When I got back to my Headquarters, a fresh signal had arrived, asking for details of suitable landing-places on the islands; evidently the Navy meant business. I answered at once, stressing the need for immediate action and suggesting the island of Korčula as the best place for landing supplies. I added that I would go to Korčula myself as soon as I could, taking a wireless set with me. This would enable me to give further particulars of landing facilities from the island itself when I reached it, and also to form an idea of the problems of onward transmission of any supplies that were landed. On the way to the coast, too, I should see new country and the Partisans operating under new conditions.
I decided to take Street, Henniker-Major and Sergeant Duncan with me. Preparations for the journey did not take long. The greater part of it would be on foot and our kit accordingly had to be reduced to what we could carry on our backs. A Partisan officer and two men were allotted us as escort. We would be passed from one Partisan band to another and would rely on them for rations. Our exact route was still uncertain and would depend on the future movements of two enemy columns which at the moment were converging to cut the route down through Dalmatia to the coast. Parker and Alston were left in charge at Jajce and we set out.
The first stage of our journey was accomplished, rather surprisingly, by train. In the course of the counter-offensive, during which Jajce had fallen into their hands, the Partisans had managed to capture intact a railway engine and a number of trucks. Boasting amongst their number a professional engine-driver and guard as well as several ex-stationmasters, they lost no time in putting together a train which operated clandestinely and somewhat spasmodically up and down the short stretch of line between Jajce and the neighbouring village of Bugojno, which it had been decided would be a good jumping-off point for our journey to the coast. After years of weary tramping over the hills, the Partisans were inordinately proud of their train, and Tito had placed his private coach, an imposing structure of planks with a stove in the middle, at my disposal, so that there could clearly be no question of our covering the first short lap of our journey by any other means without causing serious offence.
Our departure from Jajce was scheduled for the middle of the night, which would allow us time to reach our destination before dawn and the appearance of the first enemy reconnaissance planes. After we had eaten and got our packs and the wireless set ready for the road, we made our way across the river to the ruins of Jajce railway station.
The station was a depressing, evil-smelling place. It had been shelled and fought over repeatedly and before the Germans had left the last time, a few weeks before, they had put several score of hostages into what was left of it and burnt it down with them inside. Now the bustle of our departure lent its ruined buildings a certain rather misleading air of animation under the sickly glare and flicker of home-made carbide lamps.
Our packs and the wireless set were put into one truck and then, after an interval, taken out and put into another. Some horses made an unexpected but welcome appearance; were entrained; detrained, and finally, with a good deal of cursing and shouting, entrained again. From time to time the engine, which had had steam up from the outset, and was belching flames, smoke and sparks from furnace and funnel, emitted a cloud of steam and a piercing blast on the whistle. Then, after another long interval, three of the retired stationmasters appeared complete with magnificent peaked caps liberally adorned with gold braid, flags, whistles, and all the paraphernalia of office. We shook hands with Velebit who had come to see us off, and jumped into our private coach; a large number of people who happened to be going our way followed our example; the engine gave a final blast on the whistle, which was echoed by the chorus of stationmasters on the platform; and, with a great deal of puffing and blowing, we rattled and creaked out into the dingy grey dawn which was coming up over the tree-tops. From the door of our truck I kept a look-out for aircraft in the lightening sky, but there were none to be seen. The next time we were in Jajce we heard that a few days later the train, after an even less punctual start, had had an encounter with a particularly active Henschel, after which there had been a badly needed tightening up of the time-table.
After all these elaborate preparations our train journey lasted for little more than half an hour. Under a cold, penetrating drizzle Bugojno station was bleak and cheerless. A score of prisoners were assembled there shivering, their faces yellowish-white above their tattered grey-green uniforms. At first I took them for Germans and reflected uneasily that they were probably on their way to be shot, the fate meted out by the Partisans to all Germans captured by them, in retaliation for the execution and often torture of all Partisan prisoners and of thousands of civilian hostages.
On closer inspection, however, they proved to be Domobranci, conscripts in the militia of the independent State of Croatia. These the Partisans regarded with good-natured toleration. They were for the most part miserable troops — very different from the Ustaše formations which formed the élite of Pavelić’s army — and generally took the first opportunity of deserting or letting themselves be taken prisoner. When they fell into their hands the Partisans either enrolled them in their own forces or else disarmed them and let them go back to their homes. A favourite Partisan story is told of a Partisan who, having disarmed a Domobran, instructed him to go back to his unit and draw another rifle so that he might again be taken prisoner and thus once more contribute to the Partisans’ supply of arms.
At Bugojno we found that we were having breakfast with Koča Popović,1 then in command of Partisan First Corps. We walked down the battered main street of Bugojno. Like every other town and village in Bosnia it had been fought over a score of times in the past two years and was largely in ruins. On its poor bullet-scarred white-washed walls the inscriptions of the previous occupants: MUSSOLINI HA SEMPRE RAGIONE; EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FÜHRER, had been crossed out and replaced in flaming red paint by the slogans of the Partisans; ŽIVIO TITO; SMRT FAŠISMU, SLOBODA NARODU.2 If you looked carefully you could see that the still earlier Partisan inscriptions of a previous occupation had been painted out by the Germans when the village had changed hands before.
We found Popović living in a peasant’s cottage on the outskirts of the village. It was my first meeting with a man of whom in future I was to see a good deal and who was one of the outstanding figures of the Partisan Movement. I have seldom met anyone who gave a more vivid impression of mental and physical activity. He was of less than average height and sparely built, with a brown skin, twinkling eyes and fine-drawn, hawk-like features. A fierce black moustache gave him a faintly piratical air. Though barely thirty, he had the same tense, strained look as all the Partisan leaders, a look which comes from long months of physical and mental stress. But in his case the life he had led seemed to have fined him down rather than worn him out. Vitality radiated from his leathery, drawn features.
We sat down round a table in the fusty little room with an elaborately framed photograph of the owner’s parents in their Sunday best on the white-washed wall and a sad-looking plant in a pot. Sour milk was brought and black bread with a lump of bacon and the usual flask of rakija. After the first few mouthfuls my temper, tried by the vicissitudes of our grotesque railway journey, mellowed and gave way to a comfortable feeling of drowsiness and well-being.
Popović, I soon found, was excellent company. He had been educated in Switzerland and France, spoke French like a Frenchman (and a very witty Frenchman at that) and had a startlingly wide range of interests. The son of a well-known Serbian millionaire he had at an early age become a convinced Communist. His interests had, however, in the first place been literary and intellectual rather than political. He had made a study of modern philosophy and had also won a considerable reputation as a surrealist poet, and, in Belgrade society, as something of an eccentric, which, considering the limitations of Belgrade society, was perhaps hardly to be wondered at. He had served his time in the pre-war Jugoslav Army, but the science of warfare had first beco
me a reality to him in Spain, where he had fought for the Republicans, an experience which had left a profound impression on him. After the Germans invaded his own country, he had been one of the first to raise a Partisan band in Serbia and had soon shown himself to possess outstanding qualities as a military leader.
Now, while innumerable flies buzzed on the dirty window panes, our conversation skipped lightly from one topic to another: infantry tactics, Karl Marx, the Atlantic Charter and the latest French playwrights. I was sorry when an orderly came in to announce that it was time for us to start. I went away with rather clearer ideas on a number of subjects and the impression of having met a man who would have been bound to make his mark in life under almost any circumstances.
Outside, we found our escort and two pack-ponies laden with the wireless set and some of our kit. We said goodbye to Koča and started out. The drizzle of the early morning had cleared off and it was now a sparkling autumn day. The track ran flat and straight before us across a little green plain, dotted with farmsteads and orchards, to the foot of the wooded range of hills which lay between us and Livno, a small town some fifty miles away in the direction of the coast. Beyond the hills fighting was in progress. Livno, which lay astride the road to the coast, had until recently at any rate been held by the enemy, as were most of the intervening villages. We should not know what route to follow until we had reached the other side of the hills and spied out the ground for ourselves.
As we tramped beside the horses I talked to Mitja, the officer in charge of our escort, a tall, smart-looking lad of about twenty-one, wearing on his new suit of British battle-dress the badges of a second lieutenant. He told me that when the Germans had invaded Jugoslavia he had been a cadet at the Royal Military College. He had at once taken to the woods and joined Draža Mihajlović. Then, finding that the Četniks were no longer seriously fighting the enemy, he had left them and gone over to the Partisans. With them he had had all the fighting he wanted. It was a story that we had heard often enough from former Četniks. No doubt my present escort had been specially chosen in order to drum it into me once again.
When we reached the foot of the hills, we left the track and followed more circuitous paths through the forests, climbing steeply most of the way. Once or twice we saw German aircraft flying above us and once from the direction of the main road came the roar of several heavy internal combustion engines. This, rightly or wrongly, was greeted by the Partisans with shouts of ‘Tenkovi! Tenkovi!’ — ‘Tanks! Tanks!’ — a point which we did not stop to investigate. Once we encountered a Partisan patrol making their way in the opposite direction to ourselves, but with little idea of what was happening beyond the hills. One of them was a woman, a sturdy-looking girl who carried rifle, pack and a cluster of German stick-grenades like the men.
At midday we rested for a few minutes and ate our rations. The Partisans produced large crusts of black bread from their pockets and we got out our water-bottles. Farish had provided us before we left with pocket-size hermetically sealed packets of the new American K-ration, which none of us had ever seen before, and I was anxious to open one and find out what there was inside. Each mysterious-looking brown packet, though only a few inches long, was labelled ‘Breakfast’, ‘Lunch’ or ‘Supper’, and to our imaginations, whetted by plenty of fresh air and exercise on not very much food, conjured up visions of three-course meals. Indeed Vivian objected that it would be in the worst of bad taste to produce such luxurious fare in front of our less fortunate companions who had nothing to eat but dry bread. However, our natural curiosity overcame these scruples and we opened first one and then another of our packets.
They were certainly very ingenious productions. They contained tiny cellophane packets of lemonade powder, specially primed with Vitamin C and tiny tinfoil packets of soup powder, specially primed with Vitamin B and a lump of special sugar, neatly wrapped in paper and containing, according to the label, a surprisingly high proportion of Vitamin D. They also contained (all wrapped in cellophane) a piece of chewing gum and two cigarettes, two small water biscuits, one small bit of chocolate and finally one very small tin containing a mouthful of Spam or, as the case might be, cheese.
The Partisans, gnawing their bread, watched us pityingly as we fumbled with the cellophane and tried to mix the soup powder in our mugs. Before we had got anywhere at all, the cry of ‘Napred’ rang out, and we were off again. We were as hungry as ever, and we had also lost face. We regained it, however, at the next halt, when, during a general showing-off of weapons, I produced my Colt automatic — another product of lease-lend — which was fingered lovingly by the whole party and greeted with gasps of admiration.
Finally, after several more hours of steady climbing and marching through thick woods, we emerged to find ourselves looking out over a wide sunny plain, with the road winding away in the distance. There were no signs of the enemy or indeed of the Partisans. Then, as we were debating what to do next, we noticed a small German staff car climbing up the hill towards us. As it came closer we saw that in it was a Partisan officer, whom we all knew, Lola Ribar, the son of Dr. Ivan Ribar, who had been President of the Jugoslav Constituent Assembly of 1920 and now was a leading figure on the political side of the Partisan movement. Young Ribar, who was still in his early twenties, had a distinguished fighting record and was regarded as possessing considerable all-round ability.
Now he was full of news of the battle. The Partisans had succeeded in recapturing Livno and were fighting in Kupres, a smaller village, lying between Livno and the point at which we now found ourselves. By the time we reached it it would be in their hands.
We piled into the car and drove off down the road at full speed leaving our escort and the baggage train to follow at their leisure. After a few miles we came to the smoking ruins of Kupres. Scattered corpses and burnt-out trucks testified to the defeat of the enemy. Partisan Brigade Headquarters was established in one of the few surviving houses, overlooking the market place. Here we found the Brigade Commander discussing the disposal of the wounded with his Medical Officer, a formidable-looking woman Partisan, who emphasized her points by thumping his table with her fist. As soon as this question had been settled, wine was brought in (we were approaching the vineyards of Dalmatia) and scrambled eggs and bread, and we were told, at length, the story of the battle, in which the Partisans had achieved a notable tactical success by the use of some captured enemy armoured cars. The enemy, not realizing that the Partisans possessed anything of the kind, had assumed that they were their own reinforcements arriving, and had greeted them, literally, with open arms, a mistake for which they paid dearly. When we had finished our meal we were taken to admire the armoured cars, now safely camouflaged behind some haystacks.
We waited at Kupres whilst our wireless operator, who had erected his aerial in the market place, tried in vain to make contact with Cairo. As so often happened, weather conditions or the neighbouring hills intervened and he tapped and twiddled unavailingly in the midst of a large and admiring crowd of Partisans and villagers.
It was late when we started for Livno, this time in a captured motor-bus driven by a handsome young Italian dressed in a splendid white sheepskin coat. He was, it seemed, the pilot of an Italian aeroplane which had come over and bombed the Partisans every day until one day someone had succeeded in shooting it down with a rifle. As he did not seem a very convinced Fascist and as they were very short of drivers, they had turned him on to driving a truck. This he did with tremendous gusto, manœuvring his clumsy vehicle as if it had been a dive-bomber, and accompanying each flick of the wrist with a burst of grand opera delivered in a rich tenor. But by now we were too tired to mind anything and nodded in our seats as we jolted over the uneven surface of the road and shot round hairpin bends.
At midnight a single lantern, only half illuminating the market place and masking the squalid debris of battle, gave Livno a romantic air. We were billeted above a shop in a room where holy pictures alternated with portraits of Hitler and Pav
elić, which there had presumably been no time to remove. We were tired and, having failed to obtain any food from a sour-looking landlady, fell asleep almost immediately.
Next morning we called on Milić, the local Partisan Commander, to make arrangements for our onward journey. The situation between Livno and the coast was obscure. Milić produced maps to illustrate the progress of the German pincer movement. The two claws seemed almost to have met. He hoped to have more detailed information the following day. Until this had been obtained it would be foolish to try to get through. In any case the journey to the coast and across to Korčula was not likely to be an easy one. Clearly we should be lucky if we got away in twenty-four hours.
Resignedly we settled down to explore the town. Livno lay in the sunshine, a little cluster of white houses at the foot of a great rock cliff. From amongst them rose the dome and minarets of a mosque. Beyond the town, Livansko Polje, the great rolling plain to which it has given its name, spread away into the distance. On the outskirts of the town earthworks had been thrown up and the houses, used as strong-points, had been battered and scarred in the recent fighting and in previous battles, for Livno had changed hands many times.
Now, on the day after the battle, the shops were open again, displaying a rather fly-blown collection of German-made fancy goods for sale in exchange for hundreds of kunars, Pavelić’s heavily inflated currency. We went into a watchmaker’s to try and buy a strap for my wrist watch. The watchmaker greeted us with a brisk ‘Heil Hitler’ and a Nazi salute, redeemed, on second thoughts by a sudden convulsive clenching of the fist. Clearly he found the military situation rather hard to follow, but this did not worry him for long and he was soon doing his best to sell us a monumental marble clock for which we could have no possible use.
Eastern Approaches Page 39