The Forgotten 500 (37 page)

The rescue itself was described succinctly: “Full arrangements were soon completed and the airmen congregated at a secret airfield. There they were all picked up and brought back to their bases.”

Two days later the newspaper ran a lengthy letter to the editor from Konstantin Fotić, former Yugoslavian ambassador to the United States, in which he said that, because of the report of February 20, apparently there was no more need to keep the rescue secret. Fotic provided a more complete account of the operation, the scope of the rescue, and the key role played by Mihailovich. He closed by noting that:

Tito, meanwhile, was completing his
takeover of Yugoslavia and doing exactly what many feared he would do: He all but gift wrapped Yugoslavia for Stalin and ensured that Communism would threaten Eastern Europe for decades. Churchill and Roosevelt already were acknowledging, mostly privately, that they had made a grave error in siding with Tito over Mihailovich, but the full truth about how Communist moles and spies had misled them would not come out until long after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945.

By then, Churchill knew that Tito could not be trusted and that Stalin controlled Yugoslavia from Moscow. On February 9, 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt met with Stalin in an effort to encourage at least limited democracy in the portions of postwar Europe controlled by Russia, and though he did not promise much, Stalin did assure the world leaders that he would persuade Tito to recognize all prewar political parties—including Mihailovich’s and his followers—and to have a freely elected Constituent Assembly. Churchill did not trust Stalin, and on February 21, 1945, it was clear to his closest staff that he was “rather depressed, thinking of the possibilities of Russia one day turning against us, saying that [former British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain had trusted Hitler as he was now trusting Stalin.” Churchill was disillusioned with the Russian leader and regretting his decision to abandon Mihailovich.

Churchill’s fears were well grounded. On April 5, 1945, scarcely a month after Stalin’s assurances and a week before Roosevelt’s death, Tito signed an agreement with Russia to allow “temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory.” Though Tito would come to have serious disagreements with Stalin, Yugoslavia was for all intents and purposes an arm of Communist Russia.

Once Tito won the leadership of Yugoslavia, backed by the force of the Red Army, he committed all of the Partisan military to capturing Mihailovich, his hated enemy. Mihailovich committed himself to a path of voluntary martyrdom. He could have saved himself by accepting offers to leave Yugoslavia and exile himself in another country, his absence probably satisfying Tito and ending the manhunt. By the time the last American officers left Yugoslavia in December 1944, they were reporting that Mihailovich had an aura of saintliness about him, which seemed to grow stronger as the Partisan manhunt closed in on him. Indeed, his people already treated him nearly as a saint. Wherever Mihailovich went, the peasants came from miles around to see him. Old women knelt and kissed his hands, while children brought him eggs and apples.

Mihailovich was able to evade capture for seventeen months. When Mihailovich contracted typhus and was near death, Chetnik soldiers carried him on a stretcher from village to village and through the mountains, always running from the Partisans. Friends in Switzerland contacted him in 1946, urging that he leave the country at least long enough to recover, but Mihailovich refused.

 

 

 

Jibilian was discharged from the
military in 1945 and found a job as a purchase-order writer at the Veterans Administration headquarters in Washington, DC. A year had passed since Tito had established Communism in Yugoslavia, and like the rest of America, Jibilian was busy getting on with his postwar life. Reading the
Washington Post
on the morning of March 25, 1946, he found a small article with the headline MIHAILOVICH UNDER ARREST, BELGRADE SAYS. He was stunned, especially since the article only described Mihailovich as “accused by the regime of Marshal Tito of traitorous collaboration with the Germans during the war, is listed by Yugoslavia as a war criminal.” There was no mention that Mihailovich had been a staunch ally of the United States, much less his role in saving downed fliers. The article predicted a swift trial for Mihailovich, followed by an immediate execution by firing squad.

Jibilian soon decided he had to do something to let the world know what Mihailovich had done for American airmen. He marched down to the newspaper to tell his story, sitting down with a reporter to explain his involvement in Operation Halyard and what he personally knew of Mihailovich.

“If he’s a collaborator, I am too,” Jibilian told the reporter. “Draza Mihailovich is a friend of this country and Tito is about to execute him before anyone hears the truth.”

Jibilian left the newspaper office feeling better, satisfied that he had at least told the story. But the newspaper article that ran the next day was brief and gained little attention.
Washington is a tough town,
Jibilian thought at the time.
It takes a lot to get anyone’s attention
.

Felman saw the same news report in a New York newspaper and, like Jibilian, was stirred to action in defense of Mihailovich. Furious that the airmen’s savior had been captured like a common criminal and that the Western press was reporting Tito’s lies about Mihailovich being a war criminal, Felman wrote letters to all the New York newspapers in an effort to correct the record. Nearly all of them ignored his pleas, but then he went to the
New York Journal American
, a staunchly anti-Communist newspaper, and found an interested editor. An article written by Felman appeared in the
Journal American
and other Hearst newspapers on March 31, 1946. That article drew the attention of others involved in Operation Halyard, and within a few weeks Felman had letters from more than three hundred airmen who had been rescued and wanted to help Mihailovich. Jibilian received a similar response to the article in Washington, and soon the airmen from Pranjane were all back in touch with one another.

Orsini also found himself in the odd position of trying to defend a world leader halfway around the globe. One evening at a small party thrown by some friends, a man started talking about the current events involving Mihailovich, not realizing Orsini’s personal connection. The man expounded at some length on how Mihailovich had once been an ally but then collaborated with the Germans, adding that his soldiers and the villagers supporting him were known to be particularly brutal with captured Americans. Orsini felt like he was back in Italy, sitting through a mission briefing. He clenched his drink tighter and tried to ignore the windbag, but finally he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“That’s not true,” Orsini said, a tinge of anger drawing attention from the clutch of people who had been listening to the diatribe against Mihailovich. “I was there and what you’re saying is just not true. I’m visible evidence that they were helping rescue airmen. I bailed out and they helped me.”

The other man refused to believe Orsini, insisting that if his story were true, he was the exception. The propaganda demonizing Mihailovich had reached all the way to Jersey City.

Orsini’s experience was repeated across the country as airmen who had returned to their civilian lives found themselves trying to explain to friends and neighbors how the claims they heard against Mihailovich just weren’t true. When Mihailovich was captured, the media coverage mostly portrayed him as a traitor to the Allied cause, with few reports acknowledging the complex history and competing motivations of those involved.

 

 

 

News reports describing Tito’s triumph
, and the arrest of Mihailovich, helped reunite the rescued airmen who had scattered to their respective communities after the war. Jibilian, Felman, Orsini, and many others involved in Operation Halyard started communicating, commiserating in their outrage at the treatment of Mihailovich and wondering what they could do. The airmen knew they had to do something to help Mihailovich, but what? How could they affect events in Yugoslavia?

The veterans all knew what was at stake. In the struggle for control of postwar Yugoslavia, Tito had won out over Mihailovich, with considerable help from the United States and Britain. Tito would put Mihailovich on trial, but it would all be a Communist dog and pony show. There was no hope that Mihailovich could actually defend himself in Tito’s courtroom, and after being convicted of collaborating with the enemy, Mihailovich would be executed. The very thought of it caused such anguish in the hearts of these men who knew they would not be back home now with their wives and children if not for the benevolence of Mihailovich. They determined that they could not stand by and watch Mihailovich be executed by a Communist government without even trying to help him.

Most of the airmen, like Robert Wilson, knew they were attempting the impossible, but still they had to make the effort. “Even if we can’t save him, we just want him to know that we remember what he did for us, that somebody appreciates how much he risked,” Wilson said. “Maybe that will bring him a little comfort.”

The Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in New York, a close friend of Mihailovich, thanked Felman for writing the article that brought the men together and for the willingness of the airmen to stand up for an accused war criminal.

“It does not matter that Draza Mihailovich will live or die. Some other Draza will be born in the mountains to lead the nation,” he told Felman. “What does matter is the effort to clear his name.”

 

 

 

Repeating his role in Pranjane,
Felman became the de facto leader of the downed airmen again and led their attempt to save Mihailovich from a Communist execution, or at least to let the world know what he did for Americans before he died. The group formed the National Committee for Defense of Draza Mihailovich and the Serbian People, setting about an organized effort to spread the word of their own experience with the supposed war criminal. The group rallied around the slogan “He saved our lives. Now we’ll save his.” They distributed pamphlets, wrote letters to the State Department and their congressmen, and told their stories to anyone who would listen. Building on each newspaper article and radio interview, the men worked hard to change public opinion and influence world events. Felman and the other organizers created a stunningly successful public relations machine, writing press releases to news outlets and taking advantage of the fact that there were more than five hundred men scattered across the country who could give dramatic, sometimes heart-wrenching firsthand accounts of their experience with the Serbs led by Mihailovich. Most of the men had not met Mihailovich personally, but they knew his people and they knew what the general had done for the lost Americans. They consistently vouched for his dedication to American servicemen, based on their own experience and the fact that they came home. Soon they found that all over the country, hometown newspapers were eager to run stories detailing a local boy’s connection to a sensational postwar trial in Europe.

The headline in the
Press
in Cleveland, Ohio, was CLEVELANDER AIDS GEN. MIHAILOVICH. The story quoted local Western Reserve University student George Salapa, one of the rescued airmen, saying, “I think he is getting a boot in the pants.” In the
Telegraph
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the headline read STATE TROOPERS HAIL MIHAILOVICH AS “FRIEND.” The story quoted Paul F. Mato of South Connellsville and Carl J. Walpusk of Jenners, both state troopers and former airmen, as saying that the Chetnik leader “is getting a raw deal from the Allied nations.” The upcoming trial would be a “treason of justice,” they said. The
New York Journal American
quoted former OSS agent Eli Popovich as saying, “We have sold Mihailovich down the river to Tito. Now Tito is selling us and sitting in Trieste waiting to fire on American soldiers at the drop of a hat with American guns and American ammunition.” The headline in the
Times
in Detroit, Michigan, read DRAZA BETRAYED, CLAIMS DETROITER.

Felman proved to be a persuasive, articulate, and most of all, passionate representative of the rescued airmen. In an article he wrote for the
New York Journal American
, headlined YANK VETS AID MIHAILOVICH, Felman described why he and the other airmen were so intent on helping a Yugoslav accused of aiding the Nazis:

Felman went on to describe how the airmen hoped to influence the U.S. government to “assure a fair trial for the man who is still a hero to us, although a traitor to Tito and the man in the Kremlin who yanks the strings.” Of Mihailovich, Felman said, “He was about as much of a Nazi collaborationist as I am. His great, unforgivable crime was that he didn’t like Communists either.”