The Secret Rescue (27 page)

The three men carried the injured to a small stone hut, where the sergeant wrapped the major’s thigh with field dressings to stop the heavy bleeding and put some plaster over one of Davies’s wounds. It was all he could do for either of them. The Italian colonel was hallucinating and moaning, and Davies yelled at him to “pull himself together and shut up that bloody noise,” while the partisan who’d been shot in both thighs lay quietly.

As the sergeant lit a fire using a piece of wood he tore from the roof, bullets hit the stone walls of the building. It sounded like they were being attacked on the south and west sides by about eighty men in each company. Davies wondered if the attackers thought he and the others had positioned themselves in the hut to mount an attack. The sergeant, who must have thought the same, went outside, and as bullets hit the ground around him, he walked around the hut. Unable to speak Albanian, he yelled in Italian, “English wounded here,” but the attackers continued to fire. When he came back in, he told Davies it looked to him as if they were “massing for the kill.… It would be all over soon.”

For a few moments it was quiet, with an odd bullet hitting the wall. “Then hell was let loose,” Davies wrote. “The supporting party opened rapid fire with all their weapons, the attacking party threw grenades and charged, shrieking at the top of their voices.” The sergeant fired his .38 revolver from the door until all six rounds were gone and then threw the gun as the attackers moved in on him. With his fists flying, he was able to run across the room to try to protect Davies, but there were too many of them. Even so, when one man pushed his rifle into Davies’s ribs, the sergeant took a swing at him. Another man tried to take Davies’s boots. The chaos only ended when an officer ordered his men to leave and through the Italian interpreter learned that Davies was a brigadier. Now in the hands of a BK officer, Davies and the others would soon be German prisoners of war.

Hayes slept until sundown. When he awoke, he learned that Orahood, the wireless operator, had received a message indicating that a boat had already left Italy, and the party should be at the water’s edge ready to leave at midnight. It was the best possible news the men and women could have hoped for. Now all they had to do was wait a little longer. The hours passed slowly, however, as the mild coastal temperatures turned a little cooler. Those who were awake ate food out of tin cans the British gave them and wondered if they were really going to make it out or if something else would get in their way. It was hard to believe they could be back in Italy in a matter of hours after having endured so much.

At about ten thirty that night, British Lt. Comm. “Sandy” Glen, who worked for MI6 and was also leaving Seaview that night, told them it was time to move. Williamson, the wireless operator who worked with Tilman at Dhoksat and was anxious to leave Albania, also joined the group.

As the party plodded down the steep trail to the small beach, Orahood, who carried one of the Handie-Talkies Brodie had sent over, tried desperately to get in touch with Brodie and the crew. He pointed the antenna in various directions and even banged the unit on his knee while muttering that he needed a walkie-talkie, referring to the large backpack radios that were more widely used at the time. He finally picked up a transmission about halfway down the trail. “I’m getting something. They’re out there!” he said.

The rescue boat had left Bari at two o’clock in the afternoon. As it made its way toward Albania and the crew tested its guns, Brodie tried to figure out whether he felt sick from the boat ride or the infectious hepatitis. As the hours passed and moonlight began to bathe the boat and the coastline, Brodie went up to the flybridge with his Handie-Talkie and watched as the boat moved closer to the snow-capped mountains along the coast. The engines now barely whispered, and the gun crew stood on alert as Brodie called Orahood on the Handie-Talkie and counted to three in German. To the relief of all those on board, he soon heard Orahood reply, “Drei, zwei, ein—is that you, Captain B?”

About forty-five minutes after the party left the caves, they reached the small patch of beach that was barely large enough for all of them. As they stood in the sand, they couldn’t help but still wonder if their time to leave had finally arrived. Assured by Orahood that the boat was somewhere nearby, the British lit a few signal fires that flickered in the night air. As the Americans waited anxiously and strained for any sight of their rescuers, three men in an inflated rubber boat suddenly appeared at the shoreline. A surge of relief washed over the group; at long last, the rescue was happening.

The crewmen took four or five women and men at a time in the small craft to the larger boat that sat idling in the water in case a quick departure was needed. It took a few hours to transport everyone, and the last two to leave the shore were Hayes and Wolf. As the medics neared the larger boat, they waited for the crest of a wave to lift their rubber boat higher into the air so they could grab on to the large boat’s netting and climb up. Hayes had just put one leg over the railing when the British captain asked him if he was the last one. Still standing astride, Hayes answered that he was, and the boat lunged ahead.

It was about two fifteen in the morning on January 9 when the boat began its journey back to Italy. After sixty-three days trapped in Albania, twenty-seven Americans were returning to Allied lines. Three nurses remained behind.

Most of the nurses, and likely the pilots, immediately went to the officers’ quarters and slept in the bunks, while at least one nurse was seasick from the waves that rocked the boat back and forth. By the time Hayes and Wolf boarded, the enlisted men who’d gotten there before them had already devoured crackers and strawberry jam given to them by the crew and were sleeping in bunks. The table was sticky and covered in crumbs, but Hayes and Wolf sat down and ate what was left.

When Hayes got up to look for a bunk, he realized they were all taken and was preparing to sleep on the table when the boat’s radio operator offered him his bed in the tiny radio room. The room was only about four feet wide and included the operator’s equipment and a bunk above a locker, but as soon as Hayes stretched out he fell asleep.

By morning, the boat had neared the Italian port of Brindisi and was following the coastline north to Bari. As those in the party awoke and ate breakfast in their quarters, they marveled at their incredible journey and rescue. At last they’d finally made it out of Albania.

Hayes spent the morning camped out on the bridge talking to the helmsman. They were soon joined by the captain and another crewman, who said, “Sir, it’s time to splice the main brace!” referring to the nautical tradition of giving an extra drink to sailors after they had completed the dangerous task of fixing the main brace of the sail if it was broken in battle or a storm. The skipper replied, “Yes it is. Since today is a special occasion we’ll put in a double splice!” The crewman opened a locker at the back of the bridge and removed a glass and a small cask of rum. He then filled the glass and handed it to Hayes. “Since you are here, you get the first splice!” he said. Hayes took a sip and, though it was as strong as the raki he detested, he happily toasted their freedom.

When Hayes returned to the enlisted men’s quarters, he found most of the men from the 807th and several crew members talking. The radio operator who had let him sleep in his bunk tugged on Hayes’s sleeve and asked, “How about giving me your jacket?” Hayes, who’d become so protective of his belongings while in Albania, immediately said no, but Owen told him, “Go on! Give it to him. You can always tell the supply officer you lost it in Albania.” Within a few minutes, all of the 807th men had given their jackets to the crew members who wanted an American coat. It was a gesture of thanks for what the men had done for them, and they were feeling generous now that they were on their way back to Allied lines. They may also have passed on the lice they still carried.

Shortly after, someone announced that they were entering Bari’s harbor, the site of the German attack in early December and their original destination on November 8. The men joined nurses—some of whom had dabbed on their last bits of makeup—on deck, and the helmsman guided the boat into a dock. As the boat approached, the party saw their commanding officer, McKnight, along with dozens of military photographers and a host of other people waiting to greet them.

While the boat was being secured to the dock, the Americans thanked Duffy, Bell, Smith, and the boat crew for all they had done for them and said their goodbyes. They were so excited to get off the boat when it was time to leave that they forgot to salute McKnight as he greeted them.

Without delay, the entire group was put in a fleet of new staff cars that were usually reserved for officers. Duffy and Bell found a military truck waiting to take them to SOE’s new Bari headquarters, and Smith found his way to OSS headquarters in Bari.

The Americans were driven immediately to the 26th General Hospital, which had only been open since December 4, two days after the attack on Bari. Because much of the equipment for the hospital had sunk with the Liberty ship
Samuel J. Tilden,
the 26th had to open using a hundred borrowed beds.

Thrasher and Baggs were immediately escorted to another area to be debriefed, and the nurses and medics never saw them again. The rest of the party, still wearing lice-infested clothes, were put into a small room with enough chairs for each of them to sit. A lieutenant colonel soon arrived and announced that he was a G2 officer, or Army Intelligence officer, and explained that they were being detained in the hospital while decisions were made as to their next assignments. Theater policy dictated that anyone who had been in enemy territory for more than eight days would be sent back to the States rather than risk being treated as a spy if caught again behind enemy lines. In the meantime, he said, the nurses and enlisted men would be housed in an isolated ward.

He then picked a nurse and a medic to be the first to be debriefed. The two were sent with an escort to an interrogation room, while Hayes, Jens, and the others signed papers indicating they understood that, to protect their benefactors and future downed troops, they could not reveal where they had been or who had helped them. When Jens was called in, she took from her coat pocket the diary she’d kept to help her remember the names of the villages. When she’d finished with it, the officer insisted on keeping it, though he said it would be returned after the war.

When half the party had been interviewed, the officers decided that the stories were consistent enough that they wouldn’t need to continue. The lieutenant colonel returned to the room where the main party was seated and pulled out a map that had been created from the interviews. He showed them that the distance between the crash site and Seaview was about sixty miles, while their estimated route was about three hundred forty miles. Given the mountainous terrain, the Intelligence officer surmised they had walked two to three times that amount—roughly six hundred fifty to one thousand miles.

The officer also explained that, because of their journey back to allied lines, they were now members of the unofficial Late Arrivals Club. The Club was originally created by a British public relations officer in the Royal Air Force in July 1941 during the desert campaigns in the Middle East. British personnel who were forced to abandon their aircraft, who were shot down, or who crash-landed in enemy territory and returned to their squadrons on foot were issued a badge with a winged boot on it and a membership certificate to the “club” detailing their journey. The certificate came with the words, “It is never too late to come back.” Covered in the media, the badge soon became legendary, and when an unknown American evader returned to England and started wearing it in 1943, others followed. The AAF never approved the designation, so the unofficial members had to wear a winged-boot pin under their lapels. The intelligence officer then showed a pin to the Americans and gave them the name of a jeweler in Ohio who sold the pins for less than two dollars.

Even more important to the group, the officer told them that when President Roosevelt learned that thirteen nurses were trapped in Nazi-occupied Albania, he’d insisted on daily briefings on what was being done to rescue them.

Late that afternoon, Smith had just finished writing his report on the evacuation at OSS Bari and was shaving in the bathroom when he was surprised by a visit from OSS director “Wild Bill” Donovan. Donovan congratulated him on the success of the evacuation and told him he was sending him back to Albania to rescue the other three nurses. Before he left, Donovan added that when he got back to Washington he would personally tell President Roosevelt of Smith’s achievements in helping to save the party.

The following day, when a medical officer examined the men and women who were still in seclusion and unable to let even their family members know they were safe, he diagnosed Cruise with pneumonia. Jens had a boil on her leg that needed treatment, and Zeiber was also ill, but the others were in good shape considering all they had been through. For the next five days, the men and women were sequestered in the two-room ward, and though they were served many of the foods they had craved in Albania, it took them several days before they could eat more than three or four bites without feeling full. The men had been given razors to shave, but some decided to keep their new goatees and mustaches and showed them off in photos taken by Army photographers.

On January 14, while Jens, Cruise, and Zeiber remained hospitalized, the others were released and flown back to their headquarters in Catania. Hornsby of the 802nd was allowed to stay with the 807th for a few days while the squadron celebrated.