Eastern Approaches

by Fitzroy MacLean

  By now our party included several technicians. Perhaps the most useful work of all was done by a stocky little Major in the New Zealand R.A.M.C. Doc. Rogers, as he was called, had seen a lot of fighting in the Western Desert, where he had commanded a field ambulance. Now, rather than work at a base hospital, he had volunteered for special service in Jugoslavia, not, I think, because he took any particular interest in that country, but simply so as to be in the thick of things.

  His wish was granted. At the time when he arrived, it was winter and the sixth German offensive was in progress. Casualties from wounds, disease and frost-bite were heavy. For the Partisans, to whom mobility was a prime consideration, the question of what to do with their wounded was a major problem. If they carried them with them, they hampered their movements. If they abandoned them, they met a terrible death at the hands of the Germans. Apart from this, they were short of doctors and lacked medical supplies almost completely. As a result, men were dying like flies.

  This was the kind of assignment that Rogers had been looking for. Accompanied by a R.A.M.C. Corporal of similar character, he set himself to solve it. He organized hospitals wherever he could, in peasants’ houses or in the woods. In them he insisted on standards of hygiene and medical discipline unheard of before his arrival. He sent over my wireless link unorthodox but effective signals to the high-ranking officers of the medical world, demanding that they send him at once by parachute large quantities of medicaments and other supplies. He started to make preliminary arrangements for the evacuation of the worst cases to Allied hospitals in Italy as soon as we gained control of a landing-strip. Having got all this going, he and his Corporal moved rapidly from one part of the country to another, descending on his improvised hospitals like a tornado, organizing, reorganizing, interfering, operating by candlelight in stables and cowsheds, arranging for the removal of a group of wounded threatened by a German attack or the isolation and treatment of typhus cases, of which, as usual, there were many. All this was done in a country occupied by the enemy, under conditions of considerable rigour, on short rations, in the middle of constant skirmishing and air attack.

  In the military or political situation, as such, he took little interest, and of the language he spoke not a word, working entirely by gesture or through interpreters. On the other hand, he had seen too much of their courage, of their capacity for enduring pain, and of their numerous very human qualities, not to feel a kind of admiration mingled with affection for the ‘Pattersons’, as he called them. And they, too, liked and admired him, wondering at such devotion and unquestioningly accepting his authority and his knowledge. Indeed such was his popularity that on occasion rival Partisan Commanders quarrelled over him and Tito had to be called in to settle the dispute.

  Two other new recruits at this time were John Clarke and Andrew Maxwell, both from the 2nd Scots Guards. The arrival of a newcomer from the outside world was a big occasion, and their drop was eagerly awaited by us all and preceded by a number of signals, reminding them to bring in various odds and ends of which we were short. On the day on which they were due to arrive I rode over to Koča Popović’s Headquarters, near which it had been arranged that they should be dropped, taking with me Hilary King who was hoping for some wireless stores. Allied aircraft were short at the time and they were accordingly to be dropped by aircraft of the co-belligerent Italian Air Force, now operating under Allied Command. The experiment was also to be tried of making a mass daylight supply drop. Altogether it seemed likely to be an interesting occasion.

  There was deep snow in the valley through which our route lay and we made slower progress than we had expected, our horses plunging and floundering up to their bellies in the snow as soon as we left the beaten track. We were still a long way away when suddenly we heard the noise of aircraft, and, looking up, saw, at a distance of some miles from where we were, several Savoia-Marchetti transport planes flying slowly along at a considerable height.

  As we watched them, still a couple of thousand feet up, expecting to see them circle down towards the dropping area, a dozen or so parachutes suddenly burst from them one after another, opened out like Japanese paper flowers immersed in water, and floated slowly down, swaying gently, over a wide area of the countryside; from where we were, we could not see whether their burdens were human or not. While the parachutes were still in the air, the Savoia-Marchettis turned round and departed in the direction from which they had come. Worried by what we had seen, we pressed on anxiously, wondering what we should find.

  Some distance further along the track, we met an old peasant coming in the opposite direction. We asked him if the British officers had landed safely. ‘Dead,’ he replied unhesitatingly, ‘all dead. They were dropped on the mountain-tops, and their bones were shattered by the fall. They are bringing their bodies down at this very moment.’ Then, evidently feeling that he had adequately summed up the situation, he passed on down the valley, muttering irritably to himself as he went.

  This was a blow. John Clarke and Andrew Maxwell were both old friends of mine and it was sickening to think of their lives being thrown away like this. We kicked our horses into a gallop and plunged on through the snow.

  The first person that we saw when we arrived was Andrew. He was standing outside a peasant’s hut, talking politely to Koča Popović in rather bad French and from time to time inquiring anxiously about his personal kit. He had, it appeared, been dropped from a great height, followed by a free drop of several hundred pairs of boots, which had passed him at high speed, missing him by inches, and had finally landed on an extremely steep mountain-side, covered with sharp stones. The containers dropped at the same time were scattered for miles around. There was no sign of John Clarke, who had been due to jump after Andrew, but search parties were out looking for him.

  Koča produced some black bread and cheese and some slivovica and we went inside to wait. One after another, Partisans arrived bringing in containers and parachutes that had been found scattered all over the countryside. The Italians, no doubt anxious to be home, had let them go from far too high and they had drifted miles out of their course. Some must undoubtedly have fallen to the Germans. Of John Clarke there was still no sign, but it was something to learn that, in spite of the gloomy prognostications of our original informant, no shattered corpses had yet been brought in.

  Our minds were not finally set at rest until a day or two later, when I received a signal from John from Italy, reporting with suitable expressions of regret that Major Maxwell, owing to an unfortunate error on the part of the Italian pilot, was thought to have been dropped to the enemy. The pilot, it appeared, had announced his supposed mistake as soon as Maxwell had jumped and Clarke had therefore naturally not followed him, but had returned to Italy with the plane, having first thrown Maxwell’s kit after him, so that he should not be unnecessarily uncomfortable in his prison camp.

  To this startling communication we returned a reassuring and mildly facetious reply. When John Clarke was eventually dropped in a week or two late, it was from a British aircraft.

  An even more sensational entry on the Jugoslav scene was made at about this time by a full-blown Soviet Military Mission, headed by a General of the Red Army, whose appointment had been announced some months before. It may be imagined with what frantic excitement the news of the impending arrival of some real Russians, the first they had ever seen, was received by the devoutly Communist Partisans.

  As the Russians still had no air bases of their own within range of Jugoslavia, the vital task of safely introducing the Mission into the country had to be entrusted to the R.A.F. We were without landing-strips, the enemy were in control of the coast, and it was therefore only possible to enter Jugoslavia by parachute.

  A first difficulty was encountered when the Russians announced that they were not prepared to be dropped by parachute. Feverish attempts were made to clear a flat piece of ground of snow, so that at any rate the General might be brought in by light aircraft; but the harder the Partisan
s worked, the harder it snowed. As time passed and there were still no Russians there began to be whispers of ‘capitalist sabotage’, when fortunately someone had the brilliant idea of bringing them in by glider. Two Horsa gliders were borrowed from Airborne Forces, and one fine day we were told to stand by to receive them.

  We collected on a neighbouring hill-top to watch their arrival. They made an imposing spectacle; the gliders, swimming along behind two Dakotas, with a fighter escort circling round them. Despite the latter, they would have made a fine target for enemy fighters, but fortunately none made their appearance, and the landing was safely accomplished, the gliders cutting adrift as we watched and circling down to the ground under the expert guidance of two glider-pilots, who now joined the strength of my Mission until a means could be found of evacuating them.

  Naturally we were much interested to see what the Russians would be like. To our relief they turned out to be charming. In addition to a natural conviviality it was evident that they had been instructed to make themselves particularly agreeable to me and my staff. Furthermore they had filled the gliders with vodka and caviare, which, coming as they did after a long period of relative austerity, were exceptionally welcome. After one or two encounters we decided unanimously that they were a great social asset.

  What other purpose they served was less clear. They had no bases within range from which they could bring in supplies, though later half a dozen American Dakotas, bearing Soviet markings, but under British operational control, made occasional appearances from Bari. Nor did they take any part in the direction of military operations or the technical training of the Partisans. Finally, it seemed most unlikely that they were there to interpret the Communist Party line for Tito, who, in my experience, usually knew instinctively what was in the Kremlin’s mind without being told and certainly did not need a Red Army General to direct his conscience.

  General Korneyev, the Commander of the Mission, was a soldier of some distinction, who had served as Chief of Staff to an Army Commander on the Stalingrad front before taking up his present appointment. Like so many senior officers of the Red Army, he was not of proletarian origin and had held a commission in the Imperial Russian Army before the Revolution. I did not get the impression that he particularly enjoyed being in Jugoslavia or that he thought much of the Partisans. His second in command was a much younger man and an expert on guerrilla warfare, having commanded a Partisan band behind the German lines in Russia. But he, too, seemed to find time hanging heavy on his hands. Of the other officers, I have no very clear recollection, save only of one who bore all the familiar marks of being the local representative of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

  The arrival of the Russians solved a problem which had been exercising me for some time, namely, how to get my old friend Sergeant (now Sergeant-Major) Charlie Button into Jugoslavia. With Sergeant Duncan, he had volunteered to come with me in the first place, but had, like General Korneyev, been forbidden to parachute on account of an old wound in the foot. Now the gliders provided an opportunity and, sure enough, on the day there was Button bringing up the rear of the Soviet party and looking as solid and as rubicund as ever. From now onwards he took charge of the Mission’s administrative arrangements, and Gospodin Charlie, as he was known, could be seen planning moves, negotiating for pack-horses, bartering strips of parachute silk for honey or eggs with buxom peasant girls, or instilling into our wireless operators a standard of smartness which would uphold the prestige of the British Army.

  In all this his constant companion was the child Ginger, whose blazing red hair had at once won his heart and who had conceived for him in return a passion perhaps not entirely unconnected with the fact that he controlled the chocolate ration.

  The task of imparting technical knowledge to the Partisans, which was one of my Mission’s functions, was not always an easy one. When introduced to completely new weapons and explosive devices, they were inclined to brush their instructors aside, exclaiming gaily that they knew all about that already, and give a spirited and often alarming demonstration of their alleged technical skill.

  Provided, however, that sufficient tact was exercised, they made excellent pupils, grasping with remarkable rapidity the mechanism of a new weapon and showing the greatest ingenuity in applying it to the peculiar conditions of guerrilla warfare. They made, for instance, good use of the Fiat mortars, which had begun to reach us. These ingeniously constructed little weapons, which fired a rocket-like projectile of great penetrating power and high explosive content, and were intended for use by infantry against tanks, were ideally suited for our present purposes and were used by the Partisans with devastating effect against houses, vehicles, railway engines, enemy strong-points and any other targets that presented themselves, to the dismay of the other side who at first could not make out what they were being bombarded with or where it was coming from. To Peter Moore, also, with his immense experience of tank warfare in the Western Desert and his great technical knowledge of explosives, the Partisans were prepared to listen on the subject of mines and anti-tank devices of one kind and another.

  But, even so, with the greatest tact, accidents sometimes crept in through the excessive anxiety to assert their own independence. There was the sad case of some dehydrated food, which was dropped to us at a stage of the winter when we had run very short indeed of ordinary food. It was the first time that any of us had seen dehydrated food, and the pleasure with which we regarded the first sacks of strange dried-up looking flakes, variously labelled ‘milk’, ‘mutton’, ‘eggs’, ‘carrots’, ‘onions’ and ‘potatoes’, but all looking strangely alike, was mingled with curiosity and, to some extent, with misgiving. At any rate, before trying them, we read, and carried out meticulously the written directions which accompanied them, of which the principal was to soak them in water for twenty-four hours before cooking and eating them. The result was astonishing. On being soaked, the uninteresting looking flakes swelled up to several times their original size and became lumps of meat or slices of vegetable, as the case might be, and we soon found that a judicious mixture of dehydrated mutton, onions and potatoes properly soaked and then baked in Ginger’s mother’s oven made a very creditable shepherd’s pie, an undreamed-of luxury in our rather straitened circumstances. Clearly, dehydrated food was just the thing for us, especially as its light weight made it far more easily transportable than tinned food.

  Delighted, we immediately signalled for further supplies in order that we might share with the Partisans the benefit of our new discovery. On their arrival, we handed them over to the Quartermaster’s department, being careful to add full instructions for their use. But these they brushed aside light-heartedly. ‘We know all about that,’ they said, and started to distribute the sacks to various neighbouring units. We had our doubts, but thought it better not to voice them.

  It was only afterwards that we heard what had happened. The dehydrated food had not been soaked, but gulped down as it was. This was dry work, or so the Partisans thought, and so they washed it down with copious draughts of water from the neighbouring brook. Then, with disconcerting suddenness, the stuff began to swell inside them until it had reached several times its original dimensions. Their ensuing discomfort was considerable, though not so acute as that of another Partisan, who at about this time ate a stick of plastic high-explosive, mashing it up with milk, under the impression that it was some kind of maize porridge.

  The snow melted in the valleys. Food grew more plentiful. Movement became easier. The fighting flared up again. Meanwhile the Allied High Command had begun to direct their attention increasingly to Serbia.

  The strategic significance of Serbia is obvious. It lies right across the Belgrade-Salonika railway, a vital enemy line of communication, of which the importance would have increased still further in the event of an Allied landing anywhere in the Balkans, which at that time was still a possibility.

  Hitherto, Serbia had been regarded by us as being primarily a Četnik pres
erve. Such supplies as had gone there had been dropped to Mihajlović. But the results had in the view of G.H.Q. Middle East been disappointing. In particular there had been little or no interruption of traffic on the Belgrade-Salonika railway. It will be recalled that Mihajlović had been given a limited period in which to carry out a certain specific operation. This had now elapsed without his having complied with this request, and the important decision was accordingly taken to withdraw the Allied Mission from his Headquarters and send him no further supplies. Supplies ceased at once; the extrication of the British liaison officers took longer, and it was not until the end of May that Brigadier Armstrong, my opposite number in the other camp, took leave of a reproachful but still courteous Mihajlović. In the House of Commons Mr. Churchill explained the Government’s action. ‘The reason,’ he said, ‘why we have ceased to supply Mihajlović with arms and support is a simple one. He has not been fighting the enemy, and, moreover, some of his subordinates have been making accommodations with the enemy.’

  Thus ended a connection which from the first had been based on a misapprehension. With the help of our own propaganda we had in our imagination built up Mihajlović into something that he never seriously claimed to be. Now we were dropping him because he had failed to fulfil our own expectations.

  The decision to drop the Četniks having once been taken, it became our policy to build up Partisan strength in Serbia as quickly as possible. The Partisan Movement had had its origin in Serbia, but, after the first bloody set-backs of 1941, the main body of Tito’s forces had withdrawn northwards and westwards into Bosnia and Montenegro, and such Partisans as remained had largely gone underground, whence they waged a bitter and uphill struggle against both Germans and Četniks, making raids and ambushes and attacking communications in true guerrilla fashion, but for the most part not operating as formed units, as they did elsewhere in Jugoslavia.