Rather than continue up the toe as they had planned, Thrasher decided to turn right in a more northeasterly direction in an attempt to fly around the system they were currently in. The plan was to make it to the heel of Italy’s boot and then follow the coastline northwest to Bari. When they reached the heel, however, even darker, more menacing clouds awaited them. Though they contacted the control tower repeatedly, their requests for weather information continued to be denied because they were not able to provide the codes.
As they changed course once again and followed the coastline, the murky waters churned beneath them. In an attempt to stay below the cloud ceiling, they continued to descend to as low as four hundred feet above sea level. Thick fog soon rolled in and quickly covered the shoreline as thunderstorms and high winds began to rock the plane and the nerves of the nurses and medics.
They were getting closer to Bari, and the weather and visibility had not improved. At ten fifty and again at eleven twenty, the crew asked the station to activate its beacon to help guide them in landing, but without the codes the control tower at Bari again refused to assist. At approximately eleven thirty-five, with no airport in sight and poor visibility continuing, the flight crew again contacted Bari control and asked for a radio fix so they could determine the direction of the airport and fly toward it. This time Bari control replied that it did not have the equipment to provide a fix. At eleven forty-five, more than three hours after takeoff, the crew asked the control tower yet again to turn on the beacon. The tower finally agreed and turned the beacon on for about ten minutes. This was the last message they received from Bari control.
Soon after the approval was received, the plane lost all radio communication. Lebo tried desperately to reestablish it, while the pilots realized the apparently faulty magnetic compass was no longer functioning properly. The flight crew was now acutely aware of the difficult situation they faced. They had lost all radio communication, they had no beacon signal from the airport, they had a nonfunctioning magnetic compass, and they had poor visibility with little ground reference to navigate. They were flying blind.
Someone from the cabin shouted, “Look out there!” and several turned to see two waterspouts about three hundred feet from the plane. Hayes had heard about waterspouts, powerful tornadoes that formed over water, and had even seen pictures, but he’d never imagined how violent they could be. He watched as the large columns of water rose up from the Adriatic Sea. They had appeared suddenly, and he began to worry that if another formed closer to the plane they would all be killed. Thrasher came back to the cabin to talk with the passengers, while Baggs flew the plane. He told them they were going to try to climb above the clouds and away from the immediate threat. Shortly after, the C-53D once again ascended as the passengers watched the wingtips appear and disappear in the thick clouds until they finally broke through. Bright sunlight suddenly lit up the cabin, and, for the moment, they were out of danger.
Their luck did not last for long. At the higher altitude the unheated cabin grew cold quickly, and some began to shiver in their seats. The crew all had flying jackets and all but three of the nurses wore thicker field coats with liners, but the medics only had their lighter field jackets. They were above eight thousand feet, but they couldn’t stay there for long. At this altitude, the outside temperature was about thirty degrees Fahrenheit. The wings were starting to ice. If too much ice formed and disrupted the flow of air, the plane wouldn’t be able to stay aloft. Transport planes were usually equipped with de-icing boots—rubber shoes on the leading edges of the wings. When turned on, the de-icing boots inflated and deflated to break up the ice. The plane’s de-icing boots, however, were lying in the back of the cabin along with the 807th’s medical and musette bags. The regular crew chief had removed them for the summer to make flying more efficient and had not yet reinstalled them, adding to the numerous problems those on board already faced.
The pilots found an opening in the clouds and managed to navigate down through it as the passengers braced themselves in their seats against the sudden descent and sharp bank made by the plane. After several minutes, the aircraft leveled out just under the ceiling. They were now flying over water and were about a quarter mile away from a rugged coastline of mountains that soared hundreds of feet in the air. In the middle of this endless expanse of cliffs stood a small strip of beach no bigger than the plane. Thrasher once again came back to the cabin and told the passengers that he suspected that they were somewhere off the western coast of Italy though he didn’t know which side of the combat line they were on. He thought they should try to make a water landing and head for the beach given the severe weather, the amount of fuel they had left, and his concerns over what they would face if they continued flying.
Parachuting out of the plane wasn’t an option; there were only a handful of parachutes on board in addition to an emergency parachute that could be used for dropping supplies to someone on the ground. Though each of the nurses and medics had been issued a parachute at Bowman Field, the chutes were among equipment that had been shipped to them in Italy but had never arrived. Only 20 out of 155 boxes had eventually turned up in Catania, and everything from flashlights to the parachutes had been lost or stolen.
The passengers took an inventory of the life preservers hanging on a cable at the back of the cargo bay. There were twenty-eight Mae Wests. That wouldn’t be enough to help the thirty souls on board. Hayes and Owen, both experienced swimmers, volunteered to go without life jackets since they’d had the most water-survival training in Kentucky, while Shumway, the crew chief, moved to a seat by the passenger door to be in position to open it when they landed. They were as ready as they would ever be.
Just then, the pilots spotted an airfield, and Thrasher told the passengers they were going to try to land there instead. The field was about five miles inland and sandwiched between mountains. As they edged closer, the pilots flew over the runway to check the conditions. Some who peered out the window could see small buildings on the west side of the field and German fighter planes along the other side. Having seen their fair share of abandoned German planes, they didn’t give them much thought. They were more anxious to get out of the severe weather. The pilots circled the field and decided to take their chances. They set up on final approach, lowered the landing gear, and locked it into position. When they neared the end of the runway and were about fifty feet from the ground, a bullet suddenly hit the tail of the plane as anti-aircraft fire erupted from below. Someone was shooting at them. At the same time, the once idle fighter planes came to life and scrambled on the runway.
Thrasher jammed the throttle forward and began a sharp climb in a desperate attempt to get out of firing range. In the excitement of preparing to land on the airfield, however, the pilots had forgotten to switch the fuel tanks. The main tank was running on the small amount of gas that remained, and the engines were stopping. The pilots quickly flipped the switch to change tanks, and the plane bucked at the demand before climbing back into the air.
As the plane gained altitude, a mountainside loomed ahead. The aircraft was within a few hundred feet of slamming into a rocky cliff, but Thrasher turned the plane steeply to the right so that its wings were parallel to the jagged bluff. It was a close call. As the pilots intentionally flew through more clouds, hoping to elude the fighter planes, mountains popped into their view, and they made several more steep turns just in time to avoid them.
When they thought they might be in the clear, they ascended high enough to regain their bearings and could see patches of blue sky. That’s when one of the passengers yelled, “What’s that plane doing?” A Focke-Wulf Fw190, a German fighter plane dubbed the “Butcher Bird,” flew toward them. Without any firepower, the American pilots’ only chance was to outmaneuver the other plane. Thrasher plunged the C-53D into the clouds again, where it remained for fifteen minutes, but when it emerged, the plane was once again in the direct path of a Focke-Wulf. Unsure whether it was the same one or another fighter, the
pilots knew they were in trouble. They once again retreated to the clouds, but they couldn’t stay hidden forever. The landscape below had changed from rugged mountains to rolling hills, but there was only a clearance of roughly four hundred feet between the tops of the hills and the cloud ceiling. They passed another airfield but decided the chance of a German presence made it too risky to attempt another landing.
Just when it seemed that their luck had run out, the pilots spotted a small lake. It appeared to have reached all the way to the surrounding hills when it was full, but at that time the water had retreated, which left a small patch of open ground. When Thrasher announced they were going to try to land, some of the passengers wondered whether the patch was large enough for a transport plane, but they had no choice but to put their confidence in the pilots. It was around one thirty p.m., and they’d been in the air for about five hours.
Shumway stashed away the de-icing boots and the passenger-loading ladder in the bathroom to prepare for the crash landing and remained in the back of the plane. The nurses and medics remained quiet as they tried to deal with the fears and uncertainties plaguing each of them and do as they had been trained. They braced themselves as best they could. Jens was among those who put her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, while the pilots lowered the landing gear.
The plane approached the lake and followed the contour of the hill to the landing site. When the wheels finally touched, the plane seemed less than a few hundred feet from the waterline. Both pilots stood on the brakes as the plane careened along the ground still saturated with water. The landing gear slowly sank in the mud until it was completely submerged, bringing the plane to a violent stop. The passengers felt like they’d hit a wall. The force embedded the plane’s nose in the marshy land, and as the tail flipped up, the medical and musette bags plummeted through the cabin. The fuselage hovered upright for a few seconds before falling back to the ground in a belly flop.
Though the seatbelts kept the other passengers buckled in, Shumway had buttressed himself against the fuselage frame toward the back of the plane, and the sudden stop loosened his grip. He flew through the air, hitting Watson in the face with his foot before landing in the front of the cabin while a toolbox weighing seventy pounds bounced down the center of the plane and narrowly missed him. Shumway lay on the floor against the bulkhead, disoriented and unable to move. His knee seemed to have taken the brunt of the collision. The impact of his foot left Watson with a split lower lip, a cut under her right eye, loose upper teeth, and the beginnings of a black eye.
The other dazed passengers tried to get their bearings as the shock of the crash landing sank in. Fearing the possibility of a fire and following their training, some rushed to unbuckle their seatbelts and exit the plane. After they pushed the door open, they quickly stepped into the muddy ground, sinking with each step. Rain fell from a dark-gray sky as they moved away from the plane. Behind them lay the fuselage that was level with the ground and standing in several inches of water with no signs of smoke. The plane’s propellers were bent, its nose was smashed, and one hole from gunfire was visible in the vertical stabilizer. As more of the medics and nurses piled out, they could see the damage to the plane, and they silently marveled at the fact that they had survived the attack and the crash landing. Beyond the lake bed where the plane had come to rest were dense, forested hills, and beyond those was what looked like an endless expanse of mountains. The men and women had been in the air for so long and become so disoriented that none of them knew where they were.
CHAPTER 4
In Enemy Territory
A few in the group, including Hayes, who were still inside the cabin, picked up Shumway as gently as they could and moved him so the pilots could get out of the cockpit and radio compartment and exit the plane. The nurses feared that Shumway had internal injuries and likely gave him a shot of morphine from their medical kits to help manage the pain. There was little else they could do. When the pilots emerged, one of them carried a Thompson submachine gun. The “tommy gun” was the only weapon among the group.
Concerned that the Germans might have spotted the plane when it flew over the second airfield and would send a patrol to investigate, the pilots and several of the medics decided to do a reconnaissance of the surrounding area. If it looked safe, they would head out and see what they could find.
Hayes and the rest of the scouting party had walked several hundred feet away from the plane when they saw a band of rugged-looking men come out of the woods. The strangers carried rifles on their backs and daggers at their sides and wore fezzes, or flat-crowned hats, emblazoned with red stars on the front. Their dark clothing consisted mostly of coarse woolen shirts and drawstring pants that ballooned at the hips and buttoned at the knees. Some wore thick socks with sandals made of old tire carcasses and jackets that looked like short capes with sleeves.
A stocky man with a handlebar mustache stepped forward and began speaking in an unfamiliar language. His face was so weathered it was difficult for the Americans to tell his age, though they would later learn he was only twenty-two years old. He asked in stilted, broken English if they were British. When Baggs, the copilot, replied they were Americans, he smiled and introduced himself as Hasan Gina, the leader of a group of partisans. He then answered the question they’d all been waiting for: they had landed in Albania.
Though the young Americans knew little about Albania, they would soon learn it was a small but wild land that had changed very little over the last several hundred years. The predominantly Muslim country, about the size of Maryland, was made up of countless poverty-stricken villages, a handful of towns, very few roads, and no railways. Deadly blood feuds and thievery proliferated, few homes had running water or electricity, clothes and shoes were mostly handmade, and pack mules and horses remained the main modes of transportation. Winters were especially brutal, and, for many people, starvation was a constant threat. Even so, the Albanians were proud of their homeland, which they affectionately called “the land of the eagle.”
Just two months earlier, thousands of German troops had occupied the country after Italy surrendered to the Allies, adding to a long list of foreign powers that had ruled Albania for most of its history. During the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for some five hundred years, much of the population had converted to Islam, though the country also included members of the Greek Orthodox Church, mostly in the south, and the Catholic Church, predominantly in the north. The country broke away from the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and declared its independence. The Great Powers of Europe—Austria-Hungary, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, and Russia—formally recognized an independent Albania the following year, but they refused to acknowledge the provisional government and appointed a German prince as its ruler. Prince Wilhem of Wied arrived in March 1914, but after just six months and with the outbreak of World War I, his regime collapsed, and chaos erupted throughout the country as local leaders fought for power.
European powers tried to divide Albania among its neighbors at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but in March 1920, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson blocked the plan, ensuring the country’s territorial integrity. The United States also recognized an official Albanian representative to Washington; and later that year, Albania was admitted to the newly formed League of Nations, further cementing its independence.
Fighting within the country, however, continued until a clan chief named Ahmet Zogu officially became president in January 1925. He rewrote the constitution, eliminated his opponents, and, by 1928, had crowned himself King Zog. In the meantime, Mussolini had made himself dictator in Italy. When Albania needed economic aid and was refused a loan by the League of Nations, Zog turned to Mussolini, whose help came with substantial political and economic strings. Over the next decade, Italy’s influence in the country grew, and on Good Friday, April 7, 1939, more than twenty thousand Italian troops invaded and occupied the country with almost no resistance. King Zog, his wife, and two-day-old son fled to Greece.
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Albania remained under Italy’s control until Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September 1943. Germany, Italy’s former partner, immediately invaded the country with little resistance from the Italian divisions still stationed there or from the Albanian people. To curry favor with the ruling elite, the Germans quickly set up a regency council made up of prominent Albanians from the country’s major religions and offered Albania a level of self-governance much greater than it had under the Italians.
With the arrival of the Germans, tensions between the two main resistance factions, both of which had developed within the country during the Italian occupation, escalated quickly. Communists such as former schoolteacher Enver Hoxha, the country’s future ruthless dictator, and Mehmet Shehu, who had bragged that he had “personally cut the throats of seventy Italian [military police] who had been taken prisoner,” had created the partisan movement known as the Lëvizja Nacional Çlirimtarë, or National Liberation Movement. They were estimated to have a force of up to five thousand troops and could rally up to ten thousand. Those who were anticommunist and antimonarchist, many of whom were part of the ruling class, had created the Balli Kombëtar (BK, or Ballists), or National Front, in response and were thought to be able to muster about three thousand soldiers. The BK fought for a return to a Greater Albania, which would bring together all ethnic Albanians. A newly formed third group, the Legality Party, wanted to reinstate King Zog, but only numbered between one thousand and two thousand forces.
The Secret Rescue Page 5