The Secret Rescue (32 page)

Sergeant Willis Shumway, the flight’s crew chief, who had to be carried from the battered plane, rests his injured knee while overlooking the town of Berat.
(Courtesy of the Willis L. Shumway Family)

Telegrams, like the one sent to Hayes’s father in Iowa, alerted family members in late November that their loved ones were missing.
(Courtesy of the Harold Hayes Collection)

In late December, the valley beyond the Albanian town of Gjirokastër became the site of a daring but failed air evacuation. The ill and exhausted party was inconsolable when the arrival of German troops prevented rescue planes from landing.
(Courtesy of the National Archives at College Park, RG 226, Entry 165, box 11, folder 105)

British Lieutenant Gavan Duffy (
third from right
) of the clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE), shown here with other British officers and top-ranking partisans, including future Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha (
second from right
), led the party from eastern Albania through the war-ravaged country to the Adriatic coast.
(©Imperial War Museums, HU 64764)

British Sergeant Herbert Bell served as Duffy’s wireless operator during the journey and helped provide a critical link between those in the field and SOE headquarters in Cairo.
(©Imperial War Museums, HU 65068)

The crew of the British motor launch, which rescued most of the Americans after months of being trapped in Albania, braved waters patrolled by the Germans during the nighttime mission.
(The National Archives of the UK: ref. HS5/121)

McKnight (
left
), the 807th’s commanding officer, greeted Gertrude Dawson and the rest of the party at the dock in Bari, Italy, while unseen military photographers snapped pictures of the event.
(15th Air Force [USAAF] photo courtesy of Air Force Historical Research Agency, Roll A6544)

Some of the nurses—(
left to right
) Lois Watson, Lillian Tacina, Pauleen Kanable, Elna Schwant, Ann Kopsco, and Frances Nelson—showed off oversized men’s shoes given to them by the British in Albania when their own fell apart after they walked hundreds of miles.
(15th Air Force [USAAF] photo courtesy of Air Force Historical Research Agency, Roll A6544)

Duffy poses with nurses Eugenie Rutkowski (
left
) and Ann Kopsco in front of one of the staff cars that transported the Americans from the dock in Bari, Italy, to the 26th General Hospital.
(15th Air Force [USAAF] photo courtesy of Air Force Historical Research Agency, Roll A6544)

The British crew (
above
) who helped rescue the Americans offered them shots of rum to celebrate their escape during their journey back to Italy.
(15th Air Force [USAAF] photo courtesy of Air Force Historical Research Agency, Roll A6544)

The flight crew—(
left to right
) copilot James Baggs, pilot Charles Thrasher, radio operator Richard Lebo, and crew chief Willis Shumway, members of the 61st Troop Carrier Squadron—were fortunate to have had their leather flying jackets with them to help battle the brutal weather in Albania’s mountains.
(15th Air Force [USAAF] photo courtesy of Air Force Historical Research Agency, Roll A6544)