Eastern Approaches (45 page)

Before we started, someone took a group with a camera taken from a German officer, a copy of which was, much to my surprise, to reach me by a courier months afterwards. Then we climbed into the truck; everybody pushed, and we rattled off down the hill in fine style.

The length of the ride hardly justified all the trouble which had been taken to put a vehicle on the road. We had scarcely started when we reached the demolished bridge and it was time for us to get out again and walk. But at least our friend the Brigadier had been able to assert the claim of his Brigade to be regarded as partially mechanized, a great source of prestige amongst the Partisans.

Just before we reached the summit of the ridge, we were overtaken by a thunderstorm and torrents of drenching rain, and for a few minutes we sheltered in a peasant’s but by the roadside, full of smoke and smelling of garlic, like a mountaineer’s but in the Alps.

Then the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, and a few minutes later we reached the top and were looking down on the Adriatic, with the islands in the distance, the jagged outline of their mountains grey-blue against the fading red of the sunset. Neither Mitja nor my bodyguard had ever seen the sea before, and so we
waited while they accustomed themselves to the idea of so much water. Then the sun sank behind the islands, and we started on our way down.

Below us on the right we could see the lights of Brela, where there was an Ustaše garrison. Further to the north, out of sight, lay Split, where the Germans were now firmly established. Immediately to the south, on our left as we descended, was Makarska also held by the enemy, and, beyond it stretched the peninsula of Pelješac, along which German troops from the garrisons at Mostar and Metković were beginning to advance, in preparation, no doubt, for an invasion of the islands. Somewhere in the darkness at our feet lay Baška Voda, still, for the moment, in Partisan hands.

Once or twice on the way down we were challenged by Partisan patrols, gave the password, and went on. Then, at last, we heard the dogs barking in Baška Voda, were challenged once more, and, passing between high white-washed walls, found ourselves on a narrow jetty, looking out over a tiny harbour.

There was no time to lose if we were to reach Korčula before daylight. While we made a frugal meal off a bottle of Dalmatian wine and a couple of packets of German ship’s biscuits, two Partisans in bell-bottomed trousers and fishermen’s jerseys started work on a fishing smack, fitted with an auxiliary engine, which was to take us across.

Soon everything was ready. The storm had cleared the air and it was a fine night. The wireless set and our kit were put on board; we followed them; I made myself comfortable in the bows with my pack under my head for a pillow, and, with the engine spluttering away merrily in the stern, we set out across the smooth star-lit waters of the Adriatic.

I have seldom slept better. When I woke, we were some way out and, looking back, we could see the lights of Makarska and of the other villages along the coast twinkling across the water. All around us, an unexpected and rather startling sight for one waking from a deep sleep, the dazzling white acetylene lights which the Dalmatians use for fishing flared and flickered from dozens of little boats. In war as in peace, black-out or no black-out, they continued to make their living in their own way, unmolested by Germans or Partisans. I asked
our crew whether the Germans made no attempt to keep a check on what was going on. ‘Yes,’ one of them said, ‘they patrol these waters regularly,’ and as he spoke, as if in answer to my question, there came the louder, more regular chugging of a more powerful engine, and a strong searchlight went sweeping over the surface of the sea a mile or two away.

The course which we followed was perforce a roundabout one, in and out amongst the islands. Once we stopped to drop a message at Sučuraj on the eastern extremity of the island of Hvar, half of which was held by the Partisans while the other half was occupied by a force of Ustaše, who had landed on it and were digging themselves in. As we approached Sučuraj, one of the crew, muttering ‘
Signal!
’ started fumbling in the locker and eventually produced a small lantern, which he lit, and then, standing up, waved a couple of times in the direction of the shore.

The response was immediate; a shower of machine-gun bullets ploughed up the water all round us. ‘Wrong signal,’ said our Partisan gloomily and waved his lantern three times instead of two. Once again the machine gun opened up, this time with rather better aim, and I began to wonder whether we had not perhaps struck the wrong part of the island and were not signalling to Ustaše. Meanwhile we had kept on our course and were by now within hailing distance of the shore. ‘
Partizani!
’ we shouted hopefully.

To my relief the sentry did not give us another burst. ‘Is that you, Comrade?’ he shouted. ‘I thought it must be, but why did you give the wrong signal?’ And an argument started which was still in progress when, after delivering our message, we once again put out to sea. Soon I was asleep again and when I next woke the sun was coming up behind the mountains on the mainland and we were nearing our destination.

T
HE
wooded hills of Korčula stood out black against the pale sky. As we rounded the point and entered the harbour, the first rays of the rising sun were beginning to fall on the old houses of the port. Picking our way through a motley assortment of fishing vessels, we tied up by some stone steps which ran down to the water at the base of an ancient circular tower, emblazoned with the Lion of St. Mark, the symbol of former Venetian domination.

We had arrived.

Although by my watch (Cairo time? Greenwich Mean Time? Central European Time? Double British Summer Time?) it was only five in the morning, a small crowd had soon collected to look at us. It included, I noticed with pleasure, one extremely pretty girl. After the tired, ragged villagers of the mainland, the islanders seemed prosperous and well, almost smartly, dressed. The houses, too, with their white, yellow, or pink walls and their green shutters, were undamaged and looked bright and inviting in the early sunlight. The sea was blue and clear as glass. The whole place had a holiday air that was most agreeable after our exertions and the austerity of Partisan life. Sleepily we tumbled out of our boat and up the steps and asked for Partisan Headquarters.

Everybody knew where it was and everybody came with us to show us the way, chattering merrily to us as we went, for the Dalmatians have something of the cheerful volubility of the Italians they dislike so much. As usual we were plied with innumerable questions. What was happening on the mainland? Were the Germans going to invade the islands? How were they to defend themselves if they did? Had we met Tito? What was he like? Were we English or American? Had we been to California, where their aunt lived? (The Dalmatians are great settlers.) Or Australia, where they had cousins? Would we take a letter to their father’s brother in New Zealand? Did we realize
what devils incarnate the Italians were, and how the island had suffered under the occupation? What had we come for? How long were we staying? Were we married? Did we like dancing?

Answering some questions and avoiding others, we made our way, followed by an excited, gesticulating crowd which increased in size as we went along, through the winding streets of the town to the old Venetian palace which housed its new rulers. Over the doorway the Lion of St. Mark stood headless, decapitated by some over-zealous Partisan, anxious evidently to celebrate the end of Mussolini’s rule by destroying the symbol of an earlier period of Italian domination. We went in, through a magnificent colonnade and up a fine Renaissance staircase, at the top of which was a door. We knocked, someone answered, and we entered to find ourselves face to face with a Franciscan friar, who rose to greet us with the clenched fist salute. He was, he said, the Chairman of the Odbor, the local Soviet. We, for our part, explained who we were and what we had come for. He replied that he was delighted to see us and that all the resources of the island would be placed at our disposal. Meanwhile, while we were waiting for a house to be got ready, perhaps we would like to have something to drink.

We said we wouldn’t mind if we did. He rang and a bottle was brought in, closely followed by a curly headed youth of about twenty, who was introduced as the commander of the garrison, a tall, elegant, Edwardian-looking character with a drooping moustache, who turned out to be his political commissar and a brisk little man in a white silk shirt and sun-glasses who had been skipper of a merchant vessel. Glasses were taken out of a cupboard and filled. The wine, a sunny Dalmatian vintage from the islands, called, with admirable succinctness,
grk
, was heady and delicious, and soon we were all engaged in animated conversation.

By the time a Partisan arrived to announce that our house was ready we felt that there was hardly anything we did not know about the war-time history of Korčula. We were told of the brutality and licentiousness of the Italians, of the girls who had been seduced and the hostages who had been taken out and shot. Of how the Padre, as our Franciscan was known, had from his monastery kept in touch with
the Partisans in the hills. Of how these, under the leadership of the curly headed youth, had been a thorn in the flesh of the Italians, waylaying them on lonely roads and blowing up their lorries and cutting their throats when they least expected it. Of the reprisals. And the counter-reprisals. Of the capitulation and what they had said and done to the Italians before they left for Italy; and the magnificent stores and equipment which they had forced them to leave behind.

When we left, they all came with us and the crowd, who had waited outside, followed along in our wake. We were taken to a little whitewashed house perched on a rocky point overlooking the harbour. From it rough steps ran down to the sea and you could plunge straight into two or three fathoms of clear blue water. The rooms were light and airy and the sun was streaming in through the open windows. In the kitchen a cook was busy preparing a succulent meal. We felt slightly bewildered. It was as though we had rubbed a magic ring and suddenly found ourselves miraculously provided with all the things we had been dreaming of for weeks past. Then the Padre asked us anxiously whether it would do and, having been assured that it would, went off back to his office, promising to come back and see us later.

After he had gone, we stripped off our dusty sweat-soaked clothes and, running down the steps, jumped into the sea. It was late enough in the year for the water to be cold and its chill refreshed us. Soon we were swimming far out into the narrow straits, scarcely a mile wide, which divide Korčula from the Pelješac peninsula. In front of us, as we swam, the high, dark hills of Pelješac ran steeply down to the sea, the fishermen’s cottages clustering by the water’s edge. As we watched some fishing boats put out from the shore. A few miles to the south, where the peninsula joins the mainland, we knew that the Germans were beginning their advance along it. Looking back, we could see the whole town of Korčula spread out round the harbour, the old churches, houses and palaces golden in the morning sunlight.

We swam till we were tired. Then we came in and dried ourselves and put on the clean shirts which each of us had kept rolled up in his pack against just such an occasion as this. An enormous and delicious meal, half breakfast and half luncheon, was waiting for us: fish, eggs,
meat, cheese, coffee, fruit, Dalmatian wine, Maraschino from Zara as well as all kinds of luxuries left behind by the Italians in their flight. The cook, it seemed, had worked in one of the royal palaces. He might well have done. We certainly did justice to his cooking.

When we had finished eating, we lay down on our beds and fell deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

I was awakened, sooner than I would have liked, by the rustle of the Padre’s robe and by the slapping of his sandals on the stone floor. Grudgingly, I struggled back to consciousness. Outside a little Italian staff car was waiting, its exhaust puffing impatiently. The skipper was there too, and the garrison commander. We were off on a tour of the island.

My recollections of that afternoon are confused. It began at I suppose two with a
vin d’honneur
and a snack with the oldest inhabitant of the next village (a process, which, as we found to our cost, was to be repeated at every other village and township in the island). It ended with a municipal dinner and a dance in the early hours of the following morning. It had the same nightmarish and exhausting quality as the last frantic days of an election campaign, with, in addition, a fantastic comic-opera character all of its own.

At each village, after we had swallowed the inevitable
vin d’honneur
and snack, we inspected the local Partisan detachment. At our first stopping-place we had greatly admired the detachment Commander, a magnificent figure of a man with fierce black moustaches, mounted on a fine black horse.

We were no less impressed by the handsome appearance and military bearing of the detachment Commander at the next village, also a typical Dalmatian and equally well mounted, though his horse, perhaps, did not seem quite so fresh or so full of spirit as the first we had seen. When, after we had visited the oldest inhabitant, we looked round for him to say goodbye, he was strangely enough, no longer there.

At our next halt, once again, the local detachment and with it its Commander was there to greet us. This time we looked closely at the Commander. His horse’s flanks, we noticed with some surprise, were heaving and flecked with foam as if it had just had a hard gallop.

And then, that curving neck, that flowing mane and tail, those
magnificent moustaches — surely it was more than a resemblance But in his eye there was no flicker of recognition as he saluted and shook hands, and so, once again we congratulated him on the smartness of his detachment and then turned tactfully away, leaving him to gallop on ahead on his charger — the only one on the island — and place himself at the head of his troops in readiness for our arrival at the next village along the line.

His must have been, I think, an engaging character, a mixture of southern
panache
, rustic guile, and a childlike desire to please. I was never able to find out what became of him in the fierce fighting that was soon to sweep over Korčula.

Other isolated incidents remain ineradicably impressed on my memory. I remember being pelted with flowers by some nuns. I remember noticing that, in contrast to the Roman Catholic clergy on the mainland, here the priests in most of the villages on Korčula seemed to be leading lights in the Partisan Movement. I remember visiting a hand-grenade factory; and a hospital where a man was having his leg cut off by a German-Jewish doctor; and a printing press where nothing in particular was happening. I have a vivid recollection of making several speeches in Serbo-Croat, one from a balcony. I shall also always remember meeting Sergeant Duncan, from whom we had somehow got separated, coming round the island in the opposite direction on a triumphal tour of his own, standing up in a lorry, swaying slightly and loudly acclaimed by the crowd. Finally I have hazy memories of the dance at a village called Blato which rounded off our day’s entertainment and which was dramatically interrupted by the explosion of a small red Italian hand-grenade which became detached from one of the girls’ belts as she whirled round the barn in which it was being held.

That night we slept very soundly.

During the days that followed our chief concern was with our wireless. We had had no contact since Livno. Mechanically the set seemed in order, but clearly something was radically wrong. Try as we would, Cairo remained deaf to our tappings, and we seemed to be able to pick up nothing of theirs.

This was a serious matter. I had undertaken to send the Navy detailed landing instructions for their motor launch. They had agreed in principle to come to Korčula, and were due to make the attempt any day now, but would they in fact risk one of their light craft so near the enemy coast without an explicit assurance that all was well? Worse still, the absence of any message from us would probably be taken to mean that I had never reached Korčula, or that it was now in enemy hands. Anxiously we tried heightening the aerial, fiddling with the crystal, taking the whole set up to the top of a nearby hill. Nothing did any good. There was also the question of the King still weighing heavily on my mind.

The only hope was to try to send a Partisan courier through to Jajce with instructions that my message should be relayed from there. But that might take weeks. Resignedly we copied out the signal on a sheet of paper, leaving it in cipher in case it should fall into the hands of the enemy. I addressed it to Vivian Street, and that night we watched the courier start off by boat for the mainland. Until I had had an answer one way or the other I myself was bound to stay where I was, for otherwise the M.L. might arrive and find no one there to meet it. I accordingly settled down to wait.

The days went by, fine and bright. Our wireless remained obstinately silent. There was no news of the courier. The fighting on Pelješac seemed to have bogged down. From time to time excited Partisans came running in to tell us that our ship had been sighted or had arrived at one of the other islands, or had been sunk and was now floating off the island bottom upwards. On investigation none of these stories were found to have the slightest foundation, but they relieved the tedium of waiting.

For some time it had almost seemed as if the Germans had wind of our intentions or at any rate of my presence on the island.

Once I had occasion to visit a neighbouring islet. It was so near that it had seemed unnecessary to take the usual precaution of waiting for darkness. The Partisans placed at my dispsoal a magnificent speedboat, resplendent with glistening white paint and shining brass, the relic of some pre-war millionaire holiday-maker. From the stern a large Partisan flag fluttered gaily in the breeze. Behind us, as we roared out
of Korčula harbour, an immense foaming wake surged up and sped in ripples towards the shore. For a moment I wondered if all this was wise. Only for a moment. Then I knew it was not. Above the roar of our own engines another, only too familiar sound had reached my ears. As I looked round to see where it came from, a large three-engined German flying boat, flying very slowly and so low that I could see the rear-gunner’s face, came suddenly over the brow of the nearest hill. Our steersman took immediate and spectacular evasive action, thereby rendering us even more embarrassingly conspicuous than we were already. Turning over in my mind the possibility of a quick dive over the side, I watched the rear-gunner anxiously to see how he was reacting. Apparently he was not interested, thinking perhaps that only Ustaše or other Axis sympathizers would circulate by day in such a showy craft. Or else he had left his ammunition at home. In any case he did not attack us, but continued peaceably on his way towards the main harbour, where, we heard afterwards, he scared the life out of our cook by skimming past our house at what is known by the R.A.F. as ‘nought feet’ and peering in at the windows. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the enemy was looking for somebody or something.