Page 14 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)
Mount Durmitor
May 29th, 1943
As darkness fell, the men who had been guarding the approaches returned to the camp and columns formed up ready to leave. Tito and the members of the Supreme Council were mounted but there were not enough horses to go round and Alix found herself condemned to walk.
Deakin and his colleagues reappeared, carrying sacks which, when opened, were seen to hold provisions of various sorts.
‘I want you to distribute these as you see fit,’ he said. ‘We have kept what we feel is essential but it is clear that your need is greater than ours.’
The tins and packets were rapidly shared round and mules were brought up to transport the vital radio sets and other equipment. As soon as they were loaded Tito gave the order to march and the columns moved forward. At that moment it began to rain.
Alix had endured many forced marches in the past two years. Initially it had only been the support of Drago that had got her through. Later, fit and battle hardened, she had been able to keep up with the best but injury and her recent struggle down into the Tara gorge and up again, together with the lack of food, had sapped her resources. The rain turned the mountain tracks to mud and as they climbed higher the mud became slush, in which she slipped and slid. She longed to feel Drago’s arm round her waist and, as the night progressed, there were times when she hallucinated and felt him at her side. Dawn came, but the rain and mist were so dense that it was impossible to see more than a hundred feet ahead and she only kept on the right path by following the man in front of her.
As it grew light Tito called a halt and all around her men and women sank to the ground, huddled together for warmth. A can of beans, part of the supplies donated by the British agents, was passed round. Alix shared it with five others. Too tired to open her pack and find her mess tin and her spoon she, like the others, scooped the beans into her mouth with her fingers. She looked around for the donors of the food and saw the four Britons lying flat on the cold ground. It struck her that, coming from the warmth and relative security of Cairo, they must be ill-prepared for the conditions in which they now found themselves. For them, the rigours of the night were even harder to endure than they had been for her.
Too soon the shout of Pokret! – the order to march – came again and Alix dragged herself to her feet and trudged on. The hours passed and night fell again, but still they marched, with only brief rests every few hours. They had crossed the shoulder of Mount Durmitor and the going became a little easier along forest paths where trees offered some shelter, but the rain did not let up. There was one consolation. The bad weather meant the Luftwaffe could not fly and the mist and clouds concealed their movements from the enemy. Alix walked in a daze, sometimes letting her eyelids fall for a few seconds of sleep, then jerking awake as her foot caught a boulder.
Suddenly she found her hand gripped by another. ‘Drago?’ she muttered.
‘No,’ a voice whispered in her ear. ‘It’s me, Olga.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘Milovan sent us. He said there might be a need among the Supreme Council for a surgeon.’
‘Us?’ Alix asked.
‘Vladimir is with me.’
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Alix murmured.
Olga gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Let yourself doze. I’ll guide you.’
They trudged on and for moments at a time Alix let herself sleep, trusting in her friend to keep her safe. Later, she insisted on changing their roles so Olga could catch a brief respite.
The days that followed maintained the same pattern, a brief few hours of rest and a little food, then the onward march, until one morning they found themselves standing at the top of the cliffs above the River Piva. The rain had stopped and the sky had cleared and they were able to look down to where the river showed as a silver thread running along the bottom of the canyon.
‘There is only one bridge remaining across the river,’ Tito said. ‘It is imperative that we cross it before the German bombs destroy it, but now the rain has stopped we dare not move in daylight. We must wait until dark.’
There was a cave in the side of the cliff and Tito and his entourage and the four Britons sheltered there, while the rest of the army concealed itself among the trees. All day they watched the enemy planes swooping low over the river, searching for the remaining bridge, but miraculously it remained intact. Nikola found Alix and knelt beside her.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t walk with you. I have to be at the head of the column with my men. You understand?’
She gave him a weary smile. ‘I understand.’
‘But you are okay? You are surviving?’
‘Just about,’ she agreed.
As night fell, they began the descent. There was only one narrow, muddy path that clung to the side of the cliff. Beyond it was a void, a drop of hundreds of feet. An advance party went ahead and the rest followed, including the mules carrying the vital radio sets and other equipment. There were some Italian prisoners of war with them, most acting as stretcher bearers, since the division had its own wounded to care for, and some of them proved to have useful expertise in coaxing the unwilling beasts down the treacherous slope. But still there were times when Alix heard again the cries of alarm as some unfortunate mule or its driver went over the edge.
At the base of the canyon they found another, larger cave at a point where they had a good view towards the bridge. Tito called his Staff together.
‘We must make a heavy decision. The enemy activity is so fierce that I cannot see the bridge holding much longer. It may not be possible to bring all our wounded and the medical staff down that path and get them across the bridge. What is the best course of action?’
Rankovic said, ‘Our spies tell us that the Boches are reinforcing their defences along the Sutjestka valley. Even if we get the hospital across the Piva I can’t see how we are going to get them across the Sutjeska as well.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lola Ribar suggested, ‘we might have a better chance if we attack at more than one point. This would prevent them from concentrating their forces.’
‘I have a possible solution,’ Djilas said. ‘We divide our forces in three. You and the First Battalion must force the Piva crossing and press on to the Sutjeska. I will stay with the Third and the Seventh and the hospital. The Third, under Sava Kovacevic, will try to break across the Sutjeska further north with the less severely wounded and I will lead the Seventh back across the plateau and make an attempt to cross the Tara, taking the more serious cases with us.’
The men of the council looked at each other. They all knew that what Milovan Djilas was suggesting was tantamount to a suicide mission, but they could see no alternative. Alix, who was taking notes as usual, bit back tears but remained silent.
The British mission had settled in a corner of the cave a little distance from the main body. Alix noted that even in these desperate circumstances they were punctilious about maintaining a certain formality, never attempting to engage the members of the council in conversation unless invited to do so. Tito went over to them and explained the change of plan, which they accepted without comment.
As darkness fell, Djilas took his leave, embracing his colleagues but without giving Alix a chance to say farewell. The rest of the company readied itself for the crossing of the river. In silence, alert for any sound from enemy scouts, they filed down the remaining slope to the bridge, a flimsy structure suspended above the torrent. Nikola and the Escort Battalion were the first to cross, followed by the Supreme Council with the British mission, then as many of the rest of the army who could cross, in single file, before it grew light enough for the Luftwaffe to start operating again. Once across they were faced with the sheer climb up the opposite cliff to the slope of the mountain beyond.
There were no trees here. The terrain consisted of slabs of rock in which the occasional thorn bush had managed to find a precarious hold. As the sun came up Alix realised that they were without cover from the patrolling aircraft. The order was passed down. ‘Lie still! Movement will attract attention.’
Throughout a long day she lay flat against the unyielding rock, scorched by the sun and parched with thirst. Her water bottle was empty within the first couple of hours. Above her head enemy planes circled, searching for any sign of life. Only when the sun sank was she able to stand up, but even then there was no source of water within reach.
That night more of the army made the crossing over the Piva and the advance guard, with the Supreme Council, moved forward. A tiny spring allowed them to fill their water bottles but there was no food. It was a land of sharp peaks and sudden valleys and enemy platoons were everywhere, seeking to dominate the heights from which to fire down on the slow-moving columns. Squadrons of the First Battalion fought running battles to prevent these attacks, and the noise of gunfire echoed from hill to hill. The main column moved only at night and in silence, the only sounds the whispered commands that were passed from mouth to mouth. Pokret! – move; Odred! – rest. During the day they lay still, listening to the aircraft circling like birds of prey above them.
The text of a message from German HQ to the local units, picked up by one of their own radio operators, was passed from mouth to mouth.
After the successful and complete closing of the ring, the communists will attempt a partial breakout through the front. Order: no man capable of bearing arms must leave the circle alive. Women to be searched in case they are men in disguise.
The reports from scouts sent ahead were not encouraging. The ring was tightening. A mass breakout seemed more and more impossible. New orders were passed down. The initiative was handed to the commanders of individual units, to act as they thought best. Only small and mobile groups would be able to penetrate the enemy defences. At this point Tito took a decision that seemed to Alix to be the final summing up of their desperate situation. The main archives of the Central Committee were buried in a copse of trees nearby and the order was issued that all heavy armament should also be buried or destroyed.
At dusk they came at last to a point where they could look down into the valley. Green pastures sloped down to the river and above their heads limestone cliffs glowed amber in the light of the setting sun. On both sides of the river they could see the smoke of gunfire rising and hear the crack of rifles as the advance guard encountered pockets of enemy troops. A little further away Alix could just make out the houses of a small village, where the fighting was more intense than ever.
Tito studied the scene through his field glasses. ‘That’s Bare and that must be our Dalmatian troops. If they can’t hold out, the Boches will control the south bank. There is only one bridge, at Suha. Our men are holding it for now but not for much longer if Bare falls.’
They halted in the woods above the river waiting for full dark and Alix saw the two radio operators with the British mission unfurling their aerials and crouching over their sets, tapping out a message. She had seen them before attempting to make contact but always enemy action or the need to move had prevented them from completing the task. Here, it seemed, they were having some success.
Once it was dark Tito gave the order to move and they crept in single file down the path leading to the river. A single torch flashed from the little stone bridge, to show that it was still in Partisan hands, and they walked across it and dispersed, a company at a time, into the woods fringing the cultivated pasture. Not far away, on either side of her, Alix could hear fierce fighting as the units protecting the wings of the column encountered German opposition. She found Olga beside her and they clasped hands briefly. In the darkness they could hear the German patrols talking to each other but slipping from tree to tree they passed them like ghosts. The land rose steeply and by dawn they were scrambling to the top of Mount Milinklada, where they reassembled in the glades of birch trees that clothed the summit.
All round them they could still hear fighting going on as the separate units battled their way through. The surroundings were illuminated by flashes of rifle fire. In the circumstances there seemed no reason not to light a fire. In the last hours of daylight the cooks had gathered armfuls of nettles from the edges of the woods and a small stream nearby provided water. In an hour they all queued up to have their cups filled with nettle soup. There was nothing else to eat. The last rations had been distributed the day before to the fighting men in the vanguard of their attack. The British agents were invited to share the soup and she heard Captain Stuart pronounce it ‘not bad, but could do with a bit of salt’.
She watched the Englishmen covertly when she had a chance but had seen nothing to suggest that they were anything but the honourable men they purported to be. They had shared the privations of the recent days without complaint, though for men unused to the rigours of life in the mountains it must have been a trial of endurance. She longed to talk to them, but Tito had made it clear that she was not to reveal her identity and she respected his authority.
At first light, Tito climbed to the summit of the mountain with some of the Escort Battalion to assess the situation. Captain Deakin and Nikola went with him. The Luftwaffe attacked again, throwing in Stukas and Dorniers in an all-out attempt to finish the Partisans. They began a systematic sweep of the woods, making low-level runs in straight lines, dropping bombs and grenades, then criss-crossing the area from the opposite direction. There was very little cover among the slender birch trees. It was a matter of trying to guess exactly where the next sweep would come and dodge it. Alix flattened herself in a hollow at the base of one of the trees with her arms over her head.
Suddenly a young soldier came running down the hill.
‘Tito is wounded! The Germans are advancing. Send the rest of the Escort Battalion immediately.’
Vladimir Dedijer started forward but at that moment a young nurse rushed up to him. ‘Comrade Vlado, Olga is wounded. It’s bad. She is calling for you to carry her down.’
As Alix and Dedijer raced upwards they passed wounded men already on their way down, many of them supported by their comrades. At the top of the hill they found Tito clutching his arm with blood oozing between his fingers. Olga lay close by. Alix and Vladimir fell to their knees beside her and she forced a smile.
‘Don’t be afraid. But the wound is serious.’
Her shoulder was a mass of blood and mangled flesh and one arm was almost severed. Alix had to suppress a cry of horror. She pulled off the scarf she wore wrapped round her head and tied it around Olga’s body to stem the bleeding, then Vladimir lifted her in his arms and carried her down the hill.
Men of the Escort Battalion brought Tito down to where the main body of troops was gathered. Deakin came limping after them and Alix saw that one of his boots had been blown clean off his foot. Nikola followed with blood streaming from a cut on his head. He was carrying the body of Tito’s Alsatian dog, Luks.
‘What happened?’ Alix asked.
‘Tito was knocked flat by the explosion. I found Luks lying on top of him. I think he must have thrown himself on him when the bomb dropped. He probably saved him from being much more badly hurt.’
‘Where’s Stuart?’ Deakin asked.
They found the English captain leaning against a tree trunk. A bullet, or a bomb splinter, had struck him in the head. He was dead.
The two British radio operators were unhurt, although one of them, Sergeant Rose, was staggering slightly and seemed dazed. Alix learned later that a bomb splinter had struck him in the chest and his life had been saved by a pack of playing cards he had in his breast pocket.
They could hear the planes coming back. One of Nikola’s men came panting up one of the steep paths. ‘There’s a cave, just down here. We can take cover there.’
Rankovic and Mosa Pijade took Tito by the arms and hustled him down the path. Olga had been laid on a stretcher, and two of the Italian stretcher bearers picked her up. Alix looked at her and abruptly the tears that rose in her throat turned to rage. These Germans, these monsters, had killed Dragomir and now it seemed probable they had killed the only person she had felt close to since his death. They had surrounded hundreds, maybe thousands, of men she had fought and marched with for two years, and the wounded they had with them, and they would show no mercy. She looked around her. Close by lay the body of a young boy who had had both his legs blown off. His rifle lay by him. Alix bent and picked it up and slung it on her shoulder. The weight of it felt good. It felt familiar. She straightened up. She was a partisanska again. A fighter, no longer a bystander. The men who had done this deserved no quarter, and she would give none.