The Forgotten 500 (8 page)

The boots walked right into the small bedroom and stopped, no more than a couple feet from Musgrove’s face. He couldn’t take his eyes off the shiny black leather. They remained motionless for a moment, the house totally quiet, Musgrove praying that he could remain perfectly still, perfectly silent. All the German officer had to do was bend down and look under the bed, where Musgrove had little room to hide himself from view, and the airman would be captured. But he didn’t.

After a long, long time, the boots turned and walked out of the room briskly, stomping through the main room and out the door. Musgrove breathed again.

 

 

 

The officer was looking for
Musgrove because he was the only crewman missing from his bomber. The other nine had been captured already and were on their way to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Musgrove’s experience was typical of the airmen drifting down in Yugoslavia. On the ground, the local villagers were counting parachutes too. They wanted to send help to every American who made it out, before the Germans could find them, but the airmen didn’t know what to expect as they drifted down into the hills of Yugoslavia. They had been given only scant briefings about the conditions in this Nazi-occupied territory that they flew over on every bombing run, and all they really understood was that there were plenty of people to stay away from. There were Germans everywhere, and the local people were split into two warring groups—those who followed Mihailovich and wanted him to run the country after kicking out the Germans, and those who followed a man named Josip Broz Tito. Some of the airmen were told to seek out Tito’s forces if they went down in Yugoslavia and not to trust the Mihailovich army.

But it turned out that the airmen didn’t have much opportunity to seek out one side or the other. Wherever you landed, the locals found you quickly. Most of the airmen landing in the hills of northern Yugoslavia, like Musgrove, Orsini, and Wilson, were lucky to land in the hands of Mihailovich’s forces and the villagers who supported him.

Though most of the Americans didn’t know for a while if they were in good hands or bad, before long, a big, rough-looking, bearded man with a rifle—one of Mihailovich’s forces—would show up and say,
“Americanski?”
When the airman said yes, the scary fellow would embrace the flier in a bear hug and let him know that he was safe.

The airmen had time for the fear to build as they drifted down, sometimes taking as long as twenty minutes to reach the ground. As Tony Orsini was drifting down to an unknown fate, he saw a heavyset woman in a long dress racing toward him. He didn’t know what to think of this, other than to be glad that she was not a German soldier carrying a rifle. He kept his eyes on her as he drifted down and didn’t realize until the last moment that he was flying right into a tree. With little time to brace, Orsini hit the tree hard and broke his clavicle, falling hard to the ground and passing out.

When he awoke, his face was in the ample bosom of the woman he had seen racing toward him. She was cradling his head and wiping his face, wrapping her arms around to hug him and saying soothing things in a voice that was foreign to him yet still remarkably comforting. The pain from his shoulder was sharp and unyielding, but he immediately knew he had come down in the right place. After waiting for him to regain his strength a bit, the woman helped Orsini to his feet and then guided him down a rugged path toward her village. As he approached, Orsini could see that the bombardier from his crew also had been found and had arrived in the village only moments earlier. The residents of the village were pouring out of their homes to greet the two Americans, everyone excited and chattering among themselves as Orsini and the other man tried to take in this incredible scene. Only a short time earlier, they’d had no idea what they would find on the ground and here they were being greeted like heroes. One family even brought out a piece of red carpet for the Americans to sit on as the other villagers brought them water, goats’ milk, and bread.

After a few hours of socializing and eating, Orsini and the bombardier were sent off with several men, the rest of the village waving good bye and kissing them on the cheeks as if they were sons going off to war. The Americans had no idea where they were going, since they still had not met anyone who spoke English, but they felt assured by this point that the local people were looking out for them. After a hike of an hour or two, the Americans arrived at an encampment of Mihailovich’s guerilla fighters in a mountainous area. Unlike in the village, these were all tough-looking men, looking older than their years because of their bushy Old Testament beards and weather-worn faces. Their clothing varied somewhat, the officers wearing more complete uniforms, the lower ranks outfitted in bits and pieces of uniforms plus whatever else they could find. The better-dressed officers wore woolen jackets with leather belts, woolen breeches with leggings that wrapped from the ankle to the knee, and round caps with no bill and a crest on the front. The luckier guerillas had sturdy military boots, but many had to make do with simple felt slippers.

They were a formidable sight to leery fliers, but they greeted Orsini and the other Americans in the same way, with bear hugs and hearty claps on the back, accompanied by shouts of,
“Americanski!”

There was still not much communication, other than a few simple words of English from some of the Yugoslav guerillas, but Orsini knew he was safe for the moment. He still didn’t know how he would get home, but he could trust these fierce-looking soldiers to protect him in the meantime.

As he lay down to sleep that night, Orsini found that one of Mihailovich’s soldiers had taken a particular liking to the good-looking young Italian-American boy. Drifting off to sleep after a long day, Orsini suddenly awoke when he felt the man sleeping next to him fumbling with the zipper on his uniform pants. Orsini pushed the man’s hands away, explaining that he wasn’t interested, but the man was insistent. The American had to keep fending off the brawny, hairy man’s advances for several minutes, finally pointing to his injured shoulder and explaining that it hurt too much. This seemed to convince the amorous Yugoslav, who nodded and smiled at Orsini before going back to his own blanket.

Orsini was relieved. After such an eventful day, the man’s advances were just one more unexpected problem that he had overcome. He was too tired to think much about it and soon went to sleep. The next morning, however, the same man approached Orsini with a smile and handed him a picture of himself. The Yugoslav knew Orsini would be moving on soon, and he wanted the American to remember him. On the back of the picture, he had written, “Remember your days in Ravna Gora.”

Orsini thanked the man and shook his hand. No hard feelings. He put the picture in his pocket and would end up keeping it for many years.

 

 

 

Still reeling from watching the
tragic crash of the bomber flying alongside the one he had just bailed out of, Wilson had his eyes closed tight when he heard dogs barking. The sound caused him to open his eyes and look at the countryside he was dropping into. It was rugged terrain, but he could see that parts of it were farmland also, and the dogs seemed to be with a flock of sheep nearby. Though these dogs weren’t making a move toward Wilson, many of the airmen dropping into northern Yugoslavia had to contend immediately with angry dogs that the local shepherds used not just to herd the flock but also to keep the wolves away. The aggressive dogs looked even scarier with the large, spiked iron collars that many wore to help protect them in fights with wolves. Fortunately for most of the airmen, the barking of the dogs attracted the shepherds before any serious damage was done.

Wilson could see local people in the fields and realized immediately that he would not be able to hide after landing. Everyone saw him coming down, and he was sure they would be on him soon, friendly or not. He landed well and undid his parachute harness quickly, leaving the canopy snagged in a tree because there was no use trying to hide it. He walked out of the small clearing where he came down and saw a burly man in heavy woolen clothes walking toward him. In the July heat, Wilson thought it was a strange sight. The man’s appearance made Wilson feel like he had landed in the Middle Ages.

The man was walking toward Wilson briskly and when he got within earshot, Wilson could hear him yelling,
“Americanski or Englaise?”
Not knowing yet whether the man would help or hurt him, Wilson felt like he had no choice but to answer. “American!” he yelled back. “I’m American!”

That caused the man to break into a jog and then embrace Wilson in a tight bear hug, almost lifting the bewildered American off his feet. Wilson didn’t quite know how to respond as the man kissed him on both cheeks, his beard scratching the airman’s face. The Yugoslav was all smiles as he shook Wilson’s hand and slapped him on the back, saying,
“Americanski!”
over and over. Wilson could only manage a weak smile because he was exhausted from the ordeal on the plane, plus he didn’t really know what was going on. But when he saw the man gesture to a girl nearby who was carrying a wooden cask, he perked up at the sight. He was desperately thirsty and wanted nothing more at that moment than a drink of water.

The girl ran over and handed him the cask as the big man smiled and gestured for him to drink. Wilson pulled out the wooden plug and turned the cask up, drinking deep before he realized it wasn’t water but what the locals called
rakija
, a strong plum brandy. Wilson choked and coughed as the man laughed and the girl smiled at him.

The brandy helped quench Wilson’s thirst somewhat, and the resulting buzz took the edge off the rest of his discomfort for a while. He wasn’t at all sure what these people were going to do with him, but they did seem happy to help him so Wilson began to relax a bit after the terrible ordeal he’d been through. He sat and rested while the others talked excitedly, looking toward him often and gesturing in a way that made it clear they were discussing him. Before long, the burly man who had hugged him gestured toward a nearby path and helped Wilson stand up, saying something that Wilson understood to mean they were leaving. He walked with a small group of men for a short while, coming upon a building that Wilson took to be some sort of military site, east of a fairly large town called Jagodina and southeast of Belgrade, the national capital. There were several men with rifles standing guard, and Wilson could see boxes of ammunition and other supplies.

The group rested for a long time, the Yugoslavs talking but Wilson not understanding anything. Then he noticed another group approaching the building, and as they came closer he could see that one of the group was not like the others. He was wearing a flight suit. It didn’t take long for Wilson to recognize one of his crewmates from the B-17 and he rushed out to greet him. Over the next eight hours, several more groups straggled in with an airmen or two in tow, until eight of the B-17’s crew were gathered together again. Only the pilot and copilot were still missing, and Wilson suspected that was because they had bailed out much later and farther away than the other crew.

The plane’s radio operator, Norman Brooks, had broken his ankle on landing, but otherwise the crew were in pretty good shape considering the ordeal they had been through.

 

 

 

The same scenes were repeated
all over northern Yugoslavia throughout much of 1944. Mike McKool, a Texas native, was a machine gunner on a B-17 when he bailed out over Yugoslavia on July 4, 1944. His story was similar to those of the other fliers: His bomber was on a mission from Manduria in southern Italy to the oil fields of Ploesti when two engines went out on the return flight over Yugoslavia. Two German fighters had been waiting in the area for damaged bombers and attacked, destroying a third engine and prompting the crew to bail out near Lapovo, about eighty miles south of Belgrade. On landing, McKool immediately found a hole to hide in but watched with trepidation as fifteen to twenty people came running toward him with pitchforks and sickles. McKool worried that he was about to be hacked to death by angry villagers, but they threw down their farming tools when they got to McKool and hugged him tightly, fighting one another for the chance to kiss him on the cheek. McKool was still bewildered by the warm welcome when two men with rifles came running up, shouting to the crowd urgently. Whatever he was saying, McKool understood that Germans were coming. They must have seen his parachute.

The two soldiers, members of Mihailovich’s forces, pushed the other locals away and one grabbed McKool’s parachute, quickly bundling it into a ball and carrying it away. The other one grabbed him by the arm and urged him to come along. For the next six hours, McKool was on the run with his escorts through thick woods and up steep hillsides. They kept moving because they could hear German soldiers chasing them, along with the occasional gunshot.

Thomas Oliver’s flight on May 6, 1944, started out badly because he was flying a borrowed plane. A B-24 pilot, he normally flew the
Flying Mudcat
, but the plane was being repaired that day so he and his crew had to take another. Oliver was a superstitious man and didn’t like it.

He had another little superstition for each flight. During the briefing for each mission, he would estimate his return time and write it on the briefing sheet, then stuff it in a pocket of his flight suit. The estimate didn’t serve any real purpose, but Oliver liked to have some written proof that he intended to come back. Having the time written down gave him some sense of confidence that he was going to make it back, and he never flew without the piece of paper on him. On May 6, he was taxiing the plane across the runway in preparation for takeoff when he reached for something in his pocket and the paper with his estimated return time flew out the open cockpit window.
Not a good sign
, he thought.