Page 43 of A Call to Home (Women of the Resistance #3)

Belgrade

October 19th, 1944

‘I have a suggestion.’ Nikola touched Alix’s arm. ‘Let’s pretend we are a courting couple looking for a place to get away from prying eyes.’

Alix met his eyes. ‘It’s a good idea. Just don’t get carried away with it.’

He grinned. ‘Trust me. I’ll behave, promise.’

Because the Russians controlled the whole sector between Vrsac and the city, the trains were running, mainly in order to bring more troops and supplies into the battle. Tito had given them a letter authorising them to travel and his name carried enough weight to get them onto the next train, so they had arrived in the city as the sun was setting. Long before they got there the noise of battle grew from a distant rumble to a deafening roar. They could hear the rattle of machine guns and the deeper thud of mortars, the high-pitched wail of shells and the explosions as they landed. The train came to a standstill some way outside the station and the troops were ordered off. Alix guessed the fighting was too close to the central station to go any nearer, so she, Nikola and Miladin Zaric scrambled down onto the track and followed the soldiers into the city.

‘Where are we?’ she asked, looking round her.

‘Not sure,’ Nikola replied. ‘It’s hard to recognise any landmarks.’

It was true. Alix remembered vividly how she and Dragomir had struggled to pick their way through the debris after the German attack on Easter Sunday 1941 but since then Allied bombing and Russian shells had created more devastation.

‘This way,’ Zaric said and they followed him down to the embankment along the Sava River. It was swollen with autumn rain and it surged along almost up to the top of the embankment towards its confluence with the Danube a few hundred yards further on.

‘My house is here,’ Zaric said. ‘You can see the bridge. The explosive charges are attached to the third pillar, right next to the embankment.’

‘Right,’ Nikola said. ‘You go inside. There’s no need for you to take any further risks. Leave it to us.’

‘You are sure you don’t need me?’

‘Quite sure. You’ve done your bit.’

‘In that case I shall wish you luck and say goodnight.’

They waited until the teacher had gone inside, then Nikola put his arm round Alix’s shoulders and she clasped hers round his waist and they strolled along the river bank towards the outline of the bridge. They had almost reached it when a patrol of Russian soldiers came the other way.

‘Hey, you!’ one of them demanded. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Nikola stepped forward so they could see his uniform. ‘Mind how you speak to me! I’m a captain in the National Liberation Army.’ He used the bastardised combination of the two Slavic languages that had become the lingua franca of the situation.

‘So why aren’t you with your unit?’ the soldier demanded truculently.

‘It’s none of your business,’ Nikola responded, then softening his tone slightly, said, ‘Come on, comrade. Do you begrudge a man a last chance to be with his sweetheart?’

That seemed to make an impression. The soldier’s face broke into a grin. ‘All right, comrade. Take your chances when you can, that’s my motto. Good luck to you.’

The patrol passed on and Alix squeezed Nikola’s arm. ‘Well done.’

They reached the point directly under the bridge where a thick concrete column rose from the riverbed to support the roadway above.

‘Where’s that scaffolding the old man talked about?’ Nikola wondered.

Alix edged round the base of the column to the riverside. ‘It’s here, out of sight of anyone passing.’

‘Can you climb it?’

‘Easy. Keep watch. I’m going up to have a closer look.’

It was dark under the bridge but the flashes of shells landing on either side gave fitful light. Peering up she made out by the next flash that there was a large box strapped to the underside of the roadway at the point where it rested on the pillar. ‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered, ‘if that goes up it’ll take the bridge and half the houses along this stretch of the bank.’

She scrambled up the scaffold and found the box within easy reach. A wire protruded from it, running out along the length of the bridge to a detonator, presumably, on the far side of the river. Alix smiled to herself and reached into her pocket for the wire cutters she had brought with her. It crossed her mind to wonder if the device might be booby trapped but she dismissed it. This had been done in a hurry, in the simplest way possible. The Germans had obviously not considered the idea that it might be tampered with. Anyway, there was only one way to find out. She reached out and took hold of the wire.

As she did so there was a flash close by, the whole structure shuddered and there was a deafening explosion. Alix clung to the scaffolding as it rocked sideways and seemed about to collapse. After a breathless second or two it righted itself and Alix realised that a shell had hit the bridge just above her head. The Russians had seen that it would provide an escape route for the withdrawing German troops and had decided to demolish it. If that was their intention, the next shell might strike closer and set off the explosive. ‘Here am I, trying to save it and now you are trying to destroy it,’ she muttered. ‘If that’s your idea, you might have saved me the trouble.’

Her hands were shaking and she almost dropped the wire cutters, but somehow she kept hold of them, drew a deep breath and snipped the wire. Nothing happened, so there had been no booby trap, but seconds later a second shell hit the bridge, closer this time. ‘Time to go,’ Alix murmured. She was about to start down when voices from below stopped her. Her ears were ringing from the explosions and it was hard to make out what was being said but the tone sounded jocular. She waited, willing whoever it was to go away, but the conversation continued and there was the rasp of a match and the flare as cigarettes were lit. Another shell hit the bridge above her.

At last she made out the words ‘good night’ and heard boots tramping away. When the sound faded into the distance she finally allowed herself to climb down the last few rungs. Nikola was waiting and caught her in his arms.

‘Thank god! You’re safe. I was terrified that the whole thing was going to go up.’

‘So was I,’ she responded shakily. ‘What was going on?’

‘A couple of local lads, wanted to know what I was waiting for. I told them, my girlfriend, and they said as you had obviously stood me up I might as well join them for a drink. It took me a while to convince them that I was prepared to wait.’ He hugged her and then relaxed his grip. ‘Come on. Let’s find somewhere safer than this to lie up.’

Tito had told them there was no point in trying to get back to Vrsac because he intended to come to Belgrade himself next day. All they needed now was to find somewhere they could hide out until morning.

Steve’s diary.

20 October 20th

We are in Belgrade!

The drive here was a pretty grim affair. The whole area has been fought over and we soon began to see the evidence – not just burnt-out tanks and other vehicles but dead bodies, first one or two, then in increasing numbers. Most of them had been stripped of their clothes but there was enough left to show they were Germans. Their naked bodies were the same colour as the grey mud they lay in and the stench of death hung in the air.

It was not long before we encountered our first Russians. They are a tough-looking bunch. Their uniforms were torn and filthy and their boots were almost worn out, but their weapons were clean and they looked as though they meant business. I was surprised by how they varied in their physical appearance. Some were blond like the Vikings of old and others had the high cheekbones and narrow eyes of Mongolia, but there was a great sense of comradeship. These men have fought their way across half of Europe and many of them proudly wore campaign medals of various sorts. We were surprised to notice that all their jeeps and other vehicles were full of weapons and ammunition but completely empty of food or spare clothing or anything of that nature. They clearly expect to live off the land and re-equip themselves from their conquered enemies. I was reminded of the hordes of Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan.

It’s clear that the fighting is not over. The Boches are not giving in easily. We could see shells exploding all over the city as we approached. We found Peko Dapcevic’s HQ in one of the outer suburbs and despite the situation he gave us an excellent lunch. This afternoon he has promised us a tour of the city with one of his men who is a native of the place. The shelling seems to be dying down and the streets are full of small companies of triumphant Russians who have a disconcerting habit of letting off bursts of machine gun fire, apparently out of pure joie de vivre.

Peko was as good as his word and they set out in a jeep driven by a man who seemed determined to show them everything of note in the city. Shells were still landing at random but their driver seemed completely undisturbed as he wound his way through the rubble and the gaping holes left by the bombing. ‘See, there is the opera house, still standing, thank god. And over there is the university, and that is the city hall…’ Maclean suggested once or twice that perhaps it was time to return to the relative safety of the suburbs, but their driver was not to be dissuaded.

Eventually he stopped the jeep at the entrance to what had once been a public park of some sort, now a wilderness of trampled mud and broken plants. He led them uphill towards the ramparts of a castle and then through a great arched gateway into an inner court. They climbed steps and came out onto a broad terrace. Steve realised that they were at the very peak of the ridge that divided the Sava from the Danube and below them the two rivers met in a churning maelstrom. A little to their left they looked down on a bridge across the Sava.

‘See!’ Their guide pointed down. ‘The Boches are fleeing like rats across to Zemun.’

A seemingly endless stream of men and vehicles was crossing the bridge.

‘Heading for the road north,’ Maclean said. ‘But there will be plenty of our people waiting for them.’

As they watched there came a break in the flow and for a few minutes the bridge was empty.

‘That looks like the last of them,’ Steve said.

Then suddenly more men and more armoured vehicles appeared, charging across in pursuit; but the uniforms were different.

‘They’re Russians, by god!’ Maclean exclaimed. ‘Why the hell didn’t the Huns blow the bridge! They could have given themselves a head start. It would have taken the Reds days to repair it.’

Alix and Nikola met Tito and Djilas and their bodyguards at the central station and they were able to greet him with the news that the task he had given them was accomplished. Also waiting at the station they found Rankovic and Jovanovic, the most prominent members of the Supreme Council, with a small escort of troops drawn from Peko Dapcic’s forces. They formed a small procession heading through the broken streets towards the fortress that crowned the city. Djilas had suggested that perhaps it would be more prudent to head for the suburbs until the last of the German artillery men had been dislodged from Zemun but Tito insisted that he wanted to ‘see what victory looked like’.

So they climbed through the gardens and into the castle and came eventually to the very summit, a sharp ‘v’ shape like the prow of a ship commanding the view over both rivers. They watched the last of the enemy flee across the Sava bridge and then the Russian pursuit and Tito turned to look for Alix.

‘This is your doing, my flame of the forest,’ he said and explained to the others how she, with Nikola’s assistance, had foiled the plan to blow the bridge.

She was accepting their congratulations when Djilas said, ‘Isn’t that Maclean down there?’

Alix whipped round to see where he was pointing, her eyes searching the little group on the lower terrace, looking for the telltale blue uniform.

Steve became aware of a stir behind him and turned to see a group of men in Partisan grey on the upper terrace. Maclean turned too.

‘My god! It’s Tito!’

Steve was already running, racing up the steps to the higher level and as he went, a single figure detached itself from the group and ran towards him. They met at the top of the steps and fell into each other’s arms.

‘It’s you! Thank god!’

‘You’re safe! Oh, my darling, I’ve missed you…’ Words tumbled over themselves as they hugged and then were stifled by kisses.

They collected themselves eventually and looked round to see Tito and Maclean shaking hands amid general back-slapping and congratulations. Maclean was saying, ‘I can’t understand why the Huns didn’t blow that bridge to stop the Reds from going after them.’

Tito chuckled. ‘Oh, they intended to, but someone saw what they were doing, and we were able to put a stop to it.’

‘You dismantled the explosives?’ Maclean asked.

‘No, no,’ Tito said. ‘For that you have to thank this young lady.’

‘Alix?’ Maclean turned to her. ‘You did that?’

As briefly as possible Alix related the story, adding, ‘I couldn’t have managed it without Nikola. He talked his way out of a couple of tricky situations. Without him I’d have been caught for sure.’

Nikola was standing to one side, momentarily isolated from the general rejoicing. Steve held out his hand and pulled him into the group.

‘Thank you for keeping her safe for me, friend.’

Nikola was about to speak, then his head jerked up in alarm. The next thing Alix knew was something hitting her in the back with great force, knocking her to the ground. There was a blinding flash, then a roar that seemed to shatter her ears. For a moment everything blacked out, then she was aware of hands lifting her and voices, but because of the ringing in her ears she could not tell what they were saying. There was a smell of burning and when her vision cleared she saw, a few feet from where she was standing, a crater had appeared in the paving, from which wisps of smoke were drifting.

‘Steve!’ She snatched herself free of the hands that were holding her and twisted round. He was sitting on the ground nearby, rubbing his shoulder and looking bemused.

Someone said, ‘It was a shell. If Nikola hadn’t pushed you out of the way…’

Then she saw him, lying on the ground a few feet away. Maclean and Djilas were bending over him but she could see from where she stood that where his arm should have been were only splinters of bone and rags of flesh from which blood was pulsing in an unstoppable stream.

She pushed away restraining hands and fell to her knees beside him. Djilas had an arm under his shoulders and was supporting him. His eyes were open and his remaining hand groped towards her.

‘I learned so much from you,’ he whispered. ‘One last service in return…’

She clasped his hand, blinded by tears. ‘Oh my dear, I wish it could have been different. You should have picked someone else…’

‘No…’ The word was almost inaudible. ‘No one but you…’ Then his eyes closed and his head fell back against Djilas’s arm.

‘Do something!’ Alix begged. ‘Where are the medics?’

Djilas shook his head. ‘He’s gone, little one. There was nothing to be done.’

Steve knelt beside her and put his arms round her. ‘I’m so sorry, my darling. He was a good friend to both of us in the end.’

Alix buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.