Page 10 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)

Lipovo, Montenegro

May 1943

‘Hitler has ordered the invasion of Montenegro.’ Mihailovic sank down onto his chair and gazed at his assembled officers.

‘How do you know?’ one of them asked.

Steve answered. ‘I just received a message from General Robotti. The Italians are as worried as we are. They don’t want the Germans moving into their occupation zone.’

Mihailovic roused himself. ‘We must resist this incursion at all costs.’

‘Sir, we do not have the men to mount an effective resistance,’ one of the officers said.

‘Then we must find more. I shall send a message to our Serbian units. They must bring their forces to help. And we must conscript men from the local population.’

The officers exchanged glances. No one wanted to be the one to voice dissent. In the end one of them spoke up. ‘The local people do not like us. Many of them are Muslims. They will not fight for us.’

‘We must not give them the choice. They will be brought in by force if necessary. We still have Tito’s rabble to contend with. We need every man. And we must pressure the Italians for more supplies and arms.’

When Steve reported this exchange to Bailey and Hudson, Bailey asked, ‘What are their prospects?’

‘Very poor, I should say,’ Steve responded. ‘Communications with detachments in other areas are bad and Mihailovic has very little control over what his officers are doing. Ostojic seems to be running his own show without reference to higher authority and Durisic is rumoured to be negotiating directly with the Germans.’

‘What about this conscription of new men?’

‘I can’t see that working either. There are reports of mass desertions in Bosnia. Men are either going over to the Partisans or simply downing their weapons and going back to their villages.’

Later that evening Steve confided his worries to his diary.

The situation here is going from bad to worse. The Italians are withdrawing to the coast and without their support we shall be short of supplies of ammunition. Some Chetniks have been taken prisoner by the Germans in the Foca area and now the Boches are moving into the Sandjak, just north-east of here. Major Durisic has been forced to withdraw to the town of Kolasin.

‘Durisic is calling for an assembly of officers to plan our defence. I shall go to Kolasin and take personal command,’ Mihailovic announced the next day. He looked at Steve. ‘You will come with me. I shall need radio communication.’

Steve had just enough time to call in at the British HQ and tell them of the new plan.

‘I’m not sure how long we will be gone, but if things go badly we may have to make a run for it back into Serbia. I think the Chetniks will be finished here in Montenegro.’

‘We have been preparing for that eventuality,’ Bailey said. ‘If that’s where Mihailovic goes, we shall have to follow.’

He offered Steve his hand. ‘Good luck. Try to keep out of the firing line. This isn’t your war any longer.’

Kolasin was a small town deep in the mountains. Before the war it had been a popular ski resort. When Steve arrived with Mihailovic, followed by an escort of Chetnik troops, they found Durisic already encamped there with about five hundred men, together with a contingent from Serbia that had recently arrived under the command of Major Keserovic. The officers met in a secret conclave but on his return Mihailovic refused to tell Steve what had transpired.

‘I don’t want you blabbing all our plans to the British,’ he said.

‘Do you not think that if we want continued help from the British, we should keep them abreast of events?’ Steve asked.

‘To hell with the British!’ was the reply. ‘They have done nothing for us.’ He glowered at Steve. ‘I should have left you with them. That’s where your loyalty lies.’

‘I have done my utmost to serve you and your cause for two years!’ Steve protested. ‘I am only trying to prevent a complete breakdown in communications. It’s for your own sake.’

‘I will decide what is best for me and my cause, as you put it,’ Mihailovic retorted. ‘Now get out of my tent.’

Steve returned to his own tent and rolled himself in his sleeping bag. It had been a hard ride from Lipovo and he was a poor horseman. He was exhausted. Very soon he was asleep.

He woke to the sound of a commotion. Men were running, there were shouts of command and of alarm and the sound of horses at the gallop. He crawled out of his tent. It was just getting light. To his horror he saw groups of Chetniks being herded together by German soldiers, while others were combing the camp for any who had been missed. Steve had pitched his tent a little apart from the rest and the search parties had not reached him yet. He pulled on his boots, grabbed his pack and wriggled out. The town was encircled by pine forest and the nearest trees were only a few yards away. Keeping flat on his belly, Steve snaked his way into their shelter and lay motionless until the noise of tramping feet and shouted orders died away.

When the silence had been complete for what felt to him like a very long time he stood up. The camp site was a morass of half collapsed tents on ground trodden to mud by many boots. There was no one moving. The Germans and their prisoners had gone. He looked at the area where Mihailovic and his escort had camped. Their tents looked relatively undamaged but here, too, there was no sign of life. Steve’s stomach contracted. If Draza was a prisoner now, where did that leave him – and all the rest of the Chetniks. He looked into Draza’s tent and saw that all his personal possessions had disappeared, even the box that he called his ‘war chest’ and which went everywhere with him. Then he noticed that the horses, which had been picketed behind the tents, had vanished and he remembered hearing the sound of galloping hooves. Mihailovic must somehow have got wind of the German attack and had time to escape. But he had not bothered to warn Steve.

Steve stood in the entrance to the tent, paralysed for a moment by the realisation that he had been abandoned. Even his horse was gone. He forced himself to think. If he stayed here, there was a good chance the Germans would come back and he would be taken prisoner, and since the Chetniks were not recognised as a regular force of combatants he might not even have the status of a prisoner of war. His only option was to make his own way back to Lipovo, assuming that was where Mihailovic had gone. If not, he could join up with Bailey and Hudson and the others. He shouldered his pack. It was time to get going.

He reached the village a little after midday. The streets were ominously quiet. There was no sign of Mihailovic or any of his men. He went straight to the little house where the British mission had set up its HQ. It was empty. Bailey had obviously decided that the time had come to head for Serbia.

Steve sat down at the empty table. The same had happened to him as it had to Hudson a year earlier and he had a vivid mental image of how he had looked when he was finally allowed back into Mihailovic’s camp – skeletally thin, filthy and covered in sores, having lived for months on what he could scavenge and the charity of peasants who had barely enough for themselves. Was this to be his fate, too?

He pulled himself together. If he could locate Bailey and the others, they would take him in. He knew in which direction they were headed and the passing of a group of British officers would not go unnoticed. It should not be hard to track them down. He pushed to the back of his mind the thought that he would be travelling through a war zone where Germans and Partisans were fighting it out with each other and with the remaining Chetniks. He forced himself to his feet. He had a long walk ahead of him.