Eastern Approaches (40 page)

It grew colder: sharp, crackling autumn weather. The leaves fell and a bitter wind swept up the valley, ruffling the waters of the lake. Winter was not far off; a hard time for guerrillas. For the Partisans it would be the third spent in the woods, ‘
u šume
’. Already food was scarcer and the lack of proper boots and clothing was making itself felt.

Once again the Germans were attacking. Split had fallen, and, with the enemy in strength at Banjaluka and Travnik, just up the road, our position was none too secure. Daily their patrols pushed closer. Between us and the coast the Germans were forcing their way back into the areas which the Italians had evacuated.

War breaks down the barriers which divide us in peace time. Living as we did amongst the Partisans, we came to know them well, from Tito and the other leaders to the dozen or so rank and file who acted as our bodyguard and provided for our daily needs.

All had one thing in common: an intense pride in their Movement and in its achievements. For them the outside world did not seem of immediate interest or importance. What mattered was
their
War of National Liberation,
their
struggle against the invader,
their
victories,
their
sacrifices. Of this they were proudest of all, that they owed nothing to anyone; that they had got so far without outside help. In their eyes we acquired merit from the mere fact of our presence among them. We were living proof of the interest which the outside world
was at last beginning to take in them. We were with them ‘in the woods’. This, in itself, was a bond.

With this pride went a spirit of dedication, hard not to admire. The life of every one of them was ruled by rigid self-discipline, complete austerity; no drinking, no looting, no love-making. It was as though each one of them were bound by a vow, a vow part ideological and part military, for, in the conditions under which they were fighting, any relaxation of discipline would have been disastrous; nor could private desires and feelings be allowed to count for anything.

But, for all that, the Partisans were not dull people to live among. They would not have been Jugoslavs if they had been. Their innate turbulence, their natural independence, their deep-seated sense of the dramatic kept bubbling up in a number of unexpected ways.

Tito stood head and shoulders above the rest. When there were decisions to be taken, he took them; whether they were political or military, took them calmly and collectedly, after hearing the arguments on both sides. My own dealings were with him exclusively. From him I could be certain of getting a prompt and straightforward answer, one way or the other, on any subject, however important or however trivial it might be. Often enough we disagreed, but Tito was always ready to argue out any question on its merits, showing himself open to conviction, if a strong enough case could be made out. Often, where a deadlock had been reached owing to the stubbornness of his subordinates, he, on being approached, would intervene and reverse their decision.

One line of approach, I soon found, carried great weight with him: the suggestion, advanced at the psychological moment, that this or that line of conduct did or did not befit an honourable and civilized nation. By a discreet use of this argument I was able to dissuade him more than once from a course of action which would have had a calamitous effect on our relations. At the same time he reacted equally strongly to anything that, by the widest stretch of the imagination, might be regarded as a slight on the national dignity of Jugoslavia. This national pride, it struck me, was an unexpected characteristic in one whose first loyalty, as a Communist, must needs be to a foreign power, the Soviet Union.

There were many unexpected things about Tito: his surprisingly broad outlook; his never-failing sense of humour; his unashamed delight in the minor pleasures of life; a natural diffidence in human relationships, giving way to a natural friendliness; a violent temper, flaring up in sudden rages; a considerateness and a generosity constantly manifesting themselves in a dozen small ways; a surprising readiness to see two sides of a question. These were human qualities, hard to reconcile with the usual conception of a Communist puppet, and making possible better personal relations between us than I had dared hope for. And yet I did not for a moment forget that I was dealing with a man whose tenets would justify him in going to any lengths of deception or violence to attain his ends, and that these, outside our immediate military objectives, were in all probability, diametrically opposed to my own.

Of the men round Tito, we saw most during those early days of his gaunt Montenegrin Chief of Staff, Arso Jovanović, who as a regular officer of the old Jugoslav Army had studied at the Belgrade Staff College under General Mihajlović. A stiff, angular, unbending, unlovable man, he kept strictly to the business in hand, unimaginative, but coldly competent, supporting his arguments with facts and figures and frequent references to a captured German map. During Tito’s outbursts of anger or merriment he would remain silent. Then, when he had finished, he would resume his accurate and conscientious appreciation of the situation.

But Arso was not one of Tito’s real intimates. These, we soon found, were men with the same background as himself; professional revolutionaries, who had shared his exiles and imprisonments, helped him to organize workers’ cells and promote strikes, run with him the gauntlet of police persecution. Gradually we got to know them.

Perhaps the most important of all was Edo Kardelj,
¹
a small, stocky, pale-skinned, black-haired Slovene in the early thirties, with steel-rimmed spectacles and a neat little dark moustache, looking like a provincial schoolmaster, which, as it happened, was what he was. He, I found, was the theoretician of the Party, the expert Marxist dialectician.

There were a lot of questions about the theory and practice of
Communism that I had always wanted an answer to. Now was my opportunity. Kardelj knew all the answers. He was a fascinating man to talk to. You could never catch him out or make him angry. He was perfectly frank, perfectly logical, perfectly calm and unruffled. Muddle; murder; distortion; deception. It was quite true. Such things happened under Communism, might even be an intentional part of Communist policy. But it would be worth it in the long run. The end would justify the means. Some day they would get their way; some day their difficulties would disappear; their enemies would be eliminated; the people educated; and a Communist millennium make the world a happier and a better place. Then the need for strong measures would disappear. He might not live to see this happen. But he was quite ready, as they all were, not only to the himself, but to sacrifice everybody and everything that was near and dear to him to the cause which he had chosen, to liquidate anybody who stood in his way. Such sacrifices, such liquidations, would be for the greater good of humanity. What worthier cause could there be? And he looked at me steadily and amiably through his spectacles.

Then there was Marko, a Serb whose real name was Aleksander Rankovic.
¹
‘Marko’, it seemed, was his conspiratorial code-name. And indeed, everything about him was conspiratorial. He had a way of keeping in the background, and it was not for some time that I realized what an important part he played in the Movement. Chiefly as an organizer. He it was who, under Tito’s supervision, operated the Party machine; got rid of unreliable characters, promoted good men in their place; planted underground workers in the big towns; penetrated the quisling forces; penetrated the Gestapo. Still, like Kardelj, in his early thirties, he had been in prison before the war; had been with Tito from the start, taking an active part in the first uprising in Serbia in the summer of 1941. The son of a peasant, he had the stubborn, rather sly look which peasants often have. Not, you felt, a man who would come off worst in a bargain. And yet, somehow, a rather engaging character. ‘
Konspiracia!
’ he would say gleefully, winking and laying his finger at the side of his nose, ‘
Konspiracia!
’

There was Džilas, too, Montenegrin, young, intolerant and good-looking,
with a shock of hair like a golliwog; and Moše Pijade, an elderly intellectual from Belgrade, who, as almost the only Jew amongst the Partisans, became a favourite target for Nazi propaganda; both high up in the Party hierarchy. And the girls, Ždenka and Olga, who took turns at working for Tito, keeping his maps and lists and bundles of signals. Ždenka, a strange, pale, fanatical little creature. Olga, tall and well-built, in her black breeches and boots, with a pistol hanging at her belt, speaking perfect English, for before the war she had been sent to a smart finishing school in London by her father, a Minister in the Royal Jugoslav Government, in the hope of keeping her out of trouble. A hope which was doomed to disappointment, for no sooner was she back in her own country than, despite her background and upbringing, she joined the Communist Party, pledged to overthrow the Government of which her father was a member, and for her part in Communist disturbances was promptly thrown into prison by that same Government’s police. Now, for two years, she had hidden in the woods and tramped the hills, had been bombed and machine-gunned, an outlaw, a rebel, a revolutionary, a Partisan. But when she spoke English, it was like talking to a young girl at home before the war; the same words and expressions, the same way of talking, the same youthful tastes and enthusiasms — all pleasantly refreshing in these grim surroundings. Somehow one never thought of her as being married, but she had a husband who was a Bosnian Moslem and a baby that she had left behind when she joined the Partisans. Now the baby — a little girl — was in Mostar, a German garrison town down towards the coast, at the mercy of the Gestapo and of frequent R.A.F. bombings. She wondered if she would ever see her again. Once a photograph was smuggled out by an agent who had been working underground in Mostar for the Partisans, a tiny, blurred snapshot, which, as Vlatko Velebit said, made the child look like a tadpole. But Olga was delighted. At least her baby had been alive a week ago.

Finally, to complete Tito’s entourage, there were Boško and Prlja, his bodyguards, a formidable pair of toughs who never left his side, and his dog, Tigger, an enormous wolfhound, originally captured from the Germans and now his constant companion.

Two things struck me about this strange group over which Tito presided with a kind of amused benevolence; first their complete devotion to the Old Man, as they called him, and secondly the fact that all of them, young and old, men and women, intellectuals and artisans, Serbs and Croats, had been with him in the woods from the early days of the resistance, sharing with him hardships and dangers, setbacks and successes. This common experience had overcome all differences of class or race or temperament and forged between them lasting bonds of loyalty and affection.

The Partisans who formed our own escort were old stagers too, in battle-experience, that is, for some were boys in their teens. Not much to look at in tattered German and Italian tunics and heavily patched trousers tucked into leaky boots, they were alert and determined, and handled their weapons, gleaming and well cared for against the drab shabbiness of their clothes, like men who have borne arms all their lives.

Their leader had the rank of
ekonom
, or quartermaster sergeant, for his tasks included drawing our ration of black bread and stew from the cookhouse, supervising our baggage train of two or three weedy little Bosnian ponies and various other functions of an administrative rather than a combatant nature. To us he was known as the Economist. At first we did not altogether take to him. He looked, we thought, too clever by half with his sallow skin and crooked features. But, as time went on, and we had more opportunity of judging of his qualities, we conceived a certain affection for him, finding him willing, friendly, resourceful and dependable in an emergency. Later, he confided to me his greatest ambition: to become a ‘real soldier’. As a first step to this end, he hoped to qualify for special training of some kind, after which, with luck, he might even become a warrant officer. But for the present he remained our guard commander and general factotum.

Gradually, from our own observation, and from the reports which I was now receiving from my officers in different parts of the country, we began to form some idea of the extent and nature of the Partisan Movement in Jugoslavia. Here, it seemed, was something far more
important both militarily and politically than anyone outside Jugoslavia suspected.

At first, the tiny Communist-led guerrilla bands had, when opportunity offered, used the few weapons they possessed to attack isolated enemy outposts, to ambush convoys on lonely roads, killing the enemy soldiers and taking their arms and equipment. Then, better armed and better equipped at the expense of an unwary enemy, they had been able to undertake more ambitious operations; had come into possession of ever-larger quantities of weapons and supplies. Their numbers increased with their successes. As their victories became known, their ranks were joined by Jugoslavs from all over the country, men and women of all ages and from every walk of life. Of widely differing views and creeds, they were united by the belief that the Partisan Movement under Tito’s leadership offered the best chance of striking a blow for the liberation of their country, and all were filled with unquenchable enthusiasm for the fierce struggle in which they were engaged and for the new and better Jugoslavia which they saw as their ultimate aim and reward. Thus the Movement grew in strength.

Strategically the situation was well-suited to irregular operations. Everything in Jugoslavia favoured the guerrilla: the enemy’s long drawn-out lines of communication, his isolated garrisons and installations. The terrain, too, was well suited to the purpose. In the hills and woods the Partisans had a background for their operations which could be made to serve at will as a base, as a jumping-off point, as space in which to manœuvre, as a place in which to hide. It was an element as essential to their kind of warfare as the sea to naval warfare. By emerging unexpectedly from it they were able to achieve the surprise which is the essence of irregular operations. By fading back into it, once their immediate task was completed, they could deny the enemy any solid target at which to strike back. They enjoyed, too, the support of a civilian population deeply imbued with the tradition of resistance to the foreign invader, Teuton or Latin, Magyar or Turk.