The Chief of Staff, we soon found, had only a rather sketchy idea of the geography of Belgrade. But as none of the rest of us had ever been there before, we left the task of navigation to him, and, under his direction, plunged gaily into the centre of the town. Our first objective was the Kalemegdan. This, it appeared, was some kind of fort, which had just been taken and from which we should be able to follow the progress of the fighting.
The streets through which we approached it were under heavy shell-fire. They were also crowded with civilians, some enthusiastic, some just standing and gaping. From time to time a shell would land full amongst them, killing several. This left the Chief of Staff unmoved. Sitting beside me in the front of my jeep, he was busy showing us the sights of Belgrade, which he had not visited since he was a child. ‘That,’ he would say, ‘is the Parliament Building. And there is the Opera. And now I am afraid we have lost the way again. Ah, that must be the Ministry of Agriculture.’
From the back of the jeep, Vivian, who as a seasoned infantryman had had considerable experience of long-range shelling and its results, was beginning to show signs of impatience. ‘Mightn’t it be better,’ he would suggest politely, as we swerved down yet another side-street, littered with the same little heaps of fresh corpses, ‘mightn’t it be better to go straight there?’
But the Chief of Staff was not to be put off. Accustomed to the hand-to-hand fighting of guerrilla warfare, long-range shelling meant little to him. Whatever happened, and even though he might not be quite sure of the way, he was determined to do the honours of the capital in proper style.
Next we tried to guess where the shells were coming from and what they were aimed at. But even that was not easy. Nor did the Chief of Staff himself seem to have a very clear idea of the situation. One thing only was evident: that heavy fighting was going on all round us. The thunder of artillery and the rattle of small-arms fire resounded from all sides. It was not until we finally reached our destination that we got a clear picture of what was happening.
The Kalemegdan is an ancient fort, built of stone and red brick, from which, in Turkish times, the Ottoman conquerors held sway over Belgrade and the surrounding country. We approached it on foot through what seemed to be some public gardens, having first left the jeeps under the cover of a clump of bushes. As far as we knew, the Kalemegdan itself was in Soviet or Partisan hands, but in the immediate neighbourhood skirmishing was still in progress and through the trees came the occasional crack of a rifle or a burst of fire from a machine gun. It was not without caution that we wended our way amongst the ornamental flower-beds and clumps of shrubs. ‘Keep off the grass’, said the notices unavailingly.
Suddenly we emerged from the trees on to a kind of terrace and found ourselves looking out over an immense panorama, in which, as in certain medieval paintings, all sorts of things were happening simultaneously. At our feet, a few hundred yards away, flowed the Danube. Here, at the point where it joined the Sava, it was a considerable stream, its rushing waters swollen by the autumn rains. Of the bridges spanning it, only one remained standing, about half a mile from where we stood.
Across this troops were pouring headlong — guns, vehicles, horses and infantry. Looking through our glasses, we saw that they were Germans, retreating in confusion to the suburb of Zemun across the river, where, it seemed, the main body of the enemy was now established and whence their guns were laying down a barrage to cover the retreat of their rearguard. Suddenly, as we watched, the stream of fugitives was broken, and for a few moments the bridge remained unoccupied. Then more troops came pouring across. As we focused our glasses on them, we saw to our amazement that they were Russians. We could hardly believe our eyes. It seemed incredible that the German sappers should have failed to blow up the bridge as soon as their last troops were across.
And yet there could be no doubt about it. They had. Already the first Russians had reached the other side and were deploying on the flat ground between Zemun and the river. Calmly, methodically, the guns, horse-drawn for the most part, were brought into position and opened up. Little puffs of smoke among the buildings of Zemun showing that they were finding their targets.
Then, as we watched, the Red infantry went into action, wave upon wave, advancing unhurriedly but relentlessly across the shell-scarred fields, firing as they went. Some were armed with tommy-guns or rifles, others dragged behind them heavy machine guns mounted on little wheels. Every now and then one of the sturdy, buff-clad figures would spin round and fall while the advance swept on past him. On the fringes of Zemun the harassed Germans were standing fast and returning the Russians’ fire as they tried frantically to dig themselves in.
It was not until later that we heard the story of the bridge. The Germans, it appeared, had duly mined it before they began their withdrawal and a detachment of engineers had been detailed to blow it up as soon as the last troops were over. The rest of the story reads like a fairy tale.
In one of the apartment houses near the bridge there lived an old man, a retired school teacher. He was warlike neither by nature nor by training, but in the course of a long life he had had one outstanding military experience. This was during the Balkan War of 1912, when, in the course of a battle with the Turks, he had, as a private soldier, distinguished himself by removing the demolition charges from beneath a bridge across which the enemy were retreating, thus preventing them from destroying it and enabling the Serbs to follow up their advantage. For this deed he was awarded a gold medal by King Peter I. After which he took to schoolmastering and relapsed into obscurity.
Thirty-two years later, on the night of October 19th, 1944, the old man, armed with this solitary but valuable experience of modern warfare and with a stout heart, was looking out of his window as the Germans made preparations for their withdrawal. With growing interest he watched them laying and connecting up the charges under the supports of the bridge. This was something familiar, something in his line. He knew exactly what to do.
Biding his time, he chose a moment when the attention of the guards on the bridge had been distracted. Then, of his own initiative he went downstairs, crossed the road and devoted a well-spent half-hour to disconnecting the charges under the bridge. When, some hours later, the enemy’s demolition party tried to detonate the charges, nothing happened, and, before they could put things right, the Russians were upon them. Some weeks later a second gold medal was awarded to the old man.
As we watched, more and more Soviet troops poured across the bridge and the fighting on the Zemun side became fiercer than ever. In a desperate attempt to make up for their fatal failure to destroy the bridge, the Germans now turned the full force of their remaining artillery against it. From where we were, we could see the shells bursting in the water all round it. Every now and then one would find its target and for a moment the smooth flow of troops across the bridge would be interrupted by plunging horses and lurching, swaying vehicles. But somehow the seemingly flimsy structure of the bridge itself stood firm; and still the Russians came on.
Up to now we had watched these remarkable scenes spellbound, as though from a grandstand. Suddenly, the sound of a gun going off in our immediate neighbourhood reminded us that we ourselves were not so far removed from the battle area. Looking round, we saw that a Soviet gun crew had established themselves with their 75-mm. field gun in the bushes twenty yards away from us, and were now firing over open sights at the enemy on the other side of the river. This, we realized at once, could only lead to one thing. And, indeed, retribution followed swiftly. The comparative peace and quiet of our ring-side seats were rudely disturbed as the German gunners across the river, resenting this challenge to their professional pride, retaliated with some painfully accurate counter-battery fire. A first shell fell to the right of where we were standing; then one to the left; then one over us; then one short of us. It was without displeasure that we received the Chief of Staff’s announcement that it was time for us to get back to Headquarters.
In the streets throug
h which we drove on our way back we found the same bewildered crowds as before. At the sight of the Union Jack on my jeep and of the Stars and Stripes on Charlie’s some of the onlookers raised a cheer. The Germans were concentrating their fire on the streets leading down to the bridge. Along these Red Army and Partisan reinforcements were now pouring, and again and again we had to drive our jeeps up on to the pavement to make way for the Russian gun-teams, as, at full gallop, with a clatter of hooves and a rattle of wheels on the cobbles, they went swaying and jerking into battle.
The Chief of Staff had one last bit of sight-seeing in store for us. We must, he said, have a look at the British Legation. In the end we found it, with the Swiss flag flying over it, an unmistakable product of the Office of Works. Georgian or Queen Anne in intention, it nevertheless somehow managed, with its high-pitched roof and artfully toned brickwork, to give the intangible impression of Tudor homeliness which for some reason is thought to be called for in the buildings which today are designed to house His Majesty’s Representatives abroad. The body of a German soldier lay spreadeagled near the front door.
By the time we reached Peko’s Headquarters, it was nearly dark. We had seen enough from the Kalemegdan to know that the issue of the battle could no longer be in doubt, and what Peko now told us confirmed this. In the battle before Belgrade and in the fighting within the city itself the greater part of the German garrison had been annihilated. The survivors were trying to made a stand in Zemun, across the river, in the hope of thus gaining a little time before continuing their retreat northwards and westwards. Shells from Zemun were still falling freely in Belgrade, but, with the exception of a few isolated pockets of resistance, now being mopped up, there were no Germans left in the city.
As I walked back down the street to the little suburban villa in which we were quartered, the evening sky over Belgrade was bright with innumerable phosphorescent streams of tracer bullets soaring upwards from all sides and at all angles and the rattle of firearms was continuous. The Russians and the Partisans were celebrating their victory in their own way. Coming down the street towards me was a group of Red Army soldiers who from time to time discharged their tommy-guns in the air or, as a variation, straight in front of them down the street. As they went past they shouted merrily to me. Above the pandemonium came the occasional crash of a German shell, and now, from quite near, an entirely new noise as a Soviet ‘Katiushka’, or multiple rocket-projector, went into action. With a rushing, whirring, hissing sound, like a giant locomotive letting off steam, five or six rockets soared up from behind our house and, trailing after them a wake of fire, went speeding off in the direction of Zemun to land there a few seconds later with a flash and a muffled explosion. Soon the Germans opened up with the inevitable counter-battery fire and once again the shells began to fall all round us in earnest.
Against this background of noise I sat down to draft my signal to the Supreme Allied Commander, announcing the fall of Belgrade. It was a signal that I had looked forward to sending for a long time.
Chapter XVII
Who Goes Home?
A FEW days after the fall of the city, Tito arrived in Belgrade and held a parade of the troops that had liberated it. Standing beside him at the saluting base, it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of the ragged, battle-stained throng of Partisans of all sizes and ages who marched past us.
Veterans of Salonika and the Balkan Wars marched next to boys of sixteen and seventeen; here and there a girl strode along with rifle and pack beside the men; some were tall; some were undersized. They carried an odd assortment of arms and equipment, with only this in common: that it had been captured from the enemy in battle. Their uniforms, also stripped, for the most part, from dead Germans or Italians, were torn and stained. They were slung about with water-bottles and hand-grenades and strange odds and ends of equipment, for they had come straight out of battle and were going straight back into battle. Their boots were worn and patched. They looked underfed and weary.
And yet they marched well and held themselves proudly and smiled as they marched. Most of them were from First Corps. They had spent the whole of the last three years fighting. Since the spring they had fought their way half across Jugoslavia. Now, after all the hazards and hardships they had endured, after the cold and hunger, the attacks and counter-attacks, the ambushes and the long night marches, after the weeks and months and years of ever-present suspense and uncertainty, they were at last entering the capital as conquerors.
With the fall of Belgrade the guerrilla phase of the Movement of National Liberation had come to an end. There was still much bitter fighting to be done, but the days of true guerrilla warfare were past.
Within a few weeks Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Herzegovina and Dalmatia and large areas of Bosnia and Croatia were free. The Germans were by now in full retreat and their strategy was solely directed to securing the communications along which their withdrawal was taking place. With this object in view they concentrated the bulk of their resources on holding the main Sarajevo-Brod-Zagreb communication together with the bare minimum of territory necessary for its defence. At the same time they held the lateral communications connecting it with Bihać, Banjaluka and Mostar, thus protecting the south-western flank of the main line of withdrawal against the attacks of the Partisans and against the possibility of an Allied landing in Dalmatia. North-east of Brod, protecting the other flank of their withdrawal, now threatened by the whole weight of the Red Army, the Germans held in force the Srem, the wedge of territory bounded on three sides by the Sava, the Drava and the Danube. Here a fixed front was formed, the Germans desperately resisting the attempts of a combined force of Russians, Partisans and Bulgars to break through towards Brod. Meanwhile, in the north of Jugoslavia, in Croatia and Slovenia, the Germans were preparing the lines of defence on which they ultimately proposed to fall back. In the space of two or three months, the war, from being a guerrilla war, a war of movement, had become a war of position, a type of war which was completely new to the Partisans.
Politically, too, the capture of Belgrade marked the beginning of an entirely new phase. The days were past when Partisan statesmen and administrators needed to creep through the enemy lines at night to transact their affairs. Tito and the members of his National Council were now safely installed in the capital, and it was their business to govern and administer the country instead of stirring up trouble, to quell resistance instead of organizing it. This, also, was a big change.
One thing was abundantly clear. The Partisans had come to stay. Already they were in complete control of practically the whole of Jugoslavia. As I had always expected would happen, the German withdrawal was leaving them in sole possession. There were no serious competitors. The various quisling administrations collapsed as soon as German support was withdrawn. Nedić had left Belgrade with the Germans. Pavelić was preparing to flee from Zagreb. The military and paramilitary forces which they had raised had either surrendered or else were withdrawing northwards with the retreating enemy forces.
As to the Četniks, many had profited by the amnesty and joined the Partisans. Others had thrown in their lot with the followers of Nedić and Ljotić and, like them, were withdrawing northwards with the Germans. Mihajlović himself with a small force of trusted followers had withdrawn to the highlands of Bosnia, to those very parts where the Partisans themselves had held out so long against the Germans. In the drawing-rooms of Belgrade there were rumours that with the spring, when the leaves were on the trees and the weather was better, there would be a Četnik rising throughout Serbia. But for the present there was no sign of any such thing, and the Partisans were busy consolidating their already overwhelmingly strong position by all the means in their power.
These were considerable. In the first place, their political, military and administrative organization was efficient and far-reaching — (it was not for nothing that their leaders were experienced Communists) — and they thus were able without further ado to assume control of al
l the key positions in the country. War-time conditions favoured centralization. A policy of State control and widespread requisitioning was easy to justify, and soon the greater part of industry and commerce was more or less directly controlled by the National Committee. The Press and wireless had from the first naturally followed the Party line. Finally, the introduction of conscription gave the central authority a convenient hold over every able-bodied individual in the country, while the possession of a very considerable body of armed men meant that its decisions were backed by force. By these familiar processes much power was rapidly concentrated in the hands of the National Committee.
Nor should it be supposed that the Partisans at the end of the war did not enjoy a very considerable measure of genuine popular support. By their gallant struggle against the invaders during the war they had won widespread admiration and approval, which had increased when they had finally emerged victorious. To many people Tito and the Movement of National Liberation seemed to represent the best if not the only prospect of stable government, and that was an important consideration in a country which for four years had been racked by every kind of external and internal strife and dissension. They were known to enjoy the support and approval of the great Allies and, above all, of the Soviet Union, whose Red Army, even after its withdrawal, continued to dominate the situation militarily from beyond the frontier. Thus, the balance was overwhelmingly weighted in their favour.
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