[1][2][3] He was born on 1 May 1906, in Trbušnica, near Loznica, on the slopes of the mountain Gučevo, as the eighth child of eleven, in the family of Alimpije and Jelena Gavrić.

[1][4] In the beginning of August 1914, Austro-Hungarian soldiers of 42nd Croatian Home Guard Infantry Division maimed and hanged his father, mother, grandmother,[2] his three sisters, and four of his brothers.

[3][4] The same evening, he took revenge by showing his unit the location of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and participated in the bombardment, as told by his son Branislav Gavrić in an interview.

[2][4][6] After the liberation of Belgrade, Major Tucović made sure that Gavrić would receive aid from a British mission that was helping war orphans in Serbia.

He was working in Šabac and Belgrade when he reached the age of conscription, and at the military barracks in Slavonska Požega, he reported that he already had been in the army during the war.

After the war, in 1947, OZNA arrested him for claiming that the Albanians were no brothers to Serbs and saying how he "felt that brotherhood of theirs in 1915, when they were killing us", during a time when the presidents of Yugoslavia and Albania (Josip Broz Tito and Enver Hoxha) were great friends.