The Forgotten 500

by Gregory A. Freeman

  Escaping from this Nazi-held territory seemed like an impossibility to most of them. They were airmen used to flying over dangerous country, not special agents trained to infiltrate and make their way through enemy territory on the ground.

  After meeting up with his fellow crew members at the military outpost of Mihailovich’s guerillas, Wilson realized that his best bet for survival was to stick with these armed men for as long as they would have him. For the next two months, the Serbian fighters harbored Wilson and his crewmates, feeding them as well as they could manage and taking them along when the group moved from one village to the next by narrow, sometimes overgrown trails—another group of ragtag Americans moving through Yugoslavia, like the groups that included Musgrove and Orsini. Each group had their own adventures and difficulties along the way, and one of the worst parts was not knowing what other Americans were out there and whether they would ever join up.

  Occasionally the Chetnik soldiers would hide Wilson and the other Americans in the bushes until a German patrol passed or until they could be certain that a village was safe. Wilson got used to trudging through the mountainous countryside and looked forward to each new village, where the fliers would be greeted as heroes and offered whatever rations could be found. Though the villagers always welcomed them, the soldiers escorting them would allow the group to stay only a day or so before moving on. They knew that the generous villagers would give every scrap of food to the Americans if they stayed too long.

  The mood of the Americans changed when they met a man named Bogdan, who greeted them in English as they entered another village. He embraced the fliers and welcomed them, causing the Americans to break into broad grins as they realized that finally they were meeting a Chetnik who spoke English. Maybe they’d find out where they were going and what would happen to them.

  They quickly found out that Bogdan had learned English while working in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. He had returned to Yugoslavia to retire and found himself directly in the path of Hitler’s army. They spoke eagerly with Bogdan, pumping him for any information, but he had little to pass on. All he could tell them was that the soldiers were protecting them until they could figure out somewhere to take them.

  “Right now, they will take you from one place to next,” he said. “They will protect you. But I don’t know where you are going.”

  Bogdan joined them on their journey, serving as their interpreter, helping the Americans understand what little there was to discuss along the way. If nothing else, he could help the Americans understand how far the next village was, how long it might be before they found some food. As they moved on, the Americans would watch for anything edible along the way, stopping to gather berries or any fruit that looked remotely like something they recognized. Whenever they came across a stream with small minnowlike fish, the airmen used their shirts to weave a seine that would catch the little fish by the dozens. They didn’t seem like much of a meal, but the Americans would take the fish to the next village and ask a local woman to fry them, offering some of the fish in appreciation for the cooking and any butter, goat cheese, or bread she might spare.

  When they came to a bigger river, the men sometimes took advantage of the chance to get out of the July heat and cool off. One day the men were drawn to the sound of rushing water, which promised relief from the incessant heat of the day and they couldn’t wait to jump in when they saw the river up ahead. With the blessing of their Chetnik escorts the Americans stripped down and jumped in the cool water, forgetting for a moment that they were in enemy territory and in constant danger. One of the guerillas indicated that he was going off in the direction of the local village to see if they should stop there or keep moving on, disappearing back through the woods and leaving the Americans with a few other Chetniks who sat down in the shade and indicated that it was okay if Wilson and his friends wanted to swim. The young men jumped in immediately, and it didn’t take them long to let their guard down. They were just young men taking a swim, shoving one another underwater and splashing with abandon. Wilson was enjoying himself, immersing himself over and over again to cool down, while trying to scrub off some of the grime that was ground into every inch of his skin. He was scrubbing when he looked downstream and noticed someone else in the water, maybe half a mile away.

  Wilson couldn’t see him clearly, but he pointed the man out to the other Americans and wondered aloud who it might be. Everyone calmed down for a moment to take a look, but then the group decided the man must just be a local villager. The man appeared to be naked, like them, and he was standing there staring back at them. Several of the men waved at the other fellow, but he just stood there. One of the Americans got the attention of a Chetnik soldier on the shore and pointed down-river to the other man. The soldier took a look and, seeing nothing to suggest the man was anything other than a local villager, shook his head as if to say there was no problem, then went back to resting under a tree. Wilson and his crewmates shrugged their shoulders and returned to enjoying the cool water.

  Suddenly they could hear the Chetnik guerrilla who had gone to the village crashing through the woods, hurriedly returning to the river-bank. He started shouting to the other Chetniks excitedly, yelling something that caused the men with rifles to spring to their feet. They started waving furiously at the Americans in the water. Wilson and his crewmates stopped their horsing around and looked up at the anxious men on the bank, not knowing what was wrong but getting the message that something was. They were starting to slowly make their way out of the water when Bogdan ran over and shouted to them.

  “Germans! There are Germans here! You must go! Go now!”

  The Americans churned the water as they ran to shore quickly, as fast as they could, grabbing their clothes on the way out and sprinting into the woods on the heels of the Chetniks. They ran for a long time, naked and half naked, struggling to put on some clothes along the way, until finally the guerillas decided they had run far enough. They all sat down in the woods, panting from the exertion, the Americans still soaking wet.

  “Where are the Germans?” one of the Americans asked Bogdan.

  Their interpreter could hardly speak as he tried to catch his breath. “The village . . . Germans are in the village. Taking pigs, other food,” he said.

  Several of the Americans looked puzzled. The village wasn’t all that close to where they were swimming, so why were they running for their lives like that?

  Bogdan was breathing better now and could explain more. “That man you saw in the river, he was the commandant of that unit, the Germans,” he said. “He went to the river to bathe while his men went to the village.”

  Suddenly the picture became clear to the Americans. They were whooping and hollering like schoolboys just upstream from a German officer who could have had them all arrested or killed on the spot. They had even waved at him. The only reason they were still alive and free, they figured, was that the German officer was by himself and didn’t know how well armed the American group might be.

  But surely he had reported the Americans, and he might even be mobilizing his own unit to chase them down. They had to keep moving.

  As they marched on and on, nearly every day, the Americans wondered where they were going. Before long, the wondering became just an idle thought in the back of their minds, not the all-consuming question it had been at first. It was only days before Wilson stopped obsessing about how he was going to get out of Yugoslavia and back to his base in Italy. With each passing day, the question seemed more futile and soon he put it out of his mind. He just kept walking through Yugoslavia. Wilson and his crewmates talked among themselves about everything under the sun because they had plenty of time to pass. Baseball gave way to cars, and then to favorite foods, which led to starlets and pinup girls, which segued into girlfriends, wives, and mothers. No matter how jocular the conversation started, it seemed to always lead to morose longing for those back home. And that led to silence as the men marched on.

  All over
northern Yugoslavia, American airmen were trudging along, hoping the next turn of the trail would offer more hope. Mike McKool had spent several days at a military camp with Chetnik escorts, waiting while the other members of his crew were brought in from the surrounding countryside. Fortunately for McKool and his fellow crew members, the commander of the Mihailovich army post, known as Captain Milankovic, spoke English. Though he could reassure the Americans that they would be protected, he also explained how serious their situation was.

  A couple of days after they landed in Yugoslavia, Captain Milankovic explained to McKool that the Germans were looking for them. And worse, they had taken twenty villagers prisoner, threatening to kill them if they did not reveal the whereabouts of the Americans. McKool and his crewmates were horrified at the idea and wondered aloud if they should give themselves up.

  “It will not help,” the Chetnik officer explained. “The Germans will kill who they wish. You cannot stop them.”

  Nevertheless, the villagers weighed heavily on the minds of the Americans as they rested in the secret military camp, eating and drinking plum brandy. After several days, they left the camp and started walking toward General Mihailovich’s headquarters, eighty miles away. They moved mainly at night and stayed away from roads, until they met up with a brigade of Mihailovich’s fighters numbering eight hundred. When the commander of the brigade was introduced to the Americans and found out that McKool was from Texas, he nicknamed him “Tom Mix,” after the movie cowboy popular at the time, and gave him a horse to ride.

  With the protection of the brigade, the group’s travel was safer but no faster. It took three weeks to reach their destination, during which there were several skirmishes with German patrols. But even more than the moments of danger, the Americans were impressed by the way the Serbian people greeted them along the way. They were offered the best food in the village and learned not to eat all they were offered, lest the family be left with nothing. Villagers offered their homes and beds for rest, and when the brigade moved out again, the Americans were singled out for special good-byes and bits of bread and goat cheese wrapped in a small cloth. As the group marched on, the column more than half a mile long, local Serbs would line the path or road to see the soldiers and especially the Americans they had only heard about, never seen. More often than not, they would step forward as the Americans passed by, offering a kiss on the cheek or a cup of goats’ milk.

  Sometimes the American airmen didn’t even realize immediately how generous the local people were, not until it was too late to be gracious. Some of the airmen, when first on the ground with the local villagers, eagerly scarfed down all the food put in front of them because the amount was small, they were hungry, and they thought it was all intended for them. Their bellies were full by the time they realized the peasant couple and their child had intended to share the food and were only waiting for them to eat first. One airman was sheltered in a villager’s home on his first night in Yugoslavia and made a snide comment the next morning about the uncomfortable wooden bed. Another airman, who had been there longer and knew how far the villagers’ hospitality extended, took the first airman around to the small stone barn behind the house and showed him that the mother and her two children had slept with the animals so the American could have their bed.

  One day McKool was overcome by the outpouring of emotion from an elderly woman in a long dress and the traditional head covering who rushed forward and grabbed his hand as he passed by on horseback, kissing it fervently and speaking words he could not understand. He could tell, however, that there was great emotion behind the words. She sobbed and held on to his hand as long as she could. As they passed and the woman fell back, McKool asked the Serbian officer he was riding alongside why the woman responded that way to him.

  “Many of these people have lost sons to this war. Some of them have sons in German prisoner camps,” he explained, looking ahead as his horse walked on. “They see you as their own children, Americans especially, because you come here to help us fight. That woman was kissing her son when she kissed you.”

  Thomas Oliver’s brief stay with the family who found him was followed by an afternoon on horseback, accompanied by three soldiers. He understood almost nothing they said to him along the way, other than their mention of the name Draza Mihailovich. Oliver didn’t know a lot about Mihailovich but figured that the men were taking him to the general.

  The group moved at a steady pace through the hills, stopping late in the afternoon to talk with a Yugoslavian doctor who had been educated in France. He didn’t speak any English, but Oliver was able to use his rudimentary French to communicate, noting that talking with a Yugoslavian who spoke French was much easier than any of his previous attempts to speak French with a Frenchman. The doctor understood that Oliver could not speak French well but understood the language when he heard it. So the doctor translated in French what the soldiers told him, and Oliver had only to answer, “Oui,” or ask, “Ou?” The doctor conveyed that the rest of Oliver’s crewmates had been found, and one was slightly wounded.

  With an “Au revoir!” to the doctor, Oliver got back on his horse and kept moving through the countryside, stopping in the evening at a farmhouse where the woman offered him a cup of hot goats’ milk. Oliver was ravenously hungry by then and took the cup eagerly, but he hesitated when he looked at the cup. The milk had some kind of scum all over the top, and whatever it was, it didn’t look appetizing. But Oliver thought to himself that he had to eat something, and whatever this was, apparently the locals did fine with it. So he brought the cup to his lips and tossed the scummy milk back in one big gulp, hoping not to taste it on the way down. It turned out not to be as bad as he’d expected.

  After that meager supper, Oliver was put to bed on a pile of straw, where he slept soundly for a few hours until the soldiers woke him up. He saw that three other soldiers had arrived in the night, and the group of seven all rode off into the night, Oliver in his flight suit and the Chetniks in their tight-fitting jackets and Cossack-style fur hats. As they moved along quietly, the only sound the jangling of the horse bridles and the scuffing of hooves on the trail, Oliver felt like he was in a Grade B cowboy movie.

  When the sun rose, the group traveled through a series of larger villages and continued their journey at a more leisurely pace. As the day wore on, Oliver started to think that the goal was to stop at every café in every village, or at least any establishment that could sell them a round of drinks. The Chetniks were generous in buying brandy and whatever other libations might be available for Oliver, which helped take his mind off not knowing where he was going. With the brandy flowing, the Chetniks escorting Oliver loosened up and started laughing, telling jokes he couldn’t understand but nevertheless including him in the revelry. At one point, one of the soldiers noticed that Oliver carried two knives, one on his belt and one strapped to his leg.

  The Chetnik motioned to Oliver as if to ask why he had two knives instead of just one. Oliver was trying to figure out how to explain that he liked having a backup when another of the soldiers interjected. He pointed to the knife on Oliver’s belt and said, “Ahhh . . . Hitler!” and made a gesture as if cutting his throat, followed by a dramatic death. Then he pointed to the knife on Oliver’s leg and said, “Mussolini!” followed by the same gesture and overacting. Oliver joined the other Chetniks in hysterical laughter.

  After a night of revelry with his escorts, Oliver experienced a more somber morning. The soldiers and the local Serbs took Oliver to a religious ceremony at the graves of two American airmen who had been shot down earlier but hadn’t made it safely into the arms of the local people. Oliver watched silently as a Serbian Orthodox priest conducted a service for the dead, passing a cup of wine around for all to sip. Then he poured a small amount from the cup onto each grave. Oliver was moved by the solemnity of the moment, the way these local people conducted the service as if the Americans were their own brothers.

  He thought about it for the rest of the day a
s he waited in the small village, not knowing how long they were staying before moving on again. As night fell and he was given a bed to sleep in, Oliver figured the group would head out after daybreak the next morning. But in the darkest early hours, Oliver awoke to screams of “Heidi! Heidi!” or at least that was what it sounded like to him. The Serbs were yelling “Hurry!” in their language, the terror in their voices conveying quickly to Oliver that Germans were coming. Several men rushed into the cottage and grabbed Oliver, practically dragging him outside and deep into the woods, where he hid for hours until the danger had passed.

  Later that day, as he lounged around the village waiting for any signal that he was moving on, the rest of his bomber crew straggled in, led by a few more Chetnik soldiers. They were accompanied by an old man who was acting as their interpreter, having spent several years living in Wisconsin and working in the logging business. Because he had worked mostly with Swedish immigrants, the Serb spoke English with a Swedish accent that always made Oliver chuckle. With the help of the old man’s English, Oliver was introduced to the local Chetnik commander, known as Kent. He was young and handsome, charismatic and a natural leader, Oliver thought. It was no wonder that he was leading all these soldiers. Kent explained to Oliver that he and the other Americans in the village, totaling twenty-four now that several groups had been brought to the same place, were not going anywhere anytime soon. They would stay in this small village close to the Danube River on the eastern border of Yugoslavia while Kent tried to arrange an evacuation with the Allies. Kent hoped to get supplies or other aid from the Allies in return for his help.