Eastern Approaches (42 page)

Mihajlović himself seems to have disapproved of actual collaboration with the enemy though he himself had originated the policy of abandoning active resistance and concentrating on the elimination of the Partisans. But the control which he exercised over his commanders was remote and spasmodic. Soon, while some Četnik commanders were still rather half-heartedly fighting the Axis forces, and others doing nothing, a number made no secret of their collaboration, and were living openly at German and Italian Headquarters.

Already this kaleidoscope of heroism and treachery, rivalry and intrigue had become the background to our daily life. Bosnia, where we had our first sight of enemy-occupied Jugoslavia, was in a sense a microcosm of the country as a whole. In the past it had been fought over repeatedly by Turks, Austrians and Serbs, and most of the national trends and tendencies were represented there, all at their most violent. The population was made up of violently Catholic Croats and no less violently Orthodox Serbs, with a strong admixture of equally fanatical local Moslems. The mountainous, heavily wooded country was admirably suited to guerrilla warfare, and it had long been one of the principal Partisan strongholds, while there was also a considerable sprinkling of Četnik bands. It had been the scene of the worst of the atrocities committed by the Ustaše, of the not unnaturally drastic reprisals of the Četniks and Partisans.

For anyone who was not himself in German-occupied Europe during the war it is hard to imagine the savage intensity of the passions which
were aroused or the extremes of bitterness which they engendered. In Jugoslavia the old racial, religious and political feuds were, as it were, magnified and revitalized by the war, the occupation and the resistance, the latent tradition of violence revived. The lesson which we were having was an object-lesson, illustrated by burnt villages, desecrated churches, massacred hostages and mutilated corpses.

Once, after a battle which had raged all day amid the green hills and valleys, I came on the terribly shattered corpse of an Ustaša. Seeing that capture was inevitable, he had taken the pin from a hand-grenade and, holding it against him, blown himself to bits. Somehow his face had escaped disfigurement, and his dead eyes stared horribly from the pale, drawn, disordered features. From under his blood-stained shirt protruded a crucifix, and a black and white medal ribbon, probably the Iron Cross, still hung to the shreds of his German-type tunic. Fighting for an alien power against his own countrymen, he had destroyed himself rather than fall into the hands of men of the same race as himself, but of different beliefs, beliefs to which they held as savagely as he held to his, for which they would kill and be killed as readily as he for his. There could have been no better symbol of the violence and fanaticism of this Balkan war.

From this confused, this typically Balkan situation, one or two facts stood out clearly.

Mine was a military mission; I had been told that politics were a secondary consideration; what mattered was who was fighting the Germans. And of that there could be no doubt. The Partisans, whatever their politics, were fighting them, and fighting them most effectively, while the Četniks, however admirable their motives, were largely either not fighting at all or fighting with the Germans against their own countrymen. Moreover, regarded as a military force, the Partisans were more numerous, better organized, better disciplined and better led than the Četniks.

I had been told to consider how we could best help the Partisans. This, too, was clear. The Partisans were already containing a dozen or more enemy divisions. By increasing our at present practically non-existent supplies to them, and giving them air support, we could
ensure that they continued to contain this force. Moreover their operations, if co-ordinated with our own, could be of direct assistance to the Allied armies in Italy. They would not need to change their strategy. Indeed it was most important that they should not depart from their guerrilla methods. If, by supplying them with arms and equipment and the air support for which they asked, we could ensure that they maintained and if possible intensified their present effort, we should be getting good value for what we gave them.

There was another aspect of the supply situation. We were getting, it seemed, little or no return militarily from the arms we dropped to the Četniks, which had hitherto exceeded in quantity those sent to the Partisans. Indeed, in so far as they were used against the Partisans, who were fighting the Germans, they were impeding rather than furthering the war effort. Logically, therefore, and on purely military grounds, we should stop supplies to the Četniks and henceforth send all available arms and equipment to the Partisans.

Politically, too, certain facts were clear. In the first place, the Partisans, whether we helped them or not, were going to be a decisive factor in the new Jugoslavia. Indeed there seemed no reason to doubt that, with their widespread and efficient organization, they would, when the Germans were driven out, become its effective rulers. Secondly, they were Communists, and must therefore be expected, when they came to power, to set up a totalitarian form of government on Soviet lines, in all probability strongly orientated towards Moscow.

These, too, were facts of first-rate importance, likely to affect the future political orientation of the Balkans and ultimately the balance of power in Europe. Should they affect the British Government’s decision to give military support to the Partisans?

The question was one which would have to be decided by the Government. I had, before ever leaving England, raised the then hypothetical question of whether or not we were concerned to check the spread of Soviet influence in the Balkans, and had been told that our policy was not influenced by such considerations. Would the Government change their mind when confronted with the more definite information which would now be laid before them? I could not tell. But, instinctively, I carried the argument a stage further.

Clearly, whatever anyone might say, we could not regard with enthusiasm the establishment in Jugoslavia of a Communist regime under Soviet influence. But did the future political orientation of Jugoslavia depend on us? As far as I could see, it did not. If I had read the situation aright, nothing short of armed intervention on a larger and more effective scale than that undertaken by the Germans would dispose of the Partisans. And that, in the middle of a war in which they and their Soviet sponsors were our allies and at a time when we were in any case desperately short of troops, did not seem a practical proposition. Two years earlier, before the situation had crystallized, we might have been able to influence the course of events one way or the other. But not now.

This being so, we might as well extract such benefit as we could from the situation militarily. To refuse to help the Partisans on the ground that they were Communists at a time when we were doing everything in our power to strengthen the Soviet Union would indeed be to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Besides, if, as seemed probable, the Partisans were going to be the future masters of Jugoslavia, the sooner we established satisfactory relations with them, the better; although, if I knew anything about Communists, this would not be easy to do.

There was one other factor to be considered. Human experience shapes human character. The impact of events on the individual cannot altogether be left out of account. Tito had been through a lot since 1937, when, as a reward for his orthodoxy, Moscow had appointed him Secretary-General of the Jugoslav Communist Party. Since then he had undergone the innumerable hazards and hardships of a bitter war fought for the independence of his own country; he had experienced the satisfaction of building up from nothing a powerful military and political organization, of which he himself was the absolute master. Would he emerge from these strenuous and stirring years completely unchanged? Would he accept Soviet dictation and interference as unquestioningly as before? Already I had been struck by his independence of mind. And independence of any kind was, I knew, incompatible with orthodox Communism.

That Tito and those round him might in the course of time evolve
into something more than mere Soviet puppets seemed too remote a possibility to serve as a basis for our calculations. But it was nevertheless an eventuality which seemed worth bearing in mind. ‘Much,’ I wrote in the report which I now started to draft against the day when I should find means of sending it out, ‘will depend on Tito, and whether he sees himself in his former role of Comintern agent or as the potential ruler of an independent Jugoslav State.’

T
HE
weeks passed, and meanwhile the supply problem was no nearer solution. We still relied on what could be dropped by an occasional aeroplane, flying haphazard from North Africa, while for communications we still depended on a rather shaky wireless link with Cairo. Our improvised landing-strip at Glamoć was now ready but, from the messages we received, the R.A.F. seemed disinclined to risk one of their aircraft on it and it was unlikely that the Partisans would be able to hold for much longer the area in which it was situated.

Then one day came the news that the Navy were considering my suggestion that supplies could be run across the Adriatic by fast naval craft and landed by night on the Dalmatian Coast. They did not like the idea of running right in-shore, but they thought that they might take their cargoes as far as the outlying islands, now in Partisan hands, if we could find shipping to carry them from the islands to the coast and some means of carrying them inland from there.

This was something. I climbed up the hill to talk things over with Tito in his castle.

He greeted the news with enthusiasm. The Partisans, he said, had captured a certain number of light craft at the time of the Italian collapse. These they had manned with crews from their Dalmatian Brigade, the Dalmatians being born sailors, and had mounted with captured machine guns and twenty-millimetre Bredas. In fact, he said, they were already well on the way to having their own navy and could easily undertake the task of trans-shipping any quantity of supplies and ferrying them across the E-Boat infested coastal waters to a point in Dalmatia where they could be landed. But, if such operations were to do any good, they must begin at once, for already the Germans were pushing down towards the coast with tanks, artillery and air support, determined to re-occupy the territory which the Italian collapse had left unoccupied and which the Partisans were now holding as best they could against overwhelming odds. The port of Split had
been recaptured by the enemy. Soon the Partisans would be cut off from the coast altogether, and then there would be no means of distributing supplies inland, even if they could be landed on the coast.

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 become 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.