, he was sent to the western front in France.

In 1917, he was sent to Salonika in Greece, where he fought alongside English and Irish regiments. Coincidentally, one of those Irish was Keating’s own great-grandfather, Thomas Frederick Vaughan. Both men were instrumental in helping to push foreign troops out of Serbia in 1918.

On his trek, crossing five countries, Mr Keating encountered graveyards where many soldiers were buried – including a cross dedicated to the famous 10th Irish Division in former Serbian territory in Macedonia.

The 10th Irish Division was formed as part of Kitchener’s new army and fought in Gallipoli, Salonika and Palestine.

“The Celtic cross is a little piece of Ireland in the Balkans that many people don’t know about,” he said.