Page 2 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)

Lipovo, Montenegro

January 1943

‘You are Popovic, right?’

Steve jumped to his feet and saluted. ‘Stefan Popovic, Flight Lieutenant RAF, sir.’

He was facing a man in the uniform of a colonel in the British Army. His first impression was that this was a man better suited to civilian dress than military uniform. He was in his middle years, with a round face, a high forehead and thick-rimmed glasses. They had not spoken before, but he knew who he was. Colonel Bailey had been dropped by parachute to the headquarters of General Draza Mihailovic on Christmas Day, as a representative of the British government. Since then, having presented his credentials to the Chetnik leader, he had been mainly concerned with setting up his own HQ with his radio operator in a small village house a few hundred yards away.

‘But in spite of the name, you are not a Yugoslav, I’m told,’ the colonel continued.

‘No, sir. I’m an American. My grandparents emigrated to Alaska from Macedonia before the last war.’

‘Okay.’ Bailey was studying him as if he was a puzzle to be solved. ‘So why is an American citizen in RAF uniform acting as radio operator for General Mihailovic?’

Steve hesitated. ‘It’s rather a long story, sir.’

‘Give me the condensed version.’

‘I was in Paris when war broke out. I wanted to do my bit, as they say, but there was no sign then of America joining the war, so I volunteered for the RAF. Ended up as a radio operator in a bomber crew, got shot down and captured by the Huns, escaped and got back to England. I was recruited by an outfit operating out of Baker Street in London and sent out here as a liaison officer to Colonel Mihailovic – he was only a colonel then.’

‘So, you’re SOE,’ Bailey said with a smile. ‘So am I. No need to be coy about who you work for.’

‘Sorry,’ Steve apologised. ‘I was sworn to secrecy, so I didn’t want to put my foot in it.’

‘Very creditable,’ Bailey agreed. ‘That’s quite a story. I’d like to hear the details when time allows. But there’s one thing that puzzles me. Why weren’t you exfiltrated when the Yugoslav Army collapsed and the Huns moved in?’

‘I suppose that might have been possible,’ Steve said, ‘but I decided to stick it out with Draza. I thought at the time…’

‘At the time?’ Bailey prompted.

Steve shifted uncomfortably. ‘I thought he presented the best chance of building up a Resistance organisation.’

‘And now?’ Bailey pressed him.

‘Now?’ Steve was struggling with his sense of loyalty to the man with whom he had gone through so many tight situations. ‘Well, things haven’t quite worked out the way I hoped they might.’

The colonel held his gaze for a moment. Then he seemed to relax. ‘Okay. Let’s leave it there for the moment. We’ll talk again some other time.’ He turned to leave, then stopped and looked back. ‘Oh, I was asked to give you a personal message. The young lady hopes you will meet again after the war. Some kind of code, is it?’

Steve felt himself flush with combined pleasure and embarrassment. ‘No, it’s not code. It’s someone I met in Paris. Thank you.’

Bailey gave him a wink. ‘My pleasure, old chap.’

When the colonel had gone, Steve sank back onto his chair and dug out a stained and crumpled notebook, the diary he had been keeping ever since he arrived in Yugoslavia. Opening it, he began to write:

January 5th

Wonderful news! It seems the letter I wrote before Christmas must

have somehow got through to Alix. Colonel Bailey has just given me a

message that must come from her, saying she hopes we’ll meet again after

the war. It’s like a ray of sunshine and I need something to cheer me

up. I’m more and more unsure about whether I did the right thing

throwing in my lot with Draza Mihailovic. Now it seems Alix is with the

Partisans, so we are fighting on opposite sides. I know we are all

supposed to be fighting the Boches, but Draza makes no bones about the

fact that he regards the Partisans as the more dangerous enemy. ‘After

the war’, she says. The whole idea is so remote it feels like a dream.

But knowing she is alive and wants to meet gives me something to hold on

to – if we both survive that long.

I hope I didn’t say too much to Bailey. But he must know already that the way Draza is conducting his campaign is, to put it mildly, questionable. He will have talked to Bill Hudson and I know he has the same reservations. After all, he’s been here since September ’41 and he’s got no reason to feel any obligation to Mihailovic, after he kicked him out and left him to survive on his wits for months.

Captain Hudson was a British agent who was the first to be sent to Yugoslavia to report on the potential of resistance. Some days passed, then one evening he looked into the cabin where Steve had set up his radio and said, ‘Colonel Bailey wants a confidential briefing with both of us. Can you come over to his HQ?’

‘Of course.’

The village consisted of little wooden houses set apparently at random in the bowl of a fertile valley. Each had a steep roof that extended almost to ground level and was surrounded by its own plot of land where goats grazed and vegetables grew. Bailey had set up his HQ in one such house, which happened to be empty. There were no proper roads, so Steve and Hudson threaded their way along the paths between the houses to reach him.

They found him sitting at a rough table with his radio operator, Corporal Freddy Barton. Steve had already struck up a good relationship with Freddy, based on their mutual struggles to maintain radio contact in adverse circumstances. Bailey poured them all a measure of the Macallan whisky he had carried in his pack when he was dropped by parachute and Steve sipped it appreciatively. It made a welcome change from the universal slivovitz.

Bailey began. ‘I’ve asked you over so we can have a private discussion about the current situation and General Mihailovic’s attitude to it. I know that you, Bill, have grave reservations about him and I get the impression that you have similar feelings, Stefan. Is that right?’

‘Please call me Steve,’ he responded. ‘That’s what I am used to. And yes, you are correct. Over the last few months, I have had serious doubts about how things are being handled here.’

‘You have known him longer than either of us,’ Bailey said. ‘What attracted you to him in the first place?’

Steve paused to collect his thoughts. ‘I was posted here as liaison officer to the Second Army just before Hitler invaded. My brief was to report on the state of readiness of the army and I soon realised that it was pretty hopeless. Most of the equipment was outdated, units were not in the places they were supposed to be, transport relied very heavily on horse-drawn or bullock-drawn vehicles and even the beasts were poor quality. Added to that, the Croat rank and file resented the Serbian officers and were ready to desert. So, it wasn’t surprising that when the balloon went up there was chaos. I wasn’t impressed with the way the most senior officers dealt with the situation, but Draza was different. He was a natural leader and his men looked up to him. When the order came to surrender, he refused. He said he was going to take to the mountains and resist, inviting anyone who agreed to follow him.

‘Plenty of his men stepped up and I realised I had a choice. I could surrender and spend the rest of the war in a German prison camp, or I could go with him. Well, I’d had a spell as a POW and I didn’t fancy another one, so I threw in my lot with Draza.’

‘From what you say he seemed to be an inspiring leader,’ Bailey commented. ‘So, what went wrong?’

‘There were quite a few of us when we started out, but we had to fight our way back from the Hungarian border to Ravna Gora, where he reckoned we could dig in without attracting too much attention, and by the time we got there we were down to a handful of men. But new recruits started to join us pretty quickly and the numbers built up again. A lot of the officers were keen to have a go at the Germans but instead of creating a unified force, Draza sent them off to their own villages with instructions to build up a local group and wait for the right moment to act. His whole idea was to wait until the Allies were victorious and then seize power as the Germans retreated and form a temporary administration until such time as the king and the legitimate government could be reinstated.’

‘So, completely passive until that time came?’ Bailey queried. ‘What changed?’

‘We heard that Tito’s Partisans were driving the German garrisons out of small towns in the area between Ravna Gora and Uzice and taking their arms and equipment. Some Chetnik units joined in without waiting for orders, so Draza had to act. He had a couple of meetings with Tito but they couldn’t agree on a unified chain of command. Draza insisted on being commander in chief and Tito wouldn’t accept that. Then the Germans started reprisal attacks. You heard about Kragujevac?’

Bailey nodded. ‘Bill told me. Seven thousand shot, is that right?’

‘That is what we heard and I think it is probably correct. Anyway, that finished any idea of active resistance for Draza. He’s obsessed with preserving Serbian lives, at any cost.’

‘Not quite at any cost,’ Hudson put in. ‘He’s prepared to risk them in the service of his other obsession.’

‘Which is?’

‘Getting rid of the communists. He’s terrified they might take over when peace comes and he’d much rather fight them than the Nazis.’

‘There’s another thing,’ Steve said. ‘He has this pan-Serb ambition. He wants a Greater Serbia including Montenegro and Bosnia and part of Croatia. And it must be ethnically pure. No Muslims and no Croats.’

‘How does he propose to achieve that?’ Bailey asked.

Steve and Bill exchanged glances. ‘Theoretically by persuading all Croats to move north into Croatia and sending all the Muslims to Turkey or Albania,’ Bill said. ‘But I’m afraid some of the commanders of different brigades have taken that as permission to carry out massacres of other ethnic groups.’

‘Good God!’ Bailey exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t Mihailovic have any control over them?’

Bill shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you will find there is very little centralised control. Chetnik leaders seem to operate without much reference to him.’

Bailey was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Well, that agrees with the impression I have formed in my tour of the local area. The individual fighters seem to have plenty of spirit, but the officers on the whole are lazy and inept.’

‘As I’ve been telling you,’ Hudson said, ‘my impression is that Tito’s Partisans are far better led and a much more formidable fighting force.’

‘And there’s no hope of persuading them to join forces against the common enemy?’

‘None at all.’ Hudson’s tone was emphatic. ‘As far as each of them is concerned, the other one is the enemy.’

Bailey sighed. ‘Well, I shall report to Cairo accordingly.’

Next day there was a flurry of excitement around the camp. Steve picked up messages from several sources informing him that German troops were massing in western Bosnia.

‘This will be the end of Tito,’ Mihailovic gloated. ‘He won’t be able to wriggle out of the trap this time!’

Major Ostojic, Draza’s chief of staff, rode in from a tour of outlying units.

‘The Italians are being pressured by Hitler to co-operate in this campaign against the Partisans. General Roatta has no wish to commit his own men, so he wants to use our people. He is already issuing arms to Bacovic’s brigade in Herzegovina and Durisic’s here in Montenegro.’

‘Very good!’ Mihailovic exclaimed. ‘Call in all the senior officers. We must prepare to march into Bosnia to meet Tito’s forces head on.’

‘But, sir,’ Steve objected. ‘Isn’t that collaboration? The Italians are the occupying force.’

Draza glared at him. ‘There’s an old saying, “our enemy’s enemy is our friend”,’ he snarled. ‘Have you never heard that?’

Steve could only keep silent, knowing that this would all be reported to Cairo on Bailey’s radio set.

The prospect of defeating his hated enemies galvanised Mihailovic into action. A meeting of local commanders was called, and orders went out that all units should be ready to march into Bosnia. The Italians, under pressure from the Germans to co-operate, promised to provide trains to transport up to four thousand troops to the front.

Cairo

In Rustum Buildings, the location of the SOE’s Balkan Desk, Leonora, Countess Malkovic, looked up from the decrypted message that had just arrived on her desk. English by birth, married to a Serbian count, she had been seconded to work there because of her intimate knowledge of Serbia and her ability to speak the language. She carried the message through to the office occupied by her immediate superior, Basil Davidson. He was in conversation with an army captain who had recently been seconded to their team. His name was William Deakin and Leo was already convinced that he would be a real asset. She had discovered in earlier conversations that in civilian life he was a historian with a degree from Oxford University and had, until war broke out, worked with Winston Churchill as his literary adviser. Urbane and courteous, he was a pleasant contrast to some of the brusque and overbearing characters she had to contend with in the higher reaches of SOE command.

‘Bailey has come up with a new plan,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty radical.’

‘What is it?’

‘He thinks we should divide Yugoslavia into spheres of influence. We should persuade Tito to move his people into Western Croatia and let Mihailovic have Serbia and Montenegro and the predominantly Serb areas of Bosnia. Mihailovic claims to have the support of ten thousand non-communist guerrillas in that region. And putting Tito in Croatia would give the Nazis a new headache.’

Davidson ran his hand through his hair. ‘You’re right, it is pretty radical. What’s the thinking behind it?’

‘He says that Mihailovic is completely fixated on wiping out the communists, at the expense of fighting the Nazis. Bailey’s idea is that if he had complete control in what he regards as the Serb heartlands he wouldn’t have any excuse for that and could turn his attention to the job we really need him to do.’

‘It’s a thought,’ Davidson conceded, ‘but I can’t see it going down very well with the Yugoslav government in exile. It would mean agreeing to the partition of the country. But we can forward it to London and see what they make of it.’

Next morning his tone was different.

‘Listen, both of you. This is highly confidential and not to be revealed to anyone else in this building. Understood?’

‘Of course,’ Deakin said.

Leo nodded. She was well aware of the cross-currents of ambition and mutual hostility that beset the organisation, and in particular the dislike for any suggestion of support to the communists.

‘Information is being picked up through intercepts of German signals traffic that suggest Partisan units are tying down large numbers of enemy troops. Bill, I want you to help me create a map pinpointing the places where this is taking place. Then we might have better grounds for arguing that we should send someone in to make contact with this man Tito.’

Deakin nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m all for that. We need to know what is going on at ground level.’

‘Further information suggests that the Nazis have had enough and are mounting a big operation in Bosnia in an attempt to either kill or capture Tito and wipe out his troops, which reinforces the idea that they are making a significant nuisance of themselves.’

A cold hand gripped Leo’s heart. She knew her daughter Alix was with the Partisans, but the information had come to her by a roundabout and highly confidential route, which made it impossible to share it with her colleagues. To make matters worse, she knew that Alix was engaged in an active combat role. It seems we have a heroine for a daughter. She would never forget the mixture of pride and puzzlement on her husband Sasha’s face when he spoke the words. She had felt pride, too, but her overwhelming emotion was one of dread. It was bad enough to discover that Alix, who she had thought was living out the war in the relative safety of occupied Paris, was back in her native Yugoslavia and working for the resistance. To know that she was putting herself at risk on the battlefield was almost unendurable. After spending Christmas in Cairo, Sasha had returned to London to resume his position as close confidant and mentor to the young King Peter, but Leo wished desperately that he was still with her now.

‘Leo!’ There was an edge of impatience to Davidson’s voice. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Sorry!’ Leo jerked herself back into the present moment. ‘What did you say?’

‘Is there anything from Bailey to back up this intel?’

Leo returned her attention to the message on her desk. ‘This has just come through. I haven’t had time to read it.’ She scanned the text. ‘Yes, he says they have heard the rumours at Mihailovic’s HQ and… oh, this is bad. This is very bad. He says that the Italians are being pressed by Hitler to join in the fight and Mihailovic is co-operating with them. He is sending his Chetniks to Bosnia to fight the Partisans and the Italians are providing transport.’

‘Well!’ Deakin gave a low whistle. ‘That’s all the proof we need of collaboration. We are backing the wrong horse, supporting Mihailovic. Bill Hudson is right. We should be putting our weight behind Tito.’

‘That’s all very well, but it is not our decision,’ Davidson pointed out. ‘All we can do is relay this information to London and let them decide whether to go on backing Mihailovic or to transfer our support to Tito.’

‘We need boots on the ground,’ Deakin insisted. ‘Why can’t we drop someone into Bosnia. I’ll go, if you can get permission.’

‘We can’t drop you or anyone into the middle of a battle,’ Davidson said. ‘And we have no idea where Tito’s HQ is. You’d be dropping blind. It will have to wait until we have a clearer picture – and until we get the okay from London.’

‘What about Bill Hudson?’ Leo asked. ‘I thought the idea was to bring him out for a rest. The poor man’s been out there for eighteen months, and he’s had a terrible time. Surely he deserves some leave.’

‘He certainly does,’ Davidson agreed, ‘and as soon as we can work out how to get him out, he will have it. But Bailey hasn’t managed to locate a suitable place for an airstrip yet so we can’t send a plane in to get him. The Italians are holding the coast and there’s too much enemy activity in the Adriatic to risk sending a sub for him. I’m afraid he’s going to have to hang on for a bit.’

‘Bailey will take care of him,’ Deakin said comfortingly. ‘He’s not on his own anymore.’

Leo sighed and went back to her work, but by the time she reached her little apartment on the houseboat moored to Gezira Island she was weary and on edge. She could not get the thought of Alix caught up in a battle out of her head. Sasha’s informant had described how she had been honoured by Tito for her role as a bombasi , hurling grenades into enemy bunkers. It wasn’t hard to imagine how dangerous that would be. She longed to confide in someone, to share her anxiety, but there was no one she could tell without divulging her source. She considered trying to get a phone call through to Sasha in London but dismissed the idea. It was unfair to burden him with the same worry when he was as helpless as she was.

Apart from that, she was not sure how he would react. He hated the idea of women anywhere near the front line, as she knew from her own experience. In addition, Alix was fighting on the wrong side as far as he was concerned. As a close friend of King Peter, he wanted above all things to see him returned to his throne. If Mihailovic and the Chetniks came out on top they would ensure that happened, whereas there was no knowing what Tito might do if he was in charge when the war came to an end. Sasha had admitted reluctantly that he was proud that Alix was fighting to rid her country of the Nazis, but it would be hard for him to accept that she was risking her life for the wrong cause.

The one person she might have confided in was out of reach and, lying awake that night, she wished it had been possible to bring Bill Hudson home, for her sake as much as for his. She remembered, with a frisson of guilt, how close they had become while he was waiting to be sent to Yugoslavia. Their relationship had tested her loyalty to Sasha almost to breaking point but they had drawn back from the brink and parted as friends. If only he was here now, with her, she knew she would be able to confide in him. He wouldn’t feel impelled to pass on what she told him to the authorities, as Basil Davidson would. He would understand her feelings and just to have his arm round her would ease her pain. She felt very acutely that she needed someone’s arm around her.