The Forgotten 500 (29 page)

The alphabet code would be good for specific bits of information, but using it for all communication would be tedious and confusing. So Oliver and some of the other airmen came up with a slang-based code that could be used to quickly convey information that probably wouldn’t make much sense to any Germans listening in. Once all the senior officers approved the plan, Oliver used Morse code to tap out another plea for help.

 

Oliver had piloted a bomber called the Fighting Mudcat, and CO APO520 was the command of the Fifteenth Air Force.

The workhorse of the American Air Force was the C-47 cargo plane, so the airmen were asking that some C-47s be sent to them.

Oliver then went on to provide the “challenge” and “authenticator” that both parties could use to verify identities if a rescue party were sent. The challenge—the signal that the rescuers would send to prove they were friendlies—would be the first letter of the Fighting Mudcat’s bombardier’s last name and the color of the scarf worn by Banana Nose, the nickname of Sam Benigno, an airman in Oliver’s squadron who always wore a white scarf. The authenticator—the signal the airmen would send to prove they were friendlies and in on the plan—would be the last letter of the “chief lug’s” last name and the color of “the fist on the wall.” Those items referred to the commander of the 459th Bomb Group, who referred to all his crews as lugs, as in lug nuts or key parts of the machinery. On a wall at the Officers’ Club at their base, the commander had written, “Each lug in the 459th sign here,” and signed it, “M. M. Munn, Chief Lug.” The fist on the wall referred to the Fifteenth Air Force emblem, with a red fist.

Oliver also transmitted the serial numbers of himself and crewmates from his plane and one other bomber from the same group, cleverly adding them to the numerical coordinates of their location in Pranjane so that the string of numbers seemed meaningless. But he hoped that someone on the other end would figure out that the serial numbers confirmed his crew’s identities, and the remaining numbers pointed the rescuers to their exact location.

To ensure that the message would get through to the right people who could understand that code, Oliver signed off by saying,
Must refer to shark squadron, 459th Bomb Group, for decoding
. His squadron had shark teeth painted on the noses of all its B-24 bombers. Then he said,
Signed, TKO, Flat Rat 4 in lug order.
TKO were his initials, and he had signed the wall under Munn’s signature with
T. K. Oliver, Flat Rat 4,
a reference to how he and his bunkmates called their tent “the poker flat” and numbered themselves as flat rats one through four.

That complex code might save their lives, the airmen thought. Or it might mean they were on the radio too long and the Germans had already zeroed in on them. Or the damn thing might be too complicated for anyone to figure out.

All they could do was wait and hope someone had heard it and was tracking down all the right information.

 

 

 

The messages were heard in Italy
, where a Royal Air Force radio operator picked up the curiously coded pleas for help. He struggled for two hours to determine the location of the caller, finally recording them, and forwarded them on to the Fifteenth Air Force headquarters in Bari. There an intelligence officer locked himself in a room with the strange message and ordered that no one without a higher rank bother him. After a few hours of consternation, he started seeing patterns and bits of code that made sense. He was able to pull out the serial numbers and then he realized the remaining numbers must mean something. The longitude and latitude then became apparent. But he still couldn’t make sense of some of the more arcane references in Oliver’s code, and he understood the part that said,
Must refer to shark squadron, 459th Bomb Group, for decoding
. So he took the message to a Major Christi, commander of the 459th Bomber Group, from which Oliver’s crew flew. Christi was stymied for a while but intrigued by the unusual code and determined to figure out what it meant. The two officers sat for a long time, staring at the message, not saying much lest they interrupt each other’s thoughts. As he kept staring at the code, Christi had a sudden realization. “Mudcat Driver” and “Banana Nose Benigno” were his men.

“That’s Oliver’s crew and Buckler’s crew!” Christi yelled excitedly, standing up and looking at the intelligence officer with astonishment. “My God! Go get them!”

 

 

 

The code worked
. With the help of crew at the air bases where the missing men had been stationed, air force officials decoded the rest of the message and understood that the men were asking for a rescue operation. The intricate code convinced them that the message could be trusted.

Only some of this information was a revelation. The air force leaders weren’t surprised to hear that American airmen were hiding in the hills of Yugoslavia, but they had not realized that the airmen were grouped together and organized enough to send a coded message requesting rescue.

The airmen in Pranjane continued sending their coded pleas—
SOS . . . Call back
. . .—and waited for a reply. There was nothing for days, and then the radio crackled with a Morse code message from Bari. It was brief, but it said everything they wanted to hear:

They were going to be rescued! The Americans were coming to get them! The news kept the airmen jubilant for days, but they became quiet again as there was no more communication. They started to worry again that maybe a rescue wasn’t forthcoming, that maybe the message had been a trick by the Germans. While they held out hope that July 31 would bring good news, they fell back into their usual pattern of waiting, helping the villagers with their chores, and listening to the radio for any more word of an impending rescue. Despite the one encouraging message, the airmen were slowly getting used to the idea that maybe the air force couldn’t get them out. Maybe it just wasn’t possible to come into enemy territory and take home hundreds of weary, sick airmen. The men’s spirits sank lower and lower with each passing day. They played cards, swapped stories, anything to make the days pass.

Maybe July 31 would change everything. But they were wary about getting their hopes up. How could the Americans rescue so many of them? Even if some sort of rescue happened, what were the chances that you would be among those taken out before the Germans interrupted the operation? Not so great, many of the airmen thought. A big gamble.

 

 

 

As the airmen waited for
help, they could at least be confident that they were relatively safe in Pranjane. Germans were garrisoned only thirty miles away, down in the valley, and Nazi patrols routinely rolled in villages all over the area. But unlike most of the countryside in the hills of Yugoslavia, this particular area was secured by almost ten thousand of Mihailovich’s forces. Their job was to protect not only the American airmen but also Mihailovich’s headquarters nearby. Within this area, Serb villagers could be assured that a German patrol would not cavalierly drive in and do as they pleased, but they also knew that the presence of Mihailovich and the airmen made the area a hot target if the Germans ever decided to launch a full assault. Until that day came, however, the day-to-day security was in the hands of young men like Nick Petrovich, a seventeen-year-old in Mihailovich’s army. He had grown up listening to the stories of his grandfather and father who fought in the Turkish wars and in World War I, so when the Nazis invaded his country Petrovich knew he had to fight. He had revered the Serbian medieval heroes Kraljevich Marko and Milosh Obilich since he was a child, and in 1940 when he was only fourteen he altered his birth certificate so he could enter the Yugoslav gliding school, while also putting himself through a rigorous physical development program of his own design. When the Germans showed up a few years later, Petrovich felt ready to fight.

Petrovich joined Mihailovich’s forces at about the time Mihailovich was abandoned by the Allies, starting first with underground work such as information gathering and stealing firearms from the Germans. One of Petrovich’s methods was organizing small groups of children around ten years old to play marbles around parked German vehicles, watching for the opportunity to pilfer hand guns, ammunition, binoculars, or any other valuable items. They stuffed the booty in a flour sack and dragged it along behind them playfully. Petrovich became so bold that he once swiped a 9-mm submachine gun from an SS officer who lived in his girl-friend’s family home. He was beaten and interrogated by the Gestapo for hours but would not confess, and they released him the same day. As he proved himself more to the Chetniks, Petrovich took on more and more responsibility, soon assigned to helping the American airmen falling out of the sky on a regular basis.

The duty was one of the most important that could be assigned to Mihailovich’s troops, and it carried a great responsibility. As more Allied airmen gathered in Pranjane to await rescue, Mihailovich issued this stern warning to the officers commanding the guard in Pranjane:

“Take good care that nothing happens to these men. You must defend them, if necessary, with your lives. If any one of you comes to me with news that anything has happened to a single one of these airmen, I shall have the man who bears this news executed on the spot.” Mihailovich may have been exaggerating to make clear his dedication to protecting the airmen, but no one could be sure.

A typical operation for Petrovich involved blocking a road leading to the area where the airmen had bailed out by placing large rocks or trees in the path, then waiting for the German patrol to stop and remove them. Once the Germans exited their vehicles, Petrovich and his colleagues opened fire. Their weapons of choice were the big fifty-caliber machine guns salvaged from downed American bombers, which they took to local blacksmiths who would secretly fashion metal stands so the guns could be used on the ground against German troops. Then they would take the deadly guns and hide in the trees, waiting for German patrols to come by. The machine guns designed to shoot down German fighter planes shredded the Nazi soldiers who dared try to get too close to Pranjane.

Knowing the price the villagers might pay for the deaths of German soldiers, Petrovich and the other guards conducted such attacks only when they had no choice but to engage, such as when a German patrol threatened Allied airmen or Mihailovich himself was in the area of Pranjane. Petrovich knew how to hold his fire and not provoke German retribution unnecessarily, but when he had to fire, he did so with gusto.

Like the Germans who would kill the American airmen rather than be bothered with capturing them, Petrovich had no time for prisoners.

July 31 came and the airmen in Pranjane eagerly
scanned the skies for any sign of a plane coming to rescue them. As night fell they gathered in a field near the village, the presumed drop zone for anyone parachuting in to help them. Dozens of eyes looked to the horizon, through the tree-covered hills, for any hint of Americans coming to take them home. They always had a red-lens flashlight ready to signal the plane with the predetermined code. They waited all night and into the morning. The weather was clear and they saw no reason the rescue had not been carried out as promised. Their hopes were dashed as the sun rose on another day in Pranjane, another day in which the Allies would not come and help them. They were crushed with disappointment, and more than a few vowed they would not get their hopes up again.

But what the airmen did not know was that Operation Halyard was still a go. They had no way of knowing that Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian had already made repeated attempts to reach them in Pranjane but were stymied by everything from bad weather to bad Brits. The mission would have arrived on July 31 if only the weather had been clear between Bari and Pranjane. Unfortunately, the airmen could see only the starry night above them and had to assume the mission was not really coming. Their despair knew no bounds, made all the worse by the fact that it was unnecessary. Not only was help on the way, but the radio messages the airmen sent so bravely, risking hundreds of lives in the process, would be the real catalyst for getting the Americans on their way to Pranjane. The rescue plan was well underway, spurred by Mirjana’s letter to Vujnovich and Musulin’s report from the field, but the coded messages from the men in Pranjane threw some momentum behind the effort. An actual request from these men, their plea for help spelled out in a way that made their desperate situation crystal clear, seemed to light a fire under anyone who held that message in their hands.

Once the message was decoded by the Fifteenth Air Force, excited intelligence officers there forwarded it to the ACRU team in Bari. Vujnovich, Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian all gathered around to read the message together. The words made their mission seem more real, more personal.

They felt it in their gut, the dire straits these men were in, and they knew they were the only ones who could help them.

Now they had some solid information. They had confirmation about where the men were, that they were all gathered in one place, and that they were eagerly awaiting rescue. And the message provided Vujnovich and the rescue team with one more vital piece of information: The number of airmen was up to one hundred fifty.

Vujnovich didn’t like hearing that. Every extra man meant the mission was more difficult. He had thought one hundred airmen were a lot to bring out, and now they were dealing with one hundred fifty. But still, the message from the airmen pumped a new vigor into their efforts, overcoming the frustration and dejection they felt from their experience with the British. Seeing the desperation in the message convinced them anew that they had to get in there soon, and they had to make this mission work.