In early November, the differences between the partisans and the BK had erupted into a bloody battle—largely to see who would control Albania after the war. Meanwhile the Germans were launching the first of several antipartisan operations in what would become known as the Winter Offensive. The Americans of the 807th didn’t know it yet, but they were not only trapped behind Nazi lines, they were also caught in the middle of a civil war.
As the Americans tried to recall anything they knew about Albania, Baggs asked Gina and the other partisans if they were friends of Draža Mihailovi, the leader of a resistance group battling the Germans in Yugoslavia. Though Mihailovi was fighting the Germans, he was also fighting the communist-dominated partisans in Yugoslavia, Gina’s brothers-in-arms. Gina frowned in disapproval at the question and turned away to speak to his men. When he addressed the Americans once again, he responded sternly that the partisans were not friends with Mihailovi, and if they thought the Americans were they would shoot them.
The severe reply shocked the Americans, who were still trying to take in the surreal scene before them. Just that morning they had been at headquarters in Catania, and now they were in the hands of Gina and his battle-hardened men who could easily kill them without anyone ever knowing their fate. Though they knew they were hardly the first military personnel to be stranded in enemy territory, the gravity of their situation was becoming apparent.
Gina, who had a habit of adding “my dear” to all of his statements regardless of whom he addressed, further revealed to the men and women that he and his men had been preparing to shoot down their plane with a machine gun they had in the woods until they saw a white star painted on the fuselage. Gina thought the white star might be a symbol used on American planes, as he’d seen in newspapers and magazines, and had ordered his men not to shoot.
The Americans later learned that Gina had learned English at the prestigious Albanian Vocational School, which, for many years, had been run by American Harry T. Fultz and was often referred to as the Fultz School. When the American Junior Red Cross founded it in 1921, Albania had only two secondary schools, neither of which offered technical or vocational courses. The Albanian Vocational School and other schools, however, were later nationalized to diminish foreign influence on the country, but by then Fultz’s school had produced more than one hundred and fifty graduates, including Gina, who were versed in some English.
Though everything Gina had said unnerved them, the Americans recognized that the partisans may have information they could use, and they asked Gina about the last airfield they had flown over. He confirmed it was in German hands and agreed that the Germans might come looking for them, and they should leave the area immediately. He and his men offered to lead them to a village about two hours away where they would take care of them while they decided what to do next. Though the Americans had no idea if they could trust them, they had few options. The pilots and the others surmised that their best chance of finding some shelter, some food, and maybe a way out in the unfamiliar terrain stood with these strangers.
As they prepared to leave, Thrasher yelled to Lebo, the radio operator, to turn off the IFF. Lebo walked to the back of the plane and activated a charge that set off a small explosion and destroyed the classified equipment that sent coded signals.
Thrasher then called to the copilot, who was in the cockpit turning off switches. “Hey, Baggs, hurry it up!” With their nerves already frayed, some of the nurses still in the plane, who, like the rest of the passengers, were unaware of the flight crew’s names, thought Thrasher was referring to them. After a few indignant moments, they realized their mistake and prepared to leave, grabbing their personal gear and exiting by the passenger door.
The rest of the medical personnel grabbed their musette and medical bags from the plane. All but three of the nurses had water-resistant field coats with them, and most of the medics had stashed their raincoats in their musette bags, which they pulled out and put on. Before they could leave, however, they had to figure out a way to transport Shumway, who was unable to put any weight on his hurt leg. Hayes helped other medics unbolt three attached bucket seats in the aircraft to make a stretcher for him. It was clumsy, but it would work. They placed him on it, and several men hoisted it onto their shoulders. One of the medics found a blanket in the plane’s survival gear, which he used to cover Shumway from the cold rain, but they couldn’t do much for his feet, which dangled off the edges.
With Shumway ready to go, the nurses and medics joined the flight crew and the band of partisans. Baggs carried the machine gun in a sling on his shoulder as the thirty apprehensive Americans, now bonded in their struggle for survival, followed their new guides into the wooded hills beyond the lake. With them, they carried desperate hopes that they were in trustworthy hands and that the Germans weren’t searching for them.
They walked through the dark woods as the medics took turns carrying Shumway on the makeshift stretcher. The slippery terrain led them uphill, and their pants and shoes were wet from the rain and covered in dirt. With each step, their unknown futures loomed ahead of them.
After about an hour, the partisans stopped at a small stone hut built into the hillside, which housed a lone ox. To the surprise of the Americans, the partisans hitched the ox to a nearby cart with oversized wooden wheels and slatted sides made of tree saplings and motioned for the medics carrying Shumway to put him in the cart. It was an unnecessary but kind gesture, and it offered some reassurance to the Americans that they could trust these men.
Just as the weather was clearing, they arrived at a simple, two-story house with a roof covered in overlapping stone. This single building with about two dozen residents made up the Muslim village, thought to be Gjolen, which Gina had mentioned earlier. It was certainly much smaller than the Americans had pictured when he’d spoken of a village, but they welcomed the chance to rest and get out of the rain.
Male partisans already at the house escorted the Americans to the second floor using an outside staircase, while some of the medics carried Shumway up the steps. The Muslim women of this particular village, who kept their distance from the Americans, wore long black dresses, headscarves, and face veils, though the party would learn that not all Muslim women in Albania followed the custom.
When the partisans told the Americans to leave their musette and medical bags on the porch at the top of the steps, the weary Americans did so without much thought. They walked past a primitive bathroom that consisted of a hole in the wooden floor before entering a barren room furnished only with a fireplace and a dirty, handmade woolen rug that looked as if it had once been white. It was difficult to breathe in the room, which was still smoky from previous fires and barely big enough to hold them all. They squeezed in the best they could, discarded their wet jackets, and collapsed onto the cold wooden floor. They sat wherever they could find room as a partisan brought in a simple lamp made from a flat dish filled with oil and a wick and placed it on the mantel.
It was the first time the Americans had been alone since the crash landing, and there was much to discuss. A few of the nurses tended to Shumway and examined Watson’s cuts, while conversations about what had happened and what to do were intermingled with people learning each other’s names. They knew there were no American troops in Albania, and it would likely be some time before anyone in their squadron realized they were missing. Most of the communication between the evacuation stations was hand delivered by medics or nurses traveling between them. They also knew that though they had landed in a place that felt as foreign to them as almost any place could, they were not that far from Italy, which was just across the Adriatic Sea. The partisans seemed to be doing their best to help them, and going it alone in such a rugged country didn’t seem safe or even possible. After a long discussion, the group figured its best chance of escape was to get to the coast with the aid of the partisans and find a boat that could take them back to Italy.
By late that afternoon, the Americans had grown hungry, and Bagg
s asked Gina if there was any food for them. Meanwhile some of the medics thought it would be best to offer the crude toilet to the nurses while they made use of the outdoors. When Gina came back to the room several hours later, he carried a tray filled with chunks of flat cornbread made solely from cornmeal and water. A few of the men helped Shumway sit up so he could eat as they all took pieces. Though Hayes was hungry and grateful for the food, he gagged when he first tried the bread, which he thought tasted like a handful of dried field corn rather than the cakelike cornbread his mother had made in Indianola. Some of the nurses and medics also had difficulty eating the bread, which would end up sustaining them in the coming weeks, but they were glad to have something in their bellies.
As they ate, a young boy came in and played a few notes on a kaval, a long, end-blown flute, doing his best to piece together a song. The group politely applauded him when he was finished, recognizing the efforts the boy and the partisans were making to help them. Gina then brought a tray of small chunks of sour white cheese, which was as unpalatable to the Americans as the cornbread, but they ate it with gratitude.
The evening wore on, and the fire that flickered in the fireplace and cast shadows on the walls helped warm them as the temperature dropped. Some of the nurses gave the liners from their field coats to the medics to use as blankets, since their thinner field jackets didn’t provide much warmth. Hayes stretched out as best he could in the cramped quarters and decided to leave his glasses on rather than risk someone stepping on them. Worn out from the day’s events, he was soon asleep. Jens, one of a few who had to sleep sitting up with their backs to the wall, detached the hood of her field coat and used it as a makeshift pillow. She fell asleep, but was eventually awakened by the sound of a man’s voice. Fearing for a few moments that the Germans had found them, she started to panic but quickly realized that one of the medics, Hornsby from the 802nd, was talking in his sleep. She had to resist throwing a shoe at him. She looked at the glowing dial from her Army watch and saw that it was about one thirty in the morning and wondered how many more nights they would spend in Albania. The room had gotten colder, and she reached across the row of bodies lying next to her to get a piece of wood for the fire. She hoped sleep, which usually came so easily to her, would offer some comfort from the many worries running through her mind.
The same day the plane crash-landed, the 807th in Catania received radiograms from Philip Voigt, the 807th flight surgeon stationed at Bari, and Edward Phillips, the 807th flight surgeon manning the station in Grottaglie, asking again for attendants. It didn’t make any sense to those in Catania, who replied by stating that the plane had left that morning. When word later came that the nurses and medics still hadn’t arrived, worry set in. McKnight flew from Catania to Bari the next day to see what he could learn, while reconnaissance planes searched for any signs of the Americans or the missing C-53D.
As the disheveled and exhausted group woke in the village in the morning and found that the rain had cleared, one of the medics stumbled onto the porch and yelled, “Someone has been in my musette bag!” Others quickly poured onto the porch to see what else was missing. Soap, socks, underwear, razors, toothbrushes, and mess gear had all been taken. Only a few items, like toothpaste, shaving cream, and the nurses’ makeup, were left behind. Though some scissors had been taken, most of the medical kits were intact. Whoever had stolen their belongings, it seemed, had taken only the items he recognized. When the Americans informed Gina, he calmly explained that Albanians didn’t steal and quickly ended the conversation. There was nothing more the Americans could do, and their already uneasy faith in the partisans was deeply shaken.
The Americans didn’t know it, but had the partisans caught the perpetrator, they likely would have killed him. Under the partisans’ code, the penalty for stealing or failing to share what had been captured from the enemy was punishable by death. When five boys who had found and sold drugs in one village had been caught, the partisans had sentenced them to be shot. They had been spared only because of their young ages and the desperate pleadings of their families. A man who had stolen cigarette papers from a fellow partisan wasn’t as lucky and had been immediately executed.
Hayes’s bag still contained the louse powder from the Red Cross, a paperback, his raincoat, and a few other items. Most important, he still had the canteen strapped to his belt, the prayer book his minister in Indianola had sent to him in Sicily in his pocket, and a knit cap, which would help keep him warm if needed. Frustrated that someone had taken things the Americans would desperately need if they were stranded there for any period of time, he decided to keep everything he had with him. He wasn’t going to let any of it out of his sight.
After the excitement subsided, a couple of partisans gave the group a pitcher of water and a basin. It took the Americans a moment to understand that the water the men were offering was to be used by all of them to wash their hands and faces. They each took their turn, hoping that the washing was in preparation for another meal, but more food never came. It had only been a day since the crash landing, and they were already dirty, hungry, and tired. More than anything, they were anxious to find their way back to Allied lines.
CHAPTER 5
Unlikely Comrades
When the Americans told Gina their plan to get to the coast and pressed him for information about how he could help them, Gina explained that he needed to consult his commandant in the next village before taking the group anywhere else. He had sent a messenger, and they would soon know more. He added that if they were to pursue their idea, they needed to go to the seaport of Vlorë to get a boat, which was up to a two-week walk. Owen, the former high school football star, replied excitedly to Hayes that they’d have some story to tell the guys back in Catania if they were in enemy territory for that long.
While they waited, Thrasher decided that he, Baggs, and Lebo should go back and destroy the plane to keep the Germans from salvaging anything if they found it. It had been impossible to even consider burning it the day before with the rain and the Germans possibly searching for them. Hayes, Owen, and a few other medics decided to join them rather than sit around waiting, and Thrasher didn’t seem to mind. Before they left, Gina sent a man to scout the area ahead of them to make sure there were no signs of German soldiers.
The group headed back to the crash site with a few armed partisans leading the way. As they revisited the rocky trail they’d been on the day before, they remained on guard. The theft of their supplies had done little to calm their concerns about whether they could trust the partisans, and the threat from the Germans was ever present.
The trip that had taken two hours in the rain while they carried Shumway took only an hour that morning. When they reached the edge of the woods, they waited for a signal from the scout that the area was safe before they ventured toward the plane. Given the all clear, the men climbed on board and looked around to see what they could take. Owen grabbed a blanket and a small tarp from a survival kit, while Hayes took four packs of K rations, or emergency meals, along with one of the canvas first-aid kits fastened to the wall of the plane. No one else wanted to take them, but Hayes figured they might just get hungry enough not to care how unappetizing the rations were, especially if the food they’d already been given was any indication of things to come. Abbott grabbed the D rations, emergency rations made into chocolate bars, and a box of sugar cubes that were also part of the emergency supplies. They also found a parachute in the survival kit that they cut into pieces using someone’s pocketknife and divided it and the ropes that connected the harness to the canopy among them. Hayes and some of the others then tied pieces of the yellow cotton around their necks as scarves.
The survival kit also contained an inflatable raft and a Gibson Girl emergency radio transmitter, so named for its hourglass shape, but the men decided to leave both behind. They probably wouldn’t need the raft, which could not hold all of them, and the Germans would probably be the ones to pick up any emergency signal they sent. Th
ey also left behind some of the other first-aid kits attached to the walls of the plane. Had they known just how long they would be in Albania, they might have reconsidered. Either that day or the day before, someone had also unscrewed the clock from the instrument panel and taken it with them.
While they checked for other supplies on the plane, one of the partisans who had climbed in with the Americans picked up a Mae West. When Baggs saw him looking at it, he put it on the man and showed him how to inflate it. The partisan pulled the cord and the vest rapidly filled with air. With a look of surprise and fear, he quickly yanked it off. As new as Albania was to the Americans, much about the Americans was new to the partisans helping them.
When they were sure they had everything they wanted, they were ready to burn the plane. It was disappointing to think of destroying it when it could have easily been fixed with the proper equipment, but they had no choice. Lebo climbed under one of the wings and opened the valve of the fuel tank to let several gallons of gasoline run onto the water under the plane. Baggs found a container on board and filled it with some of the draining gasoline, doused the cockpit with it, and poured it in a trail to the door. He struck a match, but before he could throw it, the fumes ignited, and the explosion knocked him from the ledge of the doorway onto his back and into the mud. He was momentarily stunned, but he wasn’t hurt. While Baggs recovered, Thrasher lit matches and threw them onto puddles of gasoline under the plane, but to his growing irritation nothing happened. He then took a stick, wrapped a piece of cloth around it, soaked it in gasoline, and threw it under the airplane wing. A small flame flickered for a moment but quickly died. Either in frustration or out of curiosity, one of the partisans took an ax and hit the ailerons on the trailing edge of the wing, and the men watched with anticipation to see if it would start a spark, but, again, nothing happened. Having run out of ideas and patience, the men decided to go back to the village to see if there was any word from the man Gina called his commandant.
The Secret Rescue Page 6