After graduation he became a schoolmaster at Baraći, near Banja Luka, in the Bosanska Krajina region of Bosnia in what had become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.[3][4][5] Prior to the outbreak of World War II, he attended the Royal Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian: Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VKJ) reserve officer training school at Bileća, and was serving in the VKJ reserve.[3][6]