Page 1 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)
Bihac, Bosnia
January 1943
Alexandra Malkovic woke out of the nightmare that had bedevilled her sleep for days. She sat up, shivering, her heart thumping. For a few seconds she could not recognise her surroundings, then the outlines of the sparse furnishings of the room solidified in the faint moonlight coming through a gap in the curtains. This was her room in the house they had commandeered in Bihac, the city Tito’s Partisans had captured after a bitter battle a few weeks before Christmas – a battle in which she had played an important part. This was safety, an end to the long weeks on the march, sleeping on the hard ground, alert always to the sound of movement in the surrounding forest and the distant howling of wolves. So why could she not sleep in peace?
There was a soft tap on her door and it opened to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered young man carrying a torch.
Alix caught her breath. ‘Oh, Drago! I’m so sorry. Did I wake you?’
Dragomir Pesic closed the door behind him and came over to the bed. ‘You were crying out. It’s not the first time I’ve heard you. Are you in pain, or is it a nightmare?’
Alix reached for a shawl draped over a chair by the bed and pulled it round her shoulders.
‘It’s a dream I keep having, over and over again. I’m back in the battle for the city. I’m throwing grenades into the blockhouse and hearing the explosions and the screams, but somehow I’m inside as well and all the people round me are my friends, my comrades, and they are the ones who are screaming. They are wounded and dying – and it’s all my fault!’
Dragomir set the torch down on the bedside table. ‘You should not feel guilty. You are a heroine. Comrade Tito himself picked you out as an example of all the women who fight alongside us. But I understand. To have taken lives, even the lives of our enemies, is not easy to live with. It is a burden we all must bear.’
She looked up at him, grateful, not for the first time, for his calm, reassuring presence. She patted the edge of the bed. ‘Sit down for a minute. I don’t want to go back to sleep for a while.’
He hesitated. Born to a peasant family on her father’s estate, he had risen by his own intelligence and determination to the position of deputy manager. He and Alix had grown up together but even now, after two years when they had fought side by side, he never forgot that she was the Count’s daughter and he hesitated to take liberties.
Alix repeated the gesture. ‘Drago, please! Just for a minute.’
He sat. ‘Remember who the real men were inside that bunker. They were Ustashe swine. The men who tortured and killed village priests in front of their parishioners, because they were members of the Orthodox faith. You haven’t forgotten that barge they floated down the River Sava to Belgrade?’
She shuddered. It was an image she could never forget. The barge had been loaded with the heads of hundreds of children and carried a banner saying: ‘Meat for St John’s market’. The Ustashe was a Croatian fascist organisation that had come to prominence when Croatia opened its gates to the Nazis at the beginning of the war. Bihac had been its headquarters. The men who were in that bunker deserved to die.
Alix sighed. ‘Oh, Drago, I’m so tired of fighting. Do you think there’s any chance we could stay here and sit it out till the end of the war?’
He shook his head. ‘Very little, I’m afraid. The Italians might have turned a blind eye. I have the impression they will do anything rather than risk their men in a fight. But the Germans are taking over from them now and they won’t want us here. And if the Allies invade on the coast, we’ll be caught between the two.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘The best we can hope for is a few weeks of peace.’
Drago took one of her hands. ‘You’re cold.’
‘A bit.’ She was gripped by an almost overwhelming desire to feel his arms around her but at the same time a sense of guilt. All through her childhood he had been her big brother, who taught her to climb trees and dam streams and build dens in the woodlands on her father’s estate. That had changed when she grew up and went away to study in Paris; but it was only a little over a year ago that she had understood that his feelings for her had nothing to do with brotherly love. It would be easy, now, to trade on that for her own comfort but she knew it would be cruel. In her heart of hearts, he would always be her big brother, her comrade in arms and very dear to her; but she was not in love with him and if she let him believe otherwise it could only end in bitterness and disappointment for them both.
She squeezed his hand. ‘Thank you for coming in. I’m sorry I woke you. But you probably should go now. If Nikola found you in here I don’t know what he might do.’
He stood up. ‘He’s sound asleep. I checked before I came in. But you’re right. I shouldn’t take the risk. Will you be able to sleep now?’
‘I expect so.’ She slid down among the blankets. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘Yes. And remember. You have nothing to feel guilty about.’
He went quietly to the door and Alix propped herself on one elbow, alert for any sound of movement or voices. She did not relax until she heard Drago’s door shut, then she lay back with a mingled sensation of relief and resentment. What was she afraid of? Nikola had no right to control who she allowed into her bedroom. Four years ago her father had chosen him as the man she should marry, but she had rejected him then and had made it clear when they met again after the bombing of Belgrade that she had not changed her mind. But as a single woman in a society where every unmarried girl was expected to be under the protection of either her husband or her father, she had made the mistake of accepting his suggestion that they should pretend to be engaged. It was a mistake she had come to regret. He had taken on the role of jealous fiancé and told everyone that whatever she said now, she would eventually have to accept her father’s wish and marry him. She had made it clear again and again that this was something she would never do, but he persisted in the delusion.
He had proved himself as a soldier in the Partisan cause and when he was promoted to become the commander of the Escort Battalion, the elite corps that protected Tito and the members of the Supreme Council, he had become even more assertive in his attitude towards her. He was jealous of her friendship with Dragomir and he had dealt with that by appointing him as his batman, to reinforce Drago’s status as a servant, and therefore beneath her.
Their relationship had undergone a radical change over the past two years. She had become a partisanska , one of the many women who fought alongside the men as equal comrades, and Nikola had lost the fingers of his right hand to frostbite. So now he depended on her for help with many of his basic needs and resorted to emotional blackmail to keep her with him. She was sorry for him but resolutely refused to change her decision. As for what might happen if he found Drago in her bedroom, she knew he would never dare to raise a hand to her; but Dragomir was a soldier and subject to military discipline. Nikola would have no difficulty finding ways to punish him.
But tonight he had not woken. They had got away with it. And with that thought she let her eyes close and drifted off to sleep. This time in her dreams she was back in Paris, strolling along the banks of the Seine in the company of a dark-eyed young man who spoke her language but was not a native of her country.
She woke next morning in a calmer frame of mind, responding to Nikola’s peevish demands for help with good grace. He was always fretful when they were not actively engaged in fighting and resented the fact that she had a job as deputy editor of Borba , the Partisan newspaper, which in no way depended on him.
‘I have to go to the office,’ she told him. ‘I have a report to finish ready for the next edition.’
The house Nikola had chosen when they conquered the city was on the banks of the River Una, which was swollen with melting ice. Alix pulled the collar of her sheepskin coat up to her throat and wound a woollen scarf over her head and round her neck. The temperature, she guessed, was not much above freezing, but despite that it was a pleasant walk into the historic centre of the city. The cupolas of the Orthodox church were draped in snow and the incongruous minaret of the Fethija Mosque, attached to what had once been the Catholic church of St Anthony of Padua, thrust an icy spear into a clear blue sky. With the tower of the medieval fortress completing the picture, the skyline encapsulated the whole history of a place that had changed hands many times in the past, and which now formed the capital of the Socialist Republic of Bihac.
As she walked, Alix contemplated the strange dichotomy of her life with the Partisans; once a journalist, then abruptly transformed into a soldier of the First Proletarian Brigade, a bombasi , one of an elite force of grenadiers, and now she was back to journalism again. Neither was a career she would have chosen. She had drifted into the first more or less by accident, writing propaganda for Borba at the beginning of the war, and then reporting for the same paper during the short-lived Republic of Uzice. It was the subsequent year during which the Partisans had fought their way five hundred kilometres north to Bihac that she had transformed herself into a partisanska , as tough and battle hardened as the best of them. Now peace had come again, and she had been directed back to her work for the paper, though how long that peace might last no one knew.
For the time being, normal life had been re-established in the city and it was her job to report on that. Schools were open, the various churches were allowed to practise their religion in their own way, and as in Uzice and Foca, the other town where they had enjoyed a brief respite from the fighting, the cultural life of the republic was beginning to take root. Her current assignment was to report on a musical concert given the previous evening.
When she reached the building where the newspaper had established its office, she found Milovan Djilas, the editor in chief, already there. He was one of Tito’s closest friends, a member of the Supreme Council and was frequently absent on missions to other groups of Partisans in different areas of the country. At those times the full responsibility fell on Alix’s shoulders. Right now, however, he was in charge and already in earnest conversation with two men she had never seen before. Their appearance shocked her. They were dressed in rags and so thin their skin seemed stretched over their bones with no flesh to cushion it. Their straggling, matted hair framed haggard faces and haunted eyes; from the way they were dressed Alix guessed they were Jews.
Djilas looked round as she came in. He was a darkly handsome man, with aquiline features and heavy lidded, piercing eyes but in repose his expression tended to be one of brooding melancholy. Now, however, it was alight with fury.
‘These men,’ he began without preamble, ‘have just escaped from a Ustashe concentration camp, further down the river at Jasinovac, and they have been telling me a terrible story.’
‘They are determined to exterminate us,’ one of the men said, his voice hoarse and shaking. ‘Not just us Jews. Serbs as well. Men, women, children. They shoot us, they attack us with knives and axes, they strangle us, they burn us alive. Thousands have already died.’
‘These two must be taken care of,’ Djilas said. ‘I want you to go with them to the hospital and take down their story. Get as much detail as you can. Then come back to me.’
He strode to the door and shouted, ‘You two, in here, now!’
Two young men in Partisan uniform who had happened to be passing came in, looking slightly alarmed.
‘These men need to go to the hospital. They need help. Take them.’
The two boys exchanged glances, then one stepped forward and lifted the frailer of the two in his arms while the other drew the second man’s arm across his shoulders and, half carrying him, headed for the door. There had been only the briefest hesitation. Young as they were, the sight of men at the extreme of exhaustion was not new to them and taking care of the sick and wounded was deeply embedded in the collective psyche of the Partisans. Alix grabbed her notebook and followed.
She returned an hour later filled with righteous anger. The stories she had heard from the two men had made her physically sick and she had retreated to the toilet before she could leave the hospital, but having washed her face and composed herself she was now ready to plan retribution against those who had carried out such unspeakable acts.
Djilas was studying a map when she marched into the office. He looked up. ‘Well?’
‘We must go down there and kill those murdering swine and set the prisoners free – those who have survived. Comrade Tito must be told and we have to make a plan of attack.’
Djilas frowned. ‘That is for the Supreme Council to decide. Tito must be told, certainly, but it is not for you to say what must or must not be done.’
Alix lowered her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But we can’t ignore what is happening, surely?’
His face softened and he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I understand your anger, but there are other matters which you are not aware of that may make it impossible. Did you make notes, as I told you?’
She held up her notebook and rifled through the pages. ‘There’s so much and some of it I could hardly bear to write down.’
‘Later you must sit down and condense it into a report we can publish. But right now, Tito wants to see you.’
‘To see me?’ She often attended meetings and conferences to make notes, but it was unusual to receive a personal summons. ‘What about?’
Djilas gave her a small ironic smile. ‘No doubt he will tell you when you get there.’
‘Shall I tell him what I’ve learned from those two poor men?’
‘I have already informed him of the basic situation. If he wants more details, he will ask. Now go.’
Tito had set up his headquarters in the Town Hall and Alix found him in a spacious room overlooking the main square. As always, he was dressed in the simple grey tunic and breeches of Partisan uniform, without any badges of rank or other decoration. It was enough that something in his bearing and in his eyes projected a natural authority. Lying under his desk was his Alsatian dog, Luks, his constant companion.
He greeted her with a smile. ‘Ah, my flame of the forest! Come in. Sit, sit.’
Alix felt a warm flush of pleasure. The nickname was one Tito had coined for her in the course of the many battles they had fought and it signified a special relationship that had begun in the early days of the war, before they left Belgrade, when she had been able to bring a contingent of workers from her father’s estate to join the cause and, more importantly, with Drago’s help, reveal the location of arms handed out by the agents of the Special Operations Executive, (known to its members as SOE), to village heads in preparation for possible resistance. Tito had decided then that she was his lucky charm. The fact that Nikola commanded the Escort Battalion had meant that they had always been close to him during the long march across Bosnia, and her own position as a reporter for the newspaper had given her access to some important meetings. She could never regard herself as belonging to the inner circle of Tito’s companions, but she enjoyed the feeling that there was a bond between them.
The moment of happiness passed as she remembered the terrible stories she had just heard.
‘Sir, I understand Milovan has told you about the concentration camp at Jasinovac. What are we going to do about it?’
His expression grew grave. ‘I know you have heard and noted terrible things,’ he nodded towards the notebook she still held, ‘and it grieves me to hear of them too. But there are factors of which you are unaware that make it impossible for us to take action. I am sorry, truly, but sometimes it is not possible to follow the path our hearts would dictate. That is not why I sent for you today.’
She tried to quell the anger and disappointment that welled up inside her. ‘Sir?’
‘I have noticed your assiduous reporting of events and decisions taken by the Council. And I have seen your bravery and initiative in battle. I have decided I need someone close to me to keep a record of events and take note of decisions and orders I make. I am offering you the position of my secretary.’
Alix caught her breath. ‘Your secretary? But I’m not trained for that. I can’t do shorthand and I’m a very slow typist.’
‘That doesn’t worry me,’ he said. ‘You have a good head on your shoulders, and you are loyal and brave. That’s all I need.’
‘If you really think so,’ she murmured, then pulling herself together, ‘It’s a great honour, comrade. I won’t let you down.’ Then a new thought occurred to her. ‘What about the paper?’
A shadow crossed his face. ‘That may not be an immediate problem. I shall discuss it with Comrade Djilas. Tonight there will be a meeting of the Supreme Council. I want you there to take notes. Six o’clock. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll be there.’
The members of the Supreme Council gathered at the appointed time. They were all men who had worked closely with Tito over the years and were personal friends. Many of them had known him by his real name of Josip Broz, a proscribed communist agitator, in the days when communism was outlawed in Yugoslavia. There was Mosa Pijade, an artist and a Jewish intellectual, who had served a prison sentence for running an underground newspaper and had met Tito in jail. With them had been Arso Rankovic, the son of a poor peasant family, now the chief of security. Ivo Lola Ribar, at twenty-six, was the youngest in the group, a member of the central committee of Communist Youth and a Croat like Tito. Tito was very fond of him and in some quarters he was seen as his potential successor. Then there was Milovan Djilas, sometimes known as the Professor. He had studied law and philosophy at Belgrade University, but he was not by nature an academic. A Montenegrin, bred from a long line of komitajdi who had fought the Turks when they invaded his homeland, he was known for his courage and daring in the most testing situations.
They were all men Alix had come to know over the past year and a half and she liked and respected them. She felt a particular bond with Lola Ribar, who had taken her under his wing when she first joined the group and Djilas had become something of a father figure while they worked together on the newspaper. It seemed Tito had told them in advance of her new position as his secretary because nobody queried her presence as she slipped unobtrusively into a seat and opened her notebook.
‘Comrades, we face a grave situation,’ Tito began. ‘Our spies tell us that German troops are massing in an arc from Karlovac to Petrovac. They have four divisions, reinforced by three Italian divisions. It is clear that they mean to encircle us and if we allow that to happen, I fear there will be no way to break out. You know that I have planned for some time that we should move south, back to Montenegro. We must now bring those plans forward and execute them urgently. Our first priority must be to delay the German advance for as long as possible. To that end I have given orders for four brigades to defend the Karlovac–Bihac axis and the First Croatian and First Bosnia Corps will defend Kordun and Lika. If they can hold the Germans back for long enough that will give us time to move the main force south. We shall move in three columns with the objective of forcing our way across the River Neretva. Once that has been achieved, we shall press on south-east to the Drina. Operational details are still to be worked out, but we are faced with one critical problem: what do we do with the wounded?’
The men exchanged looks, heads were shaken and there was a collective murmur in which the words ‘what, indeed?’ and ‘difficult point’ summed up the general mood.
‘We have to take them with us,’ Djilas said.
‘How can we?’ Rankovic asked.
‘We never leave our wounded,’ Djilas said.
From the beginning of hostilities, the Partisans had adhered to the ancient principle inherited from the forces that had fought the Turks centuries before. They would never abandon their wounded. To this end, secret hospitals had been set up as they moved, hidden deep in the forest. An animated discussion followed. Some members of the committee were in favour of leaving the patients where they were, but others insisted they would not be safe from the German advance. The alternative was to bring them all along with the rest of the troops.
‘It means we encumber ourselves with a long train of stretcher bearers and walking wounded,’ Rankovic said. ‘How can we protect them if we are fighting for our own lives.’
‘How can we leave them to the mercy of the Boches?’ Djilas countered.
The discussion went on late into the night without reaching a conclusion. By the time Alix put away her notebook and headed for what she could only think of now as a temporary home, her euphoria at her new position had been displaced by a fatalistic sense that any security was an illusion. A new battle lay ahead of her and what the outcome might be she could not begin to imagine.
Three days later, with all her meagre possessions crammed into her saddle bags, she rode at Nicola’s side as the Escort Battalion accompanied Tito out of Bihac. The main body of the army followed. It was not a day too soon. Refugees reaching their temporary camp on January 20th told them that Hitler had launched a massive bombing raid on the city and they were the first of a steady stream of men, women and children who had chosen to follow the Partisans south.