Eastern Approaches (44 page)

When we got back to our billet, we found that a signal had come in over the wireless from Cairo. I had arranged that only urgent and important messages should be passed to me while I was on my way down to the coast, and so we looked at it with some interest. As we read it, our interest turned to amazement. The message was largely corrupt, but one sentence was quite clear. ‘King now in Cairo,’ it read, ‘Will be dropped in to you at first opportunity.’

It could only mean one thing. For some time London had been concerned to effect a gradual rapprochement between King Peter and the Partisans. As a first step, I knew, the King was to move to Cairo, where it was felt, for some reason, that he would be better placed than in London to know what was going on in his own country. I had been kept informed, step by step, of the progress of these deliberations. But now, clearly, someone on a high level, Mr. Churchill perhaps, or possibly King Peter himself, had lost patience and decided to take the bull by the horns, and without more ado to precipitate the King headlong into the seething centre of the Jugoslav cauldron.

We were dumbfounded. The way had not been prepared at all. We had no means of telling how the Partisans would receive the King. In my conversations with Tito I had so far hardly touched on the extremely ticklish subject of the monarchy. My own guess was that if King Peter dropped without warning from a British aeroplane, the Partisans would simply hand him back to me and ask me to get rid of him again, which under existing circumstances would be easier said than done. Our minds boggled at the thought of the embarrassing situations which might arise.

My first thought was to get into touch with Cairo and find out what they really had in mind, but our wireless, temperamental as ever when most badly needed, now suddenly refused to emit a flicker. There was nothing for it but to wait and see.

Meanwhile Milić had returned from his reconnaissance and we went round to see him. He looked tired and worried. Once again the maps were brought out and we traced the progress of the German pincer movement. It had been all too rapid. The two claws had now joined up and the way to the coast was blocked. He himself had had a hard time getting back to his Headquarters. It would, he said, be out of the question for us to attempt the journey. The last courier from the coast had only just managed to get through.

I prepared for an argument. His last remark gave me the opening I wanted. If a courier could get through, I said, I could get through. He replied, with some justice, that it was not at all the same thing. The Germans were firmly established across our route and the only way of reaching the coast was to get through their lines at night. If we were taken prisoner or killed, he would get into trouble. At this I reminded him that my journey to the coast had been planned with Tito personally and that future supplies for the Partisans depended largely on my getting there. This seemed to shake him and I followed up my advantage. In the end he agreed that I should press on as far as Aržano which the Partisans were known to be still holding, and see for myself what arrangements I could make for my onward journey from there.

I was convinced that we should get through somehow and it seemed to me most important to maintain at all costs the principle of our freedom of movement. At the same time, even supposing that Milić had exaggerated the difficulties of the onward journey for our benefit, there was clearly a good chance of our running into an enemy patrol, in which case we should look very foolish if both Vivian and myself were taken prisoner. I accordingly decided to send Vivian back to Jajce with the bulk of the kit, and to go on to the coast myself, taking with me John Henniker-Major and Duncan. We left Livno in the early afternoon. With us came the Professor, a schoolmaster from Split with a remarkable talent for languages, whom I recruited at Livno and who was to be attached to one or other part of my Mission for the remainder of the war, covering immense distances on foot and enduring hazards and hardships most unusual in the career of a peace-loving man of letters.

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were to travel by truck as far as Aržano. After we had gone a very short distance it became evident that our driver did not know the way. This was disturbing, for the situation was still extremely fluid and no one seemed very certain of the exact extent of the enemy’s advance.

The next village which we entered at full speed turned out to be still occupied by Italians. With the exception of the Colonel at Livno they were the first I had seen since the capitulation and for a moment the sight of their grey-green uniforms, so long the mark of an enemy, took me by surprise. Then they flocked forward, clenching their fists in the Communist salute and I remembered that we were amongst friends or at any rate co-belligerents.

I talked to several of them while the driver once again asked the way. They were the usual friendly peasants whose chief concern was to get out of Jugoslavia, with its unpleasant memories, and back to ‘la Mamma’ in Italy. I felt somehow that, despite the heroic echoes of their name, the Garibaldi Brigade which the Partisans were trying to form would not be an unqualified success from a military point of view. They had clearly not much enjoyed fighting for the Germans and the prospect of now fighting against them filled them with alarm and despondency.

Meanwhile the nature of the country through which we were passing had begun to change. The grey rocks and crags of Dalmatia were gradually taking the place of the wooded hills and green valleys of Bosnia. Everywhere there were traces of the recent fighting. The bridges were down and, scattered along the road and in the stony fields were burnt-out tanks and armoured cars with German, Italian and Croat markings. Towards evening, after a good deal of casting about, we came to Aržano, a few tiny white-washed houses, clinging to the side of a hill. Across the valley, dark against the setting sun, rose the first of the ranges of hills, which lay between us and the coast.

We were made welcome by the local Brigade Commander and his Political Commissar, two hilarious characters with heavy moustaches, almost indistinguishable the one from the other. Brigade Headquarters were sitting down to their evening meal. We pulled out our mess tins; they were filled with stew and black bread and a bottle of
rakija
was opened.

While we were eating, we explained who we were and what we were doing and broached the subject of our onward journey. To my relief the Brigade Commander seemed to take it as a matter of course that people with urgent business to transact should slip through the German lines at night. For the greater part of the way, he said, it was simply a question of knowing the lie of the land and dodging German patrols. There was only one place where we were likely to run into trouble. That was a road which we should have to cross and which was strongly held by the enemy.

We produced our map. He gave us in some detail an account of the latest fighting, and a plan was made without further ado. We were to be given two dozen men who would act as guides and escort during the first part of the march. When we reached the road, they would cause a diversion while we slipped across. Thereafter we would make our way by ourselves to a house in a certain village, where we would find reliable men who would put us on the right road to the coast.

This seemed a good plan in the best Fenimore Cooper tradition and before we set out a good many healths were drunk to the success of our venture. Then some songs were sung; plaintive Dalmatian folk songs, rousing Partisan marching songs, bitter Communist political songs, and, in our special honour, ‘Tipperary’ in Serbo-Croat by an old gentleman who remembered (rather dimly) hearing it sung on the Salonika front in 1917.

The last chorus was still ringing out as our little party wound down the hillside in the gathering dusk. From the west, where the daylight was dying away behind the hills for which we were making, came the flash and boom of some fairly large guns. The fighting was flaring up again.

At first our way lay through the cultivated land of the valley. Then we started climbing, still through muddy fields, up the long slope
opposite. At the top we had our first halt. We had been going for about three hours and from now onwards we would have to march as silently as possible. Hitherto a couple of pack-ponies had carried our kit and the wireless set. Now, to avoid making more noise than was essential, we sent these back and divided the load amongst the members of our own party. After we had started on our way, we could still hear for some time the gradually fading sound of hoof-beats in the distance.

Soon we were over the crest and picking our way down a precipitous track towards the next valley. Somewhere beneath us lay the road with its German patrols. Under foot the loose jagged stones clattered noisily against each other. There was no moon and in the dark there could have been no worse surface to walk on for heavily laden men trying not to be heard. In single file the long procession wound its way painfully downwards in the pitch darkness, stopping from time to time to listen.

After several false alarms of enemy to the front, to the rear and on both sides, and many whispered confabulations, we reached the bottom, and there parted with our escort who filed off to create their diversion.

How they fared, we never knew. After some time had elapsed, there were ‘noises off’ from which those of us who remained concluded that the attention of the enemy was fully engaged elsewhere, and, taking advantage of the opportunity thus offered us, slipped down to the road and across its broad white dusty surface.

Once we were all safely on the other side, we mustered our diminished force and continued on our way, this time through dense bushes and scrub. All of a sudden a new obstacle blocked the way; a fast flowing river, too wide and too deep to be fordable. By now we had been marching for six or seven hours over rough country in the dark, and we were glad to sit down while someone was sent to look for a means of getting across. But waiting was a cold business, and we were not sorry when, half an hour later, our scout returned to say that further down-stream there was an old man who would put us across on a raft.

The raft, when we got to it, was a minute, flimsy affair, not much larger than a big soap box, on which there was barely room for one passenger besides the aged ferryman, who, grumbling to himself as he
went, propelled it across the rapid current with vigorous but erratic strokes of his pole. Eventually, after a series of individual journeys, each of which landed the passenger, soaked to the skin, at a different point on the opposite bank, we were all across. We bid farewell to the boatman, still grumbling to himself in the darkness, and set out to look for our next target, the village where we were to find reliable guides.

The need for guides was already beginning to make itself felt. We had not gone far when there was the usual hoarse whisper of ‘enemy’. As usual we all stopped dead in our tracks and held our breath, but this time, instead of silence, we heard the unmistakable sound of men making off at full speed through the scrub. This was too much for the Partisans. On all sides of me I could hear the rattle and click of machine pistols and sub-machine guns being cocked and I reflected with alarm that, in our present formation, at that moment a rough semi-circle, an attempt to shoot it out in the darkness with an unseen and possibly imaginary enemy, besides rousing the entire neighbourhood, would almost certainly inflict heavy casualties on our own party. But fortunately more prudent councils prevailed and, while we inflicted, it is true, no damage on the intruders, we at least succeeded in preserving our anonymity.

The incident had convinced me of the advisability of finding our guides as quickly as possible and then continuing our journey to the coast by the most direct route. Somebody, probably, to judge by his behaviour, the enemy, now knew where we were, and, if we continued to wander aimlessly about in the dark, would almost certainly come back in force to deal with us. Mitja, who was in charge of navigation, was accordingly summoned, maps and an electric torch were produced, and a more direct route plotted. Then, hoisting our packs back into position, we started once again to pick our way upwards over the ever-shifting scree of the hillside, our feet sliding back half a yard for every yard that we advanced.

The village for which we were bound lay on some flat ground at the top of the next range of hills. There were, it appeared, Germans quartered in it. The house we were looking for was a farm on the outskirts of the village. The rest of us lay behind a hedge while one of the Partisans went and knocked at the door. For a time nothing
happened. Then the door opened a few inches and a whispered conversation took place. Clearly nocturnal visitors were regarded with suspicion.

Finally, after much whispering, a tall, gaunt, elderly man in a cloth cap emerged, with long, drooping moustaches, and a rifle slung over his bent shoulders. He was, it seemed, the Partisans’ chief contact-man in the village, where, under the nose of the Germans, he conducted his own miniature underground movement. Should the Germans be driven out, he would come into his own and probably become mayor. Meanwhile, he led a clandestine, surreptitious existence, full of nerve-racking episodes such as this. He took the lead and we moved silently off. The going — loose, sharp-edged stones — was as bad as ever.

After another hour or two of marching it began to get light. By now we were out of the danger zone and our guide turned back to his village; we had only to follow a clearly marked track which plunged downwards into the valley. There was not much further to go and the knowledge that we were nearing our destination suddenly made us feel tired and sleepy. We plodded along in silence. Dawn, coming up over the hills we had just crossed, was beginning to light the topmost pinnacles of the great range which rose like a jagged wall on the far side of the valley, the last barrier between us and the sea. As the rays of the rising sun touched them, the mountain tops turned to gold. The mist still lay thick in the valley beneath. We wondered, with an increasing sense of urgency, what, if anything, there would be for breakfast.

The country which we were now traversing was almost incredibly rugged and desolate. In some places, amid the great whitish-grey boulders, the stones had been cleared away to form tiny patches of cultivated ground, not large enough to merit the name of fields, where the vivid green of the vines contrasted vividly with the drab background of the rocks. Here and there stood the remains of a peasant’s cottage, its blackened stones an eloquent reminder of the results of Italian military government. Then, rounding a corner, we came upon a church, with three or four houses round it, and a group of Partisans with tommy-guns standing in the roadway. We had reached Zadvarje — our immediate destination.

We asked for Brigade Headquarters and were taken to an upper room in the priest’s house, the largest in the village, where we found the Brigade Commander, a young man in his early twenties, sitting down to a breakfast of black bread and captured ersatz coffee made from roasted grain. He asked us to join him and eagerly we did so. It was not the breakfast I should have ordered from choice, but it was very welcome all the same, and was rendered doubly so by a bottle of
rakija
which was produced to wash it down. By now it seemed to us the most natural thing in the world to gulp raw spirits at breakfast.

By the time breakfast was over we felt as if we had known the Brigade Commander (and the dozen or so other people who had flocked in to watch us eat) all our lives. Each of them had told us his or her life-story and we, in response to a volley of questions, had reciprocated with a great many personal details of an intimate and revealing nature. The Brigadier, who in civil life was an electrician’s mate and who had been one of the first Partisans in Dalmatia, could not take his eyes off us. To him we seemed, as indeed in a sense we were, beings from another world. How, he wanted to know, had we got here? We explained. What did it feel like to be dropped out of an aeroplane? Had we been sent or had we come because we wanted to? What were we going to do, now that we were here? Might our Government send in arms, and ammunition, and boots, and greatcoats, and food? And would some be sent to Dalmatia?

It was all that we could do to stem the flood of questions and bring the conversation round to our onward journey. This, according to the Brigade Commander, presented no great difficulty. Standing outside the door, he showed us our route. As far as the river at the bottom of the valley, we could travel in a truck which they had captured a few days before. From there onwards — over the last great ridge of Biokovo, and down to the sea — we should have to walk, for the next bridge was down and there was no means of getting the truck across. If we left at midday, we should reach the pass over Biokovo at dusk, which would enable us to complete our journey to the sea under cover of darkness. This was advisable as practically the whole coast was now in German hands, save for the tiny harbour of Podgora, for which we were bound and where we hoped to find some
kind of craft to take us across that night to the island of korčula.

Having thus planned our route, the Brigadier next turned his attention to the truck and was soon hard at work at the head of a gang of amateur mechanics. I asked him what was the matter with it and be answered that it had been shot up by a Henschel the day before. ‘The driver was killed,’ he added, ‘but the engine was not badly damaged, and we will soon get it right again.’ He asked us if there was anything we would like to do in the meantime. We said there was: we would like to lie down and go to sleep.

When we woke the sun was high, the truck was ready and it was time to start. We said goodbye to the electrician turned Brigadier. We had only been his guests for a few hours, but I still remember his efficiency, his friendly straightforwardness and his obvious gift of leadership. He was, it seemed to me, a good man by any standards. I tried afterwards to get news of him, but there was bitter fighting in the coastal area in the months that followed and it seems likely that he and most of his men were killed.