The Forgotten 500 (32 page)

“Is no problem. No problem,” he said. “One of my men saw something moving and challenged it. When it did not say anything, he fired his machine gun.”

“Oh, so there’s nobody out there,” Musulin said, lowering his weapon.

“Only cow. Now dead cow.”

 

 

 

The agents and the airmen
slept fitfully that night if they slept at all, and when they awoke on the morning of August 9, their first thought was of the rescue. For seventy-two of the men, they knew this was the day they would finally get out of Yugoslavia or die trying. For the others, this was the day they would see if this crazy plan would work and there was an end in sight for their time in Yugoslavia. The plan was to bring the cargo planes in at night to make them less of a target for German fighters, so there was still one more long day in Yugoslavia to get through. There was still work to do, however, so the men could focus on putting the final touches on their improvised airstrip, as well as setting up the flare pots that would help guide the planes in.

Late in the day, Orsini and Musgrove joined more than a hundred airmen and villagers working on the field, looking for soft spots and rocks, pushing carts of dirt here and there to even out the ground as much as possible, while Musulin and Rajacich oversaw the work. Musulin was on horseback, looking for any last-minute problems or areas that could be improved, when he spotted two or three tiny specks off the horizon, coming from the direction of Belgrade. He knew at once they were German planes. Once again, he thought the jig was up, the Germans were onto them and coming in to strafe them just as they were close to rescue. Rajacich saw them too. Simultaneously, both men started shouting to the airmen and villagers.

“German planes! German planes! Run! Get off the field! Hurry!”

Everyone scurried like field mice from an approaching hawk, sprinting and hobbling off the airstrip and into the closest tree line, squatting down in the ground cover to hide from the planes. Musulin and Rajacich joined them, watching the specks get closer and louder. It didn’t take long to see that the planes were a Stuka dive bomber and two JU-52 Junker planes that were similar to the American C-47s expected later that night, only more angular and boxy. The Stuka dive bomber struck fear in the hearts of the airmen, who easily recognized it on sight. Though it looked more like a small fighter plane, airmen and infantry the world over knew the Stuka as a fearful plane to encounter when you were helpless on the ground beneath it. In addition to strafing, which most any plane could do, the Stuka was specially designed for precision bombing of critical ground targets—including airfields. One of the most advanced and successful planes used in World War II, the Stuka had a dedicated autopilot system that put it in a steep controlled dive, allowing the pilot to aim the bomb with great precision, and then the system automatically pulled the aircraft out of the dive and back to level flight when the bomb was dropped. The extreme G-forces of such a near-vertical dive often caused pilots of other planes to temporarily lose consciousness during the pull out of the dive, resulting in a crash, but the Stuka’s autopilot prevented that from happening. The Stuka pilot also had an excellent view from the cockpit and special indicators to inform him of his dive angle and when he reached the optimal bomb release altitude, allowing him to focus entirely on precise aiming during the fast, steep dive. The sight and sound of a Stuka diving right at you should have been plenty frightening enough, but Hitler wanted to maximize the terror. So he ordered the
Luftwaffe
to equip the Stuka with a screaming siren that made the sound of its dive far more frightening, even rattling some antiaircraft gunners so much that they did not fire at the plane.

While they were primary transports of one type or another, like the C-47s, the German Junkers were armed with machine guns and could make slow lazy circles around the airmen, strafing the men on the ground until the bodies were heaped in piles. On this day, it was likely that the Junkers were on a routine mission and the Stuka dive bomber was accompanying them for protection. It might have been pure chance that their path had brought them right across the Pranjane airstrip, but Musulin and Rajacich couldn’t be sure. They were only a few hours away from carrying out this mission, and German planes were flying right toward the field. . . .

All around the airstrip, tended lovingly with bloodied hands and improvised tools, the hearts of the American airmen sank as they watched the planes approach. When they saw the Stuka dive bomber, they all had the same thought. Musgrove looked at the planes with anger.
Damn, they’re going to bomb our field. A few bombs on this airstrip and it’ll take forever to repair it enough for C-47s to land.
Even if the Germans hadn’t sent the planes specifically to foil the rescue attempt, they all knew that the pilots would notice something amiss when they spotted the freshly cleaned strip of land and the extension into the woods. Having the pilots see that big stretch of land near Pranjane with nothing happening on it, no farmer plowing or tending a crop, would look almost as suspicious as seeing the Americans working on it. But it was too late to send a villager out there with a plow in an effort at looking normal. They could see the planes coming in right toward the field at about one thousand feet and very slowly, slow enough that the pilots would get a good look if they just glanced down at the right moment. Everyone tensed in their hiding places, watching the planes get closer and closer.

Then Musulin noticed a most providential herd of cows sauntering onto the airstrip. The bovine pack’s attention was drawn to the fresh grass on the airstrip, which had been denied them while the workers were busy all day and into the night for weeks prior. The cows waddled up into the field and didn’t seem to notice when the three planes flew directly overhead at low altitude, giving the field exactly the look the airmen needed at that moment—that of a normal farm field in the mountains of Yugoslavia.

Musulin, Rajacich, and the rest of the airmen watched intently as the German planes continued on their path past Pranjane, never turning to come back and take another look. Everyone started breathing again as they realized that the German pilots who could have put an end to Operation Halyard didn’t notice a thing, perhaps due in part to the impromptu cow camouflage. They were all talking about how sure they had been that the Germans were onto them. But apparently not, they said. Just a random flight.

Musulin wasn’t so sure. He was keenly aware that the success of this mission depended on operational security. The mission was so risky to begin with that he could only hope for success if the Germans didn’t get wind of it too early. There was no way he could carry out this rescue and engage in an all-out battle with the Germans simultaneously, so Musulin was worried that those three planes weren’t just a random overflight. The enemy might have intercepted a message from Bari and sent that seemingly random flight over Pranjane to take a look at the airstrip and check for defenses. If it was a reconnaissance flight, it would make sense that they didn’t attack or come back for a second look. With just hours till game time, this ex-linebacker was getting his game face on; Musulin was suspicious of everything.

Musulin considered calling off the rescue, postponing it for another night. But he realized it was probably too late. The planes were probably already taking off in Brindisi, and besides, every day they waited just made the risk worse. He asked one of the Chetniks to check on the German garrison in the valley below, using a secret telephone line, to see if there was any unusual activity that could signal an impending attack. The Chetnik supporters in the valley reported that all was normal.

The big brawny American stood in the field, the wind blowing through his bushy black beard, and watched as the men got back to work, looking for any way to make the airfield just a little bit safer for that night’s rescue. As he looked over the men, ragged and scrawny but still working hard, Musulin knew they were willing to risk everything to be rescued.

The airmen and the villagers
continued toiling on the makeshift runway throughout the day and well into the evening, some bringing carts of dirt to level out another dip in the field, others wielding crude farm axes to bring down just a few more trees on the end. If they didn’t have any specific task to do, many of the airmen roamed the field methodically, their eyes cast downward looking for any bump or soft spot, any rock that had been overlooked. Even if they couldn’t do much more in the hours before the rescue attempt, they couldn’t sit still. Orsini felt that he had to be out there, doing something, anything, to give himself just a bit more hope that this wild plan could actually work. They were all doing their damnedest to make sure this little farm meadow on a plateau in the mountains would be the last place they touched the ground in Yugoslavia.

As night fell and forced the men to stop working, they retreated to the homes in Pranjane for what seventy-two of them hoped would be their last meal in the village, their last cup or two of plum brandy. They were tired from the day’s work and from living for weeks or months in Yugoslavia on little food, and the wounded were suffering from their broken bones, lacerations, dislocated shoulders, and myriad other injuries. But on this night, no one was eager to bed down in the haylofts and small cottage rooms. The men were anxious to see if this rescue could really happen, seventy-two of them realizing they were the most fortunate to be going out that night, but also the most at risk because they would test the details of this plan with their lives. But there wasn’t an airman in Pranjane who wouldn’t trade places with them and willingly take that risk.

The night was clear but dark, exactly what Musulin wanted for this operation. Though it greatly intensified the challenge for the pilots of the rescue planes, the night landing would help protect the lumbering C-47s from German fighters. All through Pranjane, downed American bomber pilots asked themselves the same question:
Could I pull this off? If they asked me to fly into some strange country and land on a little airstrip in the dark, could I do it without killing myself and a few dozen men?
No one ever had a clear answer. They told themselves they could do it if they had to, and they assumed that the pilots on their way to Pranjane were saying the same thing to themselves.

The airmen awaiting rescue didn’t know it yet, but the rescue had already begun. Six C-47s were in the air and on their way to Pranjane. When the planes took off from Bari, George Vujnovich knew it would be hours before he heard anything about the mission, good or bad. But like the airmen in Pranjane, Vujnovich would not sleep that night. He occupied himself as best as he could, shuffling paper and writing letters, anything to keep him busy so he didn’t just sit and worry about the mission. After all the bureaucratic infighting and resistance from the British, Operation Halyard was in the air. Vujnovich thought again of his last days in Yugoslavia and how much he had yearned to get out and be free of German oppression. He knew the men in Pranjane must feel the same way, and he was right. They could think of nothing else, every sense on alert as they waited for the appointed time. A couple of hours after darkness enveloped the airfield, Musulin sent the word: He ordered the first seventy-two airmen to gather at the airfield and prepare to leave.

The chosen seventy-two made their way to the airfield just outside the village, many of them hobbling with their injuries, and waited in the cold night air. The rescue planes were not due for another two hours, but Musulin did not want to run the risk that the planes would show up early and the men would not be ready. The makeshift airstrip was crowded again, just as it had been during the day, because most of the other airmen had come along to see what would happen. They milled about in the darkness in an imitation of their last-minute runway inspections before losing the sun, but this time the men said good-bye to those who were chosen to leave that night, and the talk was all about whether the planes actually could land out here in the dark. And whether the Germans might crash the party.

Dozens of villagers and Chetnik soldiers also converged at the airfield with the Americans, some of them with a specific task to aid the rescue and some just wanting to see this great event that everyone had been talking about for so long. Everyone who had been aiding the airmen for months turned out to see the final act, and they were as excited as if the circus were coming to town. And in a way, it was. The mood was jovial at first, but it grew more and more somber as the hours passed and the time for the rescue grew near. Conversations died down and even the most exuberant of the men became quiet, sensing that the coming hour would bring something momentous to this tiny village in the mountains, and that whatever it brought would deserve some respect. Either dozens of men would be saved tonight, with the promise of many more soon after, or dozens of men might be killed and along with them the hopes of all the rest. What was about to happen in Pranjane would be profound, in one way or another.

Musulin and his air force contacts in Bari scheduled the rescue to begin at ten p.m. on August 9. Musulin checked his watch obsessively and nearly every other airman who still had a watch followed suit, all of them reflexively making sure they were in place, that they were ready on their end as soon as the planes arrived. As ten p.m. grew nearer, Musulin ordered everyone off the airstrip. The men made their way to the tree lines on either side, just as they had done many times before when a German plane flew overhead, leaving the makeshift runway empty. Then Musulin spoke with the Chetnik officers at the field and made sure that the soldiers manning the flares, improvised out of oil cans and hay bales donated by the villagers, understood what to do. As soon as Musulin gave the order, he wanted the Chetniks to light the flares and hay bales lining either side of the runway, giving the incoming pilots some rudimentary indicators of the landing field’s parameters. The Chetniks were ready. The airmen were more than ready. Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian were scanning the skies looking for any sign of an incoming plane.