The Forgotten 500 (28 page)

And they waited.

Musulin finally asked the jump master what was wrong, and he relayed the pilot’s report that there was a problem with the ground signals.

“No ground signals over the drop zone!” the jump master shouted over the airplane noise, in a British accent. “We’re sending, but there’s nothing on the ground!”

He was referring to the way Allied planes confirmed that they were over the right drop zone and that the friendly guerillas on the ground were there to receive the agents. When the time and location of the drop was arranged, the air force had informed Mihailovich that the plane would send a specific signal of light flashes and that the men on the ground must respond with another light signal. The plane was sending its designated signal, but there was no return flash on the ground. Without the confirmation signal, the agents could find themselves alone once they hit the ground, or worse, the Germans may have found out about the drop and were waiting for the spies to land. No ground signal meant no drop. The jump master informed Musulin that the plane was heading back to Brindisi, and the trio had no choice but to abort the mission.

Vujnovich was not happy to see the agents return that night, but it was not an uncommon sight. Missions often were aborted at the last minute when something went wrong with equipment, or the plane got lost, or intelligence revealed new information. Better to come back and try again later than throw the agents out over the wrong drop zone or right into the hands of the Gestapo. The agents planned their next attempt, and on another night they again drove to Brindisi and boarded the C-47, flying into Yugoslavia.

This time the plane had to turn back because of a fierce storm over the mountains in Yugoslavia.

The next time, it was flak on the way to the drop zone. Too much antiaircraft fire to get through safely.

So far it seemed like just the routine reasons a mission can be aborted. But then Musulin and his team started getting suspicious about the British who were supposed to be flying them in. Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian soon realized that the British were not just unenthusiastic about the mission. They were actively sabotaging it, or at least that’s how it appeared to the American team.

The outright hostility of the British was made evident on the next attempt to jump into Pranjane, a few days later. Musulin learned that on the first attempt, when there were no ground signals, the problem actually was that the pilot had flown to the wrong coordinates. They were in the wrong place, so that explained why there was no welcoming party. Knowing that, Musulin wanted to double-check the coordinates soon after they took off on their fourth attempt to go rescue the airmen. He went forward and asked the pilot to confirm their destination. The pilot read out the coordinates he intended to take the men to and, as soon as he checked the spot on his own map, Musulin exploded in anger.

“That’s Partisan territory!” he yelled. “Where the hell did you get those coordinates?”

The pilot, visibly intimidated by the large and very angry American, explained that he had been briefed on the mission by his British superiors and he was just following orders. That answer did not satisfy Musulin, and then his blood pressure went a few ticks higher as he noticed a Partisan soldier sitting in the back of the plane.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Musulin screamed, incredulous that a Tito supporter was sitting on the plane that supposedly was going to take them to Mihailovich territory.
What in the world is going on here? Are they trying to sabotage this mission?

The pilot’s answer did not improve the situation. He explained that the Partisan was assigned to act as the jump master for this mission. He would be the one who told Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian where and when to jump.
Oh, hell no.

“No son-of-a-bitch Communist is going to push me and my men out of this plane,” Musulin boomed. “We’re aborting this mission. Forget it!”

The three Americans were astounded that the Brits had so completely fouled up their efforts to get into Pranjane, but they still had a hard time believing that their tea-sipping allies were actually trying to sabotage Operation Halyard. Could they really be so opposed to Mihailovich that they would jeopardize the lives of these agents, not to mention preventing the rescue of a hundred airmen? The answer came on the next attempt.

All three of the men were on high alert when they boarded the plane the next time, watching for any sign that the British were undercutting their mission in any way. Musulin checked the coordinates and they seemed right. There was no damned Communist on the plane, at least none that was actually wearing the red-star cap of a Tito Partisan. All seemed well and the trio thought they might finally get into Pranjane this time. The jump site neared and the team again double-checked all their gear, confirmed their plans once they landed, and then they watched the red light and waited for the jump master to tell them to go.

Finally it happened. On the fifth attempt to get into Pranjane, the light turned green and the British jump master gave them the signal and the trio walked over to the open door of the plane. Musulin took the lead as the mission commander and was bracing himself in the doorway, pausing for the Brit to check that his rip cord was securely fastened to the cable over their heads that would pull his chute out. Rajacich and Jibilian were in line behind him, ready to leap out immediately afterward. The jump master had his hand on Musulin’s back, ready to give him a hard shove that would help him clear the plane. All Musulin had to do was to let go of the doorframe and Operation Halyard would be underway.

But then he saw something.
What the hell is that?
He couldn’t tell for sure what he was seeing on the ground, but it didn’t look right. He held on to the plane’s doorframe while he looked and then, suddenly, he realized what he was looking at in the darkness below.
Son of a bitch! You goddamn Brits are trying to kill us!

Musulin pushed back hard from the doorway, knocking Rajacich and Jibilian off balance. The jump master looked at him quizzically and yelled to ask what was wrong.

“We’re right over a damn battle! Look at that! Look!” Musulin screamed. He wanted to dangle the jump master out by his feet so he could get a good view, but he resisted the urge. Rajacich and Jibilian went to the door and peered out too, and they were shocked at what they saw: the flashes of light from heavy weaponry, vehicles, and soldiers in an active gun battle below them. The British were trying to drop them into the middle of a full-fledged battle. They would never have made it to the ground alive.

Musulin couldn’t be sure whether the British were actively trying to kill them and stop the Halyard mission or whether they were just completely incompetent. But he was leaning toward sabotage as the explanation. He knew about James Klugmann in the British SOE post at Bari, knew him as a Communist with way too much influence over British operations, and he suspected Klugmann and the other Tito supporters were manipulating the Halyard mission. Jibilian didn’t even doubt it. He was sure the Brits were trying to kill them.
They were hoping we would just drop into the battle and disappear
.

No matter what the explanation was for the Brits’ actions, the OSS agents had had enough of this. Musulin marched into Vujnovich’s office and demanded an American plane, an American crew, and an American jump master. They weren’t going back into Yugoslavia without an all-American team.

Vujnovich was happy to comply.

In Pranjane, the Americans had no idea that the ACRU
team was working so hard to rescue them. The plight of the downed airmen was getting worse every day and in every way. Food was in short supply even for the local people, who shared all they could with the downed Americans, and some of the fliers were in desperate need of medical care for the wounds they suffered on their ill-fated bombing runs. Richard Felman, the leader of the airmen who had watched the Germans burn a Serb village when the Chetniks would not give up the fliers, decided that it was only a matter of time before the Germans found the hidden Americans. When that time came, it would be a bloodbath. Not only would they probably kill all the Americans instead of taking them prisoner, but they would kill all of the innocent Serbs as well. Or the Germans might even do something worse than killing them as punishment for helping the airmen.

Felman met with some other ranking officers of the Americans in Pranjane and started debating whether to do something to facilitate their rescue. Up this point they had been just waiting, hoping that the Allies knew they were there and were planning some way to get them home. And they assumed that Mihailovich, who was protecting them so diligently, had made contact with the Americans. But nothing was happening. Weeks and months had passed with no word of any way they might get out of Yugoslavia.

Felman and the other airmen wanted to do something to help themselves, but what? Some of the airmen wanted to send a radio message telling the Allies where they were and that they needed rescue. It was possible, because the Chetniks routinely salvaged anything they could use from the crashed bombers, including radios. With a little repair work they probably could get a radio working well enough to broadcast a message back to Allied territory. But it would be a risky move. So far their survival depended on the Nazis not knowing exactly where they were. Though the Germans knew that American airmen were being hidden in the hills of Yugoslavia, they didn’t know that so many were concentrated in the small town of Pranjane. Even with Mihailovich’s forces surrounding them, the Germans could launch an air strike that would devastate the entire town, killing the Americans and all the local people as well. It was crucial that the Germans not find their hidden sanctuary.

A radio message could change all of that. Just as Jibilian and his team had found out earlier, a radio message could allow the enemy to zero in on your exact location. The longer the message, and the stronger the broadcast, the easier it was for the enemy to determine where you were hiding. If they got on the radio and started calling to their bases in Italy, the first response could be a fleet of German fighters and bombers unleashing hell on them.

Everyone agreed it was a huge risk, but it was one they had to take. Felman and other ranking officers in Pranjane decided they had to send a message to the Fifteenth Air Force base in Bari, Italy. They asked Mihailovich’s forces to send them a radio from one of the planes, and Mihailovich agreed, knowing that the risky message might be the only way to get help for the airmen. Thomas Oliver, the airman who parachuted down onto a family’s picnic, was part of the group pushing for the message to Italy and he worked closely with radio operators and others in the group to devise the right way to call Italy. Everyone knew they had to be cautious.

At first the group decided to just be quick about it. They would send short, simple radio messages to Italy in hopes that the Allies would pick up the transmission but that the Germans wouldn’t have time to zero in on where it was coming from. When it was time to send the first call for help, there were dozens of airmen gathered around the radio, set up on a farmhouse table. A radio operator took the controls and put his finger on the Morse code key. He looked at the other men and took a deep breath before sending the first message from the downed airmen. He began to tap.

That was it. That was all they were willing to send out at first, lest they give the Germans plenty of time to trace the radio call. So they sat and waited, their eyes on the radio, hoping fervently to hear a message tapping in return. They waited for hours. There was no reply. Slowly the men left the room, a few at a time, dejected as they realized that no one had heard them.

As the radio sat silent, Felman and the other officers discussed the situation and decided to keep trying. They would send the same message every few hours and maintain a vigil by the radio, waiting for someone to call them back.

They waited two days and heard nothing.

Then they realized that, in all likelihood, the Fifteenth Air Force in Bari, Italy, was hearing them after all but just not replying. They probably suspected this was a trick, some sort of trap set by the Nazis to lure in a rescue mission.
Of course
, Felman thought,
they’re not going to just get on the radio and arrange a rescue without knowing for sure that the message is legitimate.
They had to develop a code that would convince the Allies their message was trustworthy, that it really was coming from the airmen and not some Nazi intelligence unit.

Oliver volunteered to work with some other airmen to develop a code. American slang would be a good idea, they thought, because it would confuse any Germans listening in. But more important, they had to code their message with information known only to those back at their air bases in Italy. That inside information would serve two purposes: It would show the Allies that the senders were really American airmen, and it would confound any Germans trying to break their code.

The airmen came up with two codes. The first was a simple letter transposition that required the receiver to know key information unknown to the Germans. Instead of the letter “A,” the code letter would be the third letter of the place of birth of a bartender at the Officers’ Club in Lecce, Italy. Instead of “B,” they would use the fourth letter of the name of the intelligence officer stationed in Brindisi, Italy. The airmen worked out an entire alphabet code with similar keys. Sending this much information would mean staying on the radio far longer than anyone had been comfortable with so far, but the airmen saw no other way to jump-start the communication process. They prayed for the best and transmitted the alphabet code to those listening in Italy. Once they were done, both parties had a code they could use to send specific information back and forth regarding a rescue without letting the Germans know what their plans were.