After the retreat through Albania and the transfer to Corfu, he was appointed head of the Operation Division of the Supreme Command overseeing the 1st Serbian Volunteer Corps in Odessa.

After the reorganisation of the Serbian Army and its redeployment along Greece’s northern border, he received command of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade during the Franco-Serb offensive of 1918, and the subsequent capitulation of Bulgaria leading to the liberation of Serbia.

At the time of Čolak-Antić birth, his father, Colonel Ilija Čolak-Antić, was commander of the Ibar Army during the Serbo Turkish War, the successful war of independence from Ottoman rule,[4] a year later his maternal grandfather, Dimitrije Matić, was elected president of the National Assembly of Serbia, which ratified the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin proclaiming Serbia's independence.

Čolak-Antić had a sister Jovanka married to writer Ilija Vukićević and an older brother, Boško, born in 1871 who became a diplomat and a Marshall of the Court.

[6] On 31 March 1910, as a Military Cadet, Čolak-Antić was sent for further training in France, at the 23rd Dragoon Regiment, the famed Royal Piémont with the rank of Captain First-Class.

During the Serbian army and government exile in Corfu, while the country was occupied by Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, Čolak-Antić was appointed to the Operational Division of the Supreme Command and promoted colonel.

In April of 1916, he was transferred to the Russian Empire at the headquarters of the 1st Volunteer Division in Odessa, where the first Yugoslav army unit was being organised; he remained there until the October Revolution of 1917 when the withdrawal was ordered.

The commission work involved studies from lawyers, historians, geographers and other members of the academic community, in order to prepare border documentation, on the basis of Article 29 of the Peace Treaty.

[11] The occupation of Pécs and Baranya by Yugoslav troops following the cessation of hostilities in November 1918, provoked some resistance from workers who wanted to be connected to revolutionary events taking place at the time in Hungary.

On 5 August 1921, the Conference of Ambassadors gave instructions for the Yugoslav withdrawal of southern Hungary and asked the Yugoslav government to appoint an officer through whom the local Allied Commission might communicate with Belgrade; Colonel Čolak-Antić was appointed Military Commander of Pécs and Baranja during the transitional period; amongst his duties was the handover of the civilian government in Pécs to the Hungarian authorities.

The small Republic of Baranya did not manage to gain international recognition and since it depended on the Serbian protection, when the Yugoslav army finally withdrew, Hungarian forces of Miklós Horthy entered into the region bringing it to an end.

[8] According to historians, the definition of the Hungarian-Yugoslav border was undeniably a major reason for the stabilisation of Europe after the First World War and the establishment of a new regional balance.

He became Inspector General of Cavalry on 11 April 1929, a position he would keep until the end of his career, on 5 December 1929 he was awarded the French Legion of Honour with the rank of Commandeur.

[4] Upon the invasion of the country by the Axis forces in April 1941, he was handed over the war plan, the operational protocol and other sensitive material by his son Lieutenant colonel Petar Čolak-Antić, documents that he hid from the invaders.