Page 20 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)

Bosnia

July 1943

It was not long before advance warning of a heavy German counter-attack forced the Partisans to abandon the town of Kladanj. They retreated into the forest as a column of enemy tanks drove in. In a small cluster of abandoned houses above the town they set up camp and Tito took over one of the houses as his headquarters. From there he took the opportunity to begin to restore the regular organisation and discipline that had of necessity lapsed in the chaos of their escape. He was dictating orders to Alix when one of the company commanders asked to be admitted.

‘Yes? What is it?’ Tito asked.

‘I was wondering what you wanted us to do with the prisoners we took during the fight to take the town,’ the man said.

‘Prisoners? Who are they? Local people?’

‘No. They are Chetniks. They were part of a regular company. Clearing them out was the hardest part of the operation.’

‘Chetniks?’ Tito growled. ‘No need to ask. Line them up and shoot them.’

Alix bowed her head. This was how the Partisans usually dealt with prisoners and she understood the necessity. Constantly on the move, they had no means of imprisoning them and to keep them meant extra men to guard them and extra mouths to feed. But it still distressed her to see men who had often fought bravely slaughtered like cattle.

The captain saluted and left, and Alix heard him shouting orders to men to form a firing squad and then orders for the prisoners to be brought out and lined up. There seemed to be some kind of altercation going on. Someone was protesting vocally.

‘I am a British airman and I demand to be treated as a prisoner of war!’

The sound of the voice struck her somewhere in the middle of her chest and she jumped to her feet and ran out of the house. A ragged line of prisoners was drawn up on the far side of the clearing with a dozen Partisans carrying rifles facing them. Her eyes went along the line. Every face was heavily bearded, unrecognisable at a distance, but then a difference in the way the men were dressed struck her. All wore tunics that had some suggestion of a uniform but on one man the trousers that protruded below it, though ragged and faded, were unmistakably Air Force blue.

‘Ready!’ shouted the captain. ‘Take aim.’

‘No!’ Alix tore across the clearing and flung herself between the firing line and the prisoners. ‘No! I know this man! He is an American, but with the British RAF. He is not an enemy.’

‘Not an enemy?’ the captain queried. ‘Then what is he doing fighting alongside the Chetniks?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alix said breathlessly. ‘But you can’t shoot him without finding out. If you shoot a British serviceman you could jeopardise any help we might get.’

The captain looked uneasy. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll let Comrade Tito decide about this.’ He called to one of the men guarding the prisoners. ‘Bring that man over here. The one who’s been causing all the trouble.’

The man in the blue trousers was shoved roughly forward.

‘Alix!’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘Thank god!’

She caught hold of his arm. ‘Steve? It is you, isn’t it?’

‘What’s left of him,’ he responded, with an effort at a smile.

‘You know this man?’ the captain asked.

‘Yes. I told you, he’s with the RAF.’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to get into your thick heads,’ Steve growled.

The captain looked him up and down and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Take him to Comrade Tito.’

The guard gave Steve a shove in the direction of Tito’s house. Alix interposed herself. ‘There’s no need for that. I’ll vouch for him. He won’t try to escape.’

Her position close to Tito had given her a degree of authority and the guard stepped back. She took Steve’s arm and led him across the clearing. ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right now.’

Tito looked up from what he was writing and frowned. ‘Who’s this? What’s he doing here?’

Steve detached himself from Alix’s grasp and came to attention, though he swayed on his feet as he did so.

‘Flight Lieutenant Stefan Popovic, RAF, sir.’

Tito’s puzzled expression deepened. ‘RAF? Popovic? Are you a Serb?’

‘No, sir. I’m an American, but my grandparents came from Macedonia.’

‘An American in the RAF fighting alongside Chetniks. It doesn’t make sense. Explain it to me.’

‘It’s… it’s a long story,’ Steve said wearily. His shoulders drooped, unable to maintain his correct military posture any longer.

Alix said quickly, ‘He’s worn out and starving. Please can I take him to get some food before he tells you? I promise he won’t try to escape.’

Tito turned his gaze to her. ‘How do you know this man?’

‘We met in Paris before the war. But when war was declared, as America wasn’t involved at the time, he went to England and volunteered for the RAF.’

‘So what is he doing here?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ She looked at Steve helplessly.

Tito scrutinised them both for a moment. ‘Well, I’ll accept your word for his good behaviour,’ Tito said. ‘Bring him back when he has been fed.’

Alix took Steve’s arm again and led him across the clearing to where a circle of fallen logs around a cooking fire had become an informal mess.

‘Alix!’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t believe it’s you. After all these months. What are you doing here?’

‘I’ll tell you all about it later,’ she promised. ‘Let’s get you something to eat first.’

There had been several further air drops of supplies and the food situation was much easier. One of the cooks was stirring a large cauldron over an open fire. The aromatic scent made Alix’s mouth water.

‘Soldier’s beans! I haven’t tasted that for months.’

‘Not quite how it should be,’ the cook said, ‘but if you dress up these tins of British baked beans with plenty of paprika you can get close.’

‘Comrade Tito has given orders for this man to be fed,’ Alix told him. ‘Are the beans ready?’

‘Near enough,’ the cook replied. He picked up a tin plate and dolloped a ladle of beans onto it.

Alix led Steve over to a fallen tree trunk that had been roughly carved into a seat and handed him the plate. For several minutes neither of them spoke while he shovelled the beans into his mouth. When the plate was empty Alix handed him a cup of water. He took a long drink then put the cup down and looked at her.

‘You saved my life.’ His voice was still husky but it was stronger.

‘Thank god I heard what was going on!’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened. You should have been listened to.’

‘I guess I’m not the first guy to try it on with a sob story of some kind,’ Steve said.

‘But it shouldn’t happen to anyone, without a trial,’ she insisted.

He shrugged. ‘This isn’t exactly regular warfare. I don’t think the Geneva conventions have much relevance here.’

They looked at each other. The beard and the unkempt hair made him look very different from how she remembered him, but the dark eyes were the same, albeit with lines around them and shadows beneath them that were new. He put up a hand and tentatively pushed back the scarf she habitually wore over her head. Suddenly she was acutely aware of how changed she must look to him. She was dressed, as were most of the Partisans, in a mixture of civilian clothes and captured German uniform. She still wore the trousers she had put on when she left home to join Tito back in the winter of 1941. Good English tweed, bought last time she was in that country, had proved its ability to withstand any amount of wear and tear. With those she wore a man’s blue shirt, given to her when she was in the hospital on Piva, under a German field grey tunic stripped of its insignia. It had been allocated to her by the quarter master and had almost certainly belonged to a prisoner who had been shot. He must have been a very small man, or perhaps a boy, but it was still too large for her. To cinch it in she wore a leather belt from which hung a holstered pistol – more battlefield loot. Her hair had been roughly chopped to just below her ears and she could not remember when it had last been washed. Its once bright amber tones were dulled, and it fell in tangled locks around her face. She had not looked at herself in a mirror for a long time but she could imagine from looking at those around her how hollow her cheeks must be and how prominent her cheek bones; prolonged hunger had robbed her body of any feminine curves.

‘I’m a mess,’ she mumbled, pushing back a wayward lock.

‘You’re the best thing I’ve seen for a very long time,’ he answered.

A thought came to her. ‘You got my letter.’

‘Eventually. Bill Hudson had a rough time. Mihailovic chucked him out and he had to survive on his wits for months. But in the end Draza relented and let him come back and he still had your letter stowed away in a pocket.’ He looked beyond her. ‘What’s happened to that brute who dragged you away last time I saw you? I hope he’s had his comeuppance.’

Alix glanced over her shoulder in search of Nikola but he was out on patrol with his men. ‘Oh, I tamed the brute,’ she said. ‘He’s quite docile now.’

‘And you got my letter?’ Steve said. ‘I got a mysterious message from Colonel Bailey.’

‘Bailey?’

‘He was dropped to join Bill Hudson in Mihailovic’s camp.’

‘How did he know about our letters?’

‘Don’t ask me. The whole business was very mysterious. Somebody in London must have pulled some strings.’

Alix sat back. ‘Can we rewind a bit? The last thing I heard from you, before we bumped into each other at that meeting in Brajici, was when I was still in Paris. You had just finished your basic training and you were going to be sent to a bomber squadron. How did you get from that to this?’

Steve ran his hands through his hair. ‘God! That feels like a lifetime ago. Okay. In a nutshell. I was shot down and taken prisoner by the Huns but I managed to escape and spent several months hiding out in Brussels, but eventually I was smuggled out of the country and got back to England.’

‘Oh! I’d almost forgotten!’ Alix exclaimed. ‘You came to have your photo taken for your fake ID in Paris.’

He stared at her. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I was working for the Resistance, helping to get men out of occupied France. We missed each other by about twenty-four hours. I was sure it must have been you but, of course, nobody could tell me where you had gone. Everything had to be kept as secret as possible.’

‘That’s incredible. How come you were working with the Resistance?’

‘No, finish your story first.’

‘Okay, where was I? I got back to the UK and then I got a summons to meet a mysterious brigadier in London. I found myself being recruited into some secret organisation designed to get agents dropped behind enemy lines. They had picked me out because of my fluent Serbo-Croat and I suppose they thought if I could get myself out of a prisoner of war camp and then out of France I must have a bit of… well, initiative, I suppose. Anyway, in the end I wasn’t sent out undercover. I was posted as a military attaché to the Yugoslavian Second Army. London wanted to find out how prepared they were for a possible invasion.’

‘Well, we know the answer to that,’ Alix said.

‘Completely unprepared,’ he agreed. ‘So when the invasion came and the army folded up like wet tissue paper in a gale I had a choice. Surrender and find myself back in a German prison camp or join the Resistance.’

‘With General Mihailovic?’ Alix queried.

‘Yes. He seemed to be the only man who had any intention of fighting back. Unfortunately…’ He lapsed into silence.

‘I haven’t had the impression that he’s done much resisting,’ Alix supplied. ‘The Chetniks seem to have been more intent on fighting us.’

‘I’m afraid that is the truth,’ he agreed.

‘But I thought Mihailovic had retreated to Serbia,’ she pursued. ‘That was the intelligence we had.’

‘He has,’ Steve agreed.

‘So how come you aren’t with him?’

As briefly as possible Steve explained how he had been abandoned at Kolasin and had been trying to make his way back to Serbia when he was picked up by a band of renegade Chetniks under Radulovic and forced to join them in their attempt to protect Chetnik towns and villages from the Partisans. ‘I’ve no reason to want to fight your people,’ he said wearily, ‘but it was a choice between going along with them or being shot as a traitor.’

She took his hand. ‘Thank god you weren’t killed in the fighting.’

He squeezed her hand in return. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

So Alix told him how she had joined the Resistance in Paris and then made her way back to her home country when the news of the coup that put Peter on the throne reached her. She explained how she had arrived just as the bombing of Belgrade started, how she had searched unsuccessfully for her parents and then bumped into Nikola, who had introduced her to Tito.

‘So you’re telling me that brute is the man your father wanted you to marry?’ Steve interjected. ‘The man you ran away to Paris to avoid?’

‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ she agreed. ‘But he has his good points. He was in Paris before us and he had become a communist there. He actually wants a lot of the things I believe in, like a more equal society. But on the other hand he’s a product of the old regime that thinks a woman should always be under the “protection”,’ – her tone supplied the inverted commas – ‘of a man. When we joined Tito in Uzice he persuaded me that I’d be safer if everyone thought we were engaged. I thought I’d made it clear to him that it was only a matter of convenience, but he suddenly started to behave as if he was really my fiancé and became insanely jealous.’

‘As I saw,’ Steve put in. ‘So how did you talk him out of it?’

She shrugged. ‘Just by persisting, I suppose. I wore him down in the end. We’re quite good friends now, up to a point.’ She stood up. ‘I’d better take you back to Tito and I’m afraid you’ll have to tell your story all over again.’

‘You seem to be… well, on good terms with him.’

She smiled. ‘I’m his secretary, for my sins.’

‘Oh, not an active soldier then? I heard a lot of Partisan women fought alongside the men.’

She hesitated. ‘Yes, they do. We do. I’m not just a secretary.’

Tito listened to Steve’s story in silence and when it was finished he said, ‘So tell me. You were sent here as a spy. You have fought alongside the Chetniks. What is it you wish to do now?’

Steve answered without hesitation, ‘Anything that will help defeat the Nazis and bring this war to an end.’

‘And you think that we can do that?’

‘From what I’ve heard, you are doing far more than the Chetniks have ever done.’

‘And what is your opinion of communism?’

Steve paused a moment, then he lifted his shoulders. ‘I’m not a political person but I believe everyone should get a fair chance in life, no matter who their parents are or where they are born. Is that good enough?’

Tito studied him for a moment, then he nodded. ‘It will do for the time being. Now…’

He was interrupted by Deakin’s voice from outside. ‘Can I come in? I have news you will want to hear.’

As always, the British contingent, which now included Stevan Sirdar and his two companions, had settled in a house a little apart from the Partisans, and Deakin never presumed to intrude on Tito without permission.

‘Come,’ Tito called in response.

The English captain’s face, normally impassive, was lit up with excitement. ‘We have just picked up a report from the BBC. The Allies have landed on Sicily.’

Tito jumped up. ‘Sicily? Does this mean the opening of the Second Front we have all been waiting for?’

‘It looks very much like it,’ Deakin said.

‘What do you think they plan to do next?’

‘I assume they are going to move on to mainland Italy.’

‘Hah!’ Tito exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Well, they won’t get much resistance from the Italians. They have no stomach for this fight.’

‘I have the same impression,’ Deakin agreed.

‘So, if Italy surrenders, what then?’ Tito’s expression changed. ‘Will they land here, as we have been expecting?’

‘Well, once they are in Brindisi, say, it’s only a short hop across the Adriatic,’ Deakin pointed out.

‘Hmm,’ Tito responded. ‘Well, we shall have to see what transpires.’ He shook off his doubtful expression and went to the chest that contained his personal belongings, from which he extracted a bottle of slivovitz . ‘Take this to share with your colleagues, to celebrate.’

Deakin thanked him and turned to go. As he did so he noticed Steve for the first time.

‘Hello, who’s this?’

The conversation so far had been in French, as usual, but Steve had recognised the British uniform. As before, he came to attention and introduced himself in English.

‘Good god!’ was Deakin’s response. ‘Where the dickens have you sprung from?’

Steve opened his mouth to explain but Tito, understanding the tone of the conversation if not the language, interrupted. ‘Not here! I have things to attend to. Alix, you had better take your friend over to the British camp and introduce him properly – if that’s all right with you, Captain?’

‘Of course,’ Deakin agreed, heading for the exit. ‘Follow me, Lieutenant.’

On the other side of the clearing Steve was introduced to the others and embarked again on the tale of his adventures. He was listened to with growing respect and when he was done Deakin clapped him on the shoulder.

‘All I can say is, bloody good show! You’re a credit to the uniform – and your country.’ And the rest joined in with a chorus of ‘Here, here’.

Alix hugged herself with pleasure at the words, but of course the next question was, ‘So how do you two know each other?’ and they had to explain that as well.

When everyone’s immediate curiosity had been satisfied Deakin asked, ‘So what was your role when you were with Mihailovic?’

‘I was his radio operator,’ Steve told him.

‘Radio operator?’ Corporal Wroughton interjected. ‘Join the club! There are three of us now but we can always use another pair of hands.’

The conversation turned to a technical discussion of the difficulties of maintaining contact with headquarters while constantly on the move and struggling to avoid enemy aircraft and Alix found herself rather left out. She was longing to have time alone with Steve but it seemed he was going to be swallowed up by the British mission. After twenty minutes or so, she murmured something about getting back to work and slipped away.

It was mealtime and she joined the rest of the camp around the fire for her portion of soldier’s beans. The rumour of Steve’s dramatic appearance had spread and she spent most of the time fielding questions about him. She had just finished eating when she looked round and saw him standing rather forlornly a few feet away.

‘You disappeared,’ he said.

‘You were busy,’ she answered.

They looked at each other.

‘Can we…’ He looked around at the many eyes that were focused on him. ‘Can we talk, somewhere?’

She looked over her shoulder, as aware as he was of being watched. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

They strolled into the woods and found a grassy clearing at the base of an old oak tree. They sat in the nook created by the spreading roots and leaned back against the trunk. For a few moments neither of them spoke. There was so much they could tell each other, but something unspoken seemed to hang between them, a sense of something unfinished.

At length Alix said, ‘Raoul was killed. Did I tell you?’

‘No! At least, if you did I never got the letter.’ He paused uncertainly. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’s no need to be, at least not for me. To be absolutely honest it was… well, a relief. That’s a terrible thing to say, but I’d realised I wasn’t in love with him and he wasn’t… he wasn’t very nice to me when he came home on leave.’

‘I’ll be honest too,’ Steve said. ‘I never liked the guy.’

They were silent for a few minutes then Alix said, ‘If I hadn’t felt I had to be faithful to Raoul, when you asked me to come back to your apartment for the night, would you still have gone to England and volunteered.’

He thought a moment. ‘It would have been much more difficult, but I think I would have had to go. I couldn’t sit in Paris and let other men do the fighting.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought not, but if anything had happened to you because of what I decided… I would never have forgiven myself.’

‘It wouldn’t have been your fault.’ He gave her a smile. ‘Anyway, here I am. Here we both are. I’ve never believed in fate but this… well, put it this way, it’s one hell of a coincidence.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

There was another silence, then he said tentatively, ‘Has there been anyone else, since Raoul?’

‘No,’ she told him, then after a moment, ‘You?’

He looked down. ‘Yes, one, when I was hiding out in Brussels. She and her father took me in and risked their lives to keep me safe.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Yvette.’

‘Were you… did you care for her?’

‘Yes, I did. But we both knew it could never be a permanent relationship.’ He looked at her. ‘When we said goodbye, she made me promise to come back to visit after the war – and bring my wife.’

She gazed back at him, then dropped her eyes and for a moment they both contemplated the image his words had conjured up.

‘I never forgot about you,’ he said. ‘I told myself one day, when all this is over, I’d come and find you.’

‘I never forgot you either,’ she said.

He reached across and took her hand, the first physical contact he had initiated. She let her hand linger in his for a minute, then she stood up.

‘I should get back. Tito will be wondering where I am.’

As they re-entered the camp Alix was confronted by a situation she had been putting to the back of her mind. Nikola was there, back from his patrol, and as they approached, the look on his face told her that he had already heard about Steve’s arrival. She reflected grimly that it would not improve matters that he had returned to find they had been spending time alone in the forest. Determined that he should not get the impression that she felt guilty, she walked straight up to him and Steve followed.

‘Nikola, this is an old friend who I met in Paris. His name is Stefan Popovic but he prefers to be called Steve. Steve, this is Nikola Dordevic, commander of the Escort Battalion.’

Steve offered his hand and gave the conventional greeting. They had been speaking English together but the switch into Serbo-Croat came naturally.

Nikola scrutinised his face for a moment, then he shook hands and responded. ‘They tell me you’re in the British RAF. Pilot?’

‘No. I was a navigator and bomb aimer.’

‘Dropping bombs on the Germans?’

‘Yes.’

Nikola nodded. ‘Good.’

Looking at them, Alix was reminded of two stags, sizing each other up before deciding whether to fight.

‘What were you doing in Paris?’

‘Trying to become a writer.’

‘Hah! Following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway?’

Steve grinned. ‘From a long way behind.’

To Alix’s surprise, Nikola laughed.

Steve went on, ‘Alix tells me you were in Paris, too. Did you enjoy your time there?’

‘Of course. Didn’t Hemingway say that if you spend time in Paris as a young man it stays with you for life?’

‘Because Paris is “a moveable feast”.’ Steve quoted the line with a smile. ‘You read Hemingway?’

‘Of course.’

And that was it. Common ground had been established and they went on to chat amicably about the novels of Hemingway and their memories of Paris. Alix heaved a sigh of relief and excused herself to go back to Tito. It was only later that evening, when Steve had been recalled to the British camp by Walter Wroughton, that Nikola stopped her as she left Tito’s tent.

‘This American.’

‘Steve?’

‘Yes. You were lovers, no?’

‘No.’ The answer was technically accurate if not in emotional terms.

‘How did you know him?’

‘He used to come to the cafe where we all met in the evenings.’

‘With other people then.’

‘Not always. He used to walk me back to where I was living sometimes.’ Nikola gave her a long, hard look. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she added.

That seemed to satisfy him. He nodded and turned away. ‘I’ll see you at supper time.’

Later Steve came to find her. ‘That Nikola guy’s not quite the oaf I thought. He’s actually very well educated.’

‘Yes, he was teaching modern languages at Belgrade University until the war broke out. It surprised me, too. He’s an odd chap, a mass of contradictions.’

‘But you still wouldn’t think of marrying him.’

She met his eyes. ‘Not in a million years.’

There was a curious incident next day that struck Alix as typical of Tito. The rations dropped by the British were very welcome and meant that they no longer went hungry but it was a long time since any of them had tasted fresh meat, so there was a cheer when the quartermaster announced with a broad grin, ‘Tonight, comrades, we eat roast beef.’

‘Beef?’ Tito queried. ‘How have you managed that?’

The quartermaster lifted his shoulders. ‘It is the natural way of things. The cow had gone dry. She hasn’t produced any milk for weeks.’

‘Cow?’ Tito asked. ‘What cow? You don’t mean Bella?’

Bella was the battalion’s milch cow, one of its prized possessions providing milk and cheese to eke out sparse rations. She had somehow stayed with them through all the vicissitudes of the escape but given the lack of fodder it was no surprise that her milk had dried up.

‘There was no point in feeding her any longer,’ the quartermaster said, his tone suddenly less confident.

‘You have slaughtered Bella?’ Tito was red with fury. ‘That animal has followed us faithfully for years. She was not just a machine for producing milk. She was an old friend. She deserved to live out her days in as much comfort as we can provide. How dare you kill her without my permission? Get out of my sight! I’m stripping you of your rank. Someone with a heart can take over your job.’

The quartermaster backed away, shaken and distraught.

Alix had witnessed the exchange and was not entirely surprised. Tito’s fondness for animals was well known. His care for his horse, Swallow, was an example to his men and she knew that he had been greatly saddened by the death of his Alsatian, Luks. Nevertheless, she felt his reaction was unreasonable, under the circumstances, and it did not help her mood to have the prospect of roast beef whipped away from her.

Looking out of the door she saw Arso Rankovic patting the quartermaster consolingly on the shoulder. No more was said, until that evening when they sat down to a meal of tinned sardines and hard biscuits.

‘You do realise that Bella had a broken leg?’ he remarked casually. ‘It was a kindness to put her out of her pain.’

Tito glared at him for a moment, then he laughed. ‘All right. Where’s that roast beef I was promised?’

The quartermaster had been waiting outside the door and a moment later a steaming platter of sliced beef was placed on the table. The meat was far from tender but as far as Alix was concerned no cordon bleu chef in the best restaurant in London or Belgrade could have produced anything as delicious.