Dragoljub (Draza) Mihailovich: Hero or Scoundrel? The Controversy That Refuses To Die.

Photo of Major Richard Felman, U.S.A.F. (Ret.) by Mari Shaefer. Richard L. Felman stands before a Douglas C-47 Sky Train, a plane similar to the C-47 transports used to evacuate 500 U.S. fliers from Yugoslavia during World War II. The photo was taken at Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

To the group of stranded American airmen he rescued during World War II, the Serbian guerrilla leader who once graced the cover of Time Magazine deserves a monument on federal land in Washington, D.C.

To others, including Croatian-Americans, he’s a villain who collaborated with the Nazis, slaughtered untold numbers of Croatians and Muslims, and thus deserves nothing short of infamy.

But to those whose decisions really count – officials at the U.S. State Department – Mihailovich’s war record is irrelevant. The fact is, he’s bad for diplomatic business. Always has been.

Today, with a fractious Yugoslavia sparring in a way that reminds experts of the ethnic unrest and communal unraveling during World War II, the chances of a Mihailovich memorial are slim.

“We can’t play national politics with Yugoslavia. The chances of Balkanization are too real,” says Jim Swihart, the State Department’s director of East European affairs. “It’s clear that to many in Yugoslavia, [building a memorial] would be a highly unfriendly act.”

“That’s what’s really sickening – our own countrymen are fighting us,” complains Richard L. Felman, who was among an estimated 500 U.S. fliers rescued by Mihailovich. “If fought two wars and now I’ve got to surrender to communist influence in my own country.”

Felman, a retired Air Force major, is waging a lonely battle for the memorial. He does so under the aegis of the National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by General Mihailovich Inc. There’s even an letterhead, with the names of dozens of members and supporters, from Ronald Reagan to John Wayne. But mostly the National Committee of American Airmen rescued by General Mihailovich, Inc. is just Richard Felman, who has time on his hands and a P.O. Box in Tuscon, Arizona.

The story of the isolated historical figure, Mihailovich, is more than a footnote to a war that gripped the globe, more than a story of a retired American airman’s lonely attempt to come to terms with the price of his survival. The dispute illustrates how old ethnic sensitivities can erupt into bitter modern-day controversies that tie the political system in knots. Moreover, it shows how Washington’s foreign-policy conerns sometime outweigh the search for historical truth.

State Department officials say their actions are motivated by a desire to hold Yugoslavia together at a time when the nation’s unity appears more threatened than ever. According to Joseph Rothchild, an Oxford professor and author of a book on the political history of Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia’s “always fragile interethnic balance is more precarious today than at any time since the end of World War II.”

In Yugoslavia, the signs of this disintegration are dramatic: Since the death, in 1980, of Mihailovich’s old civil war nemesis, dictator Josip Broz Tito, feuding has escalated. Leadership of a loose confederation works like a major-league pitching rotation, with leaders of six states taking turns at the helm. Prime Minister Ante Markovic, though strongly supported by the United States, is fighting an uphill battle because of these political problems and intercommunal violence. Most of the sparring is between liberal reformers, in Slovenia and Croatia, and conservatives in Serbia. Last March Slovenia declared economic independence from the central Yugoslavian government – demonstrating that four decades of domination by Tito, who was Croatian, and centralized communism have failed to quench the fires of ancient ethnic grudges and grievances.

“The last thing we want to do,” explains a State Department official, “is feed those fires.”

July 9, 1944. After a dawn bombing run on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, the American B-24 Liberators head back for the base in Lecce, Italy. Some of the fliers in 1st Lt. Richard Felman’s bomber are thinking about lunch. Some are talking about Italian women. It is 11:00 a.m. They are 20,000 feet above a brutal Balkan civil war.

Suddenly, a group of Nazi Messerschmitts looms on the horizon. Battle ensues. This is why Felman’s group calls itself the “Never-a-Dull-Moment Crew.” With a deadly rat-a-tat-tat, Felman’s plane is pocked full of holes. A gunner dies. The plane leaks gas. Amid flames, Felman and 10 others bail out, scattered by the wind. Felman lands alone in a cornfield, sees people running toward him, then spots the blood on his leg. Some shrapnel stays with him for life.

At first, he understands nothing of what these people say, or who they are. They take him to a small house, dab his wounds with slivovitz – plum brandy. Then these men – and Felman – drink, and drink, and drink.

“There I was, in the middle of a war zone, with who know who, getting drunk.” Next day, a man took Felman to a small chapel. There they prayed, side by side, without saying a word.

“The State Department’s doing what’s expedient, not what’s right,” argues Milton R. Copulos, a former researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. In his spare time, Copulos chips away at a scenario for a movie about Mihailovich. He sees drama in the story, but believes there’s also a troubling moral when well-meaning citizens, in their quest to say thanks, are later over-ruled by the niceties of international diplomacy.

“We set bad precedents when we oppose legitimate actions of U.S. citizens on the basis that it might upset some foreign government,” says Copulos. “Besides, the worst that would happen [with government sanction of a Mihailovich statue] is that it would be a minor embarrassment to the United States.

Dusan Zupan, a Washington correspondent for Yugoslavia’s Tanjug News Agency, says. “There’d be a very negative reaction, even in Serbia. It would not be a friendly gesture.” But even Zupan has better things to do than follow a controversy in Congress about building a statue. “I don’t write about it. It’s just not that important.”

Instability is hardly a new development in Yugoslavia, but the area once called the “powder keg of Europe” can still make the rest of the world edgy. After all, it was a local event – an assassination in Sarajevo in the name of Serbian nationalism – that triggered World War I.

Maps are deceptive; on it, Yugoslavia is the size of Wyoming and the biggest nation in southeastern Europe. In reality, it is home to two alphabets, three major religions, three main languages and, as the country’s politicians like to say, 23 million contentious people.”

Since Tito’s death [May 4, 1980], more people are discussing Mihailovich in the press and in speeches. But the discussion usually centers on Mihailovich’s ideas for Yugoslavia rather than his wartime deeds. And the new Yugoslav government’s attitude seems to have changed little. Warns Branislav Bajovic, first secretary at the Yugoslavian Embassy: If there is any significant move involving federal ground [in Washington, D.C.] the Yugoslavian government would be pretty upset.”

Diplomatic considerations aside, just what is the truth about this Ollie North of Serbo-Croatian relations?

The record – including reports from spies and special observers sent by the Allies, some of whom may have been trying to engineer Mihailovich’s downfall – is murky. However, many historians believe Mihailovich failed to consistently to the Allies’ bidding, thus engineering his own demise. During the war an English officer reported to higher-ups that Mihailovich was “reluctant to risk reprisals” from the Nazis. Initially, the British considered him helpful, but Churchill turned elsewhere – to Tito – after concluding Mihailovich had made pacts with the Nazis.

“He did save some people – American fliers,” explains John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations. “But he didn’t do many things to thwart the Nazis or the fascists in Italy. He turned his back on the Nazi movement and was more concerned with his own Serbo-Croatian battles.”

But a clear picture of Mihailovich’s role in the civil war within the world war is hard to obtain, and possibly clouded by the tricks of spies. Felman and some historians argue that such conclusions are based om a distorted historical record that covers up skeletons in Tito’s own closet, including the firing on Mihailovich’s troops from behind while Mihailovich was sparring with the Nazis.

Then again, many assert it was more the other way around – Mihailovich firing on Tito’s people. “We shall never forget the atrocities…which outweigh the good…in saving the lives of a group of American airmen,” says John P. Plesh, national secretary of the Croatian Fraternal Union of America. In congressional testimony, his group submitted long lists of villages, and next to each village name were notations such as “24 people taken to the forest and killed” and “32 thrown live into a precipice,” or simply “one thousand people.”

Tito’s attitude toward Mihailovich was cleazr. In 1946, following a controversial trial from which American airmen were barred as witnesses, he had his rival executed by a firing squad.

There was a separate, well-publicized but mostly symbolic hearing on this side of the Atlantic that exonerated Mihailovich. The late Frank J. Lausche, then Ohio’s governor, served on the committee that organized the hearing. In 1976, in a foreword to a book about the guerrilla leader, Lausche, who was of Slovenian descent, confided: “I bow my head in shame whenever I think of the terribly mistaken policy that led the Allied leaders to abandon General Draza Mihailovich.” In 1980, Mark Wheeler, a history professor at the University of Lancaster in England, concluded: “Mihailovich was not guilty of all, or even many, of the charges brought against him.”

More clear was this simple fact: Over the years, the United States had a strategic interest in keeping Tito happy. By force of personality, political mastery and defiance to the Kremlin, he managed to keep Yugoslavia in one piece. Even when Harry Truman awarded Mihailovich a high honor – giving him the Legion of Merit posthumously in 1948 for “undaunted efforts” in rescuing the American airmen and for being “instrumental” in the Allied victory – he did so secretly.

To Felman, the issue of a monument in the city of monuments – to Jefferson, the Vietnam War, now to women in the military – is all-consuming. He has had a victory or two. In 1984 he persuaded the Encyclopedia Britannica to clean up its entry on Mihailovich by removing a reference to his “occasional collaboration” with the Germans. But still the monument eludes him.

“Sometimes I waver,” he acknowledges. “I say, ‘Felman, go on with your life. You can’t fight City Hall, in this case the State Department.’ But I saw Americans killed. I fought two wars. The reason we spend trillions for defense is so a fallen nation won’te interfere with our internal affairs. Yugoslavia’s making a damn sucker out of us.”

People have the impression that Congress can grapple with some of the weightiest issues of the day, but the Mihailovich controversy has proven too much. It dogs some politicians year after year – and leaves many straddling the fence. Even George V. Voinovich, the former Cleveland mayor now running for governor, delicately dodged the issue. It may be the result of an inner struggle; some of his ancestors were Serbs and some were Slovenians. At any rate, in 1985, Voinovich told Felman that “any issue which creates discord or divisiveness is out of the frame of my goals to promote harmonious unity among my fellow citizens.” Thus, said Voinovich, he was not going to “get involved.” A few years ago, Rep. Frank Annunzio, D-IL, put it more bluntly: “I don’t want to get caught in the middle of an ethnic fight.”

In 45 years of lobbying by the airmen, and counter-lobbying by Croatian-Americans, the issue has never come up for vote by the full Congress. The Senate passed bills in 1976 and 1977; both died before reaching the House floor. “It’s bigger than Congress,” says Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, D-20, of Cleveland. “The State Department has tremendous clout.”

Last June, Rep. Philip R. Crane, R-IL, whose constituents include many Serbians and in whose office “Mihailovich” is almost a household word, urged Secretary of State James A. Baker III to agree to the monument. Given events in Eastern Europe and “the present climate of openness” in which even the Soviet Union has admitted mistakes, Crane and 10 other congressmen argued it was time “finally to acknowledge an Allied hero.”

Usually, the response from Congress is more like that of Rep. Dante Fascell, D-FL, who wrote Felman last February that too much was at stake – “not only the sensitivity of the Yugoslavian government, but…ethnic groups in Yugoslavia and the U.S.” Felman says of that letter: “I’m still throwing up.”

Back to the summer of 1944. The Nazis ferret out the downed American fliers, whose numbers are growing every day. But the mountainous area, about 60 miles southwest of Belgrade, without many roads, with too many hideouts, and with a messy civil war going on, is not the kind of place you send messages first, then troops. So the Nazis send a message. The message goes something like this: Turn over the American fliers or we’ll burn down a nearby village, Pranjane, and kill all 200 men, women and children there.

By now Felman has met Mihailovich, who strikes him as a kind, cautious man. At 51, the guerrilla leader has reached his prime. He is tough, was active in political bodies, was sent abroad on secret missions as a military attaché; but he also knows how to play the mandolin. Still, war is his trade; he entered the Serbian Military Academy at 15.

The Americans suggest they turn themselves in to spare the lives of the villagers. Mihailovich pauses, shakes his hand, as Felman remembers it.

“We have a saying,” intones the Serbian guerrilla leader. “Bolje grob nego rob.” He is speaking through a translator, a woman schoolteacher who knows Serbo-Croatian, French and English. “He says, ‘We have a saying: Better a grave than a slave,’” she explains. “If we return you and you do one more mission and drop one more bomb, that’ll do more for the cause of freedom than our 200 men, women and children can do. Freedom has a high price.”

The next day, while Felman and his colleagues are safely tucked away in farmhouses in the hills, the Germans torch the village.

For the next five weeks, Felman can’t get the idea of the those flames out of his mind. They stay with him even now. “I still get tearful about it,” he says in Arizona in 1990. “Why am I doing this, fighting for this memorial? Maybe it’s not Mihailovich exactly. Maybe it’s for the 200 women and children. Who knows?”

August 1944. With daily bombing raids, mostly into Romania, of 500 or more planes, the American airmen sequestered in the hills now number close to 250. Mihailovich has a radio transmitter, but the fliers know no secret codes. So their frantic pleas for help are little more than hopeless messages sent into the air. The Allies would be doubtful of any messages without a code, they knew. How would the Americans or British know it wasn’t a Nazi trap? Still, the fliers tapped away at the radio. It goes on for five weeks.

In the end, perhaps they owe their lives not to Mihailovich, but to a bartender whose name Felman can no longer recall. The message goes something like this: “Italy: United States Air Force. We are about to devise a code. For the letter ‘A’ we will use the first initial in the name of the bartender at the officer’s club in Lecce.” It works. They are told to light flare pots to identify their location. Four nights later, at about 10, there’s the buzz of an airplane overhead. Within the hour, an intelligence officer, a team of radiomen armed with transmitter code and a plan, land on a chicken coop. Amid the squealing of chickens, there’s much rejoicing of fliers.

Mihailovich’s guerrillas, known as Chetniks, make a runway out of a cow pasture. They tear down trees to make room, then line the runway with flare pots to light the way. On August 9, the C-47 transports start rumbling in – and, as quickly as possible, out again. Plane after plane, 20 airmen to a plane. The fliers strip, leaving their clothes with the ragtag Chetniks and needy peasants. And, in their underwear, they fly to freedom.

The Mihailovich memorial is one of those topics, like making the District of Columbia the 51st state, that never goes away. Obligingly, members of Congress have shaken the requisite number of hands and inserted letters from the airmen and the Croatians into the Congressional Record, which generally impresses constituents but isn’t necessarily a record of what really happens in Congress. They have introduced legislation knowing it would go nowhere. Every now and then, they even hold hearings.

The last one was in 1985. Oakar conducted it. Then chairwoman of a subcommittee on libraries and memorials, she found herself having to bang the gavel repeatedly to restore order as witnesses bickered among themselves. This doesn’t happen too often in the subcommittee on libraries and memorials.

Monuments have been proposed for naturalists, anti-war demonstrators – even housewives and dogs. But in a capital already overflowing with 113 memorials and plaques, most interest groups have little hope of securing a choice location.

Felman had no illusions. “It was nothing but a token hearing,” he complains. “It’s disgraceful. Half her constituents are Serbian and half are Croatian. I suppose that’s what a politician does.”

“If he’s bitter,” responds Oakar, “I can understand that. But I think he was bitter before I met him.”

She now offers a compromise. The federal government has excess land, some of it off the beaten track and some of it rather unkempt. But it is federal land in Washington. And so, Oakar advocates this solution: She wants the government to sell some of this excess land “at cost” to Felman’s group. Members get their memorial, which if not next to Jefferson, would at least be in Washington; the Croatian-Americans will be mollified; and the State Department could say the statue isn’t on federal land.

“A compromise should be worked out,” she says. “I see this as an issue that does not relate necessarily to the politics of Yugoslavia. It’s an issue of soldiers, American veterans, whose lives were saved. They’re not interested in the politics of whose side you’re on in Yugoslavia.”

A REVIEW OF “THE FORGOTTEN 500”

The Untold Story of the Men who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War Two.

by Gregory Freeman

When I asked author Gregory Freeman what drew him to the story of ‘Operation Halyard’, he didn’t hesitate:

“My interests as an author usually lead me to stories of heroism and sacrifice that went unrecognized for too long, and the story of Operation Halyard fits the bill perfectly. I was drawn to the idea that not only was this an amazing tale of intrigue and bravery, but it had been purposefully hidden from the American people for decades. A dramatic story is one thing; a dramatic story that has been kept secret is even more intriguing. The story of Operation Halyard is one of the last great stories of World War II and it is high time that the American people learn about the heroic sacrifice of Draza Mihailovich and the Serbian people.”

There are men who fight for their country who are truly a personification of dedication, determination, courage and heroism. Some of them we come to know, and their names are immortalized in our historical consciousness. There are others who most people never hear of and their deeds never become legend, though they deserve to be known and remembered and permanently included in the historical record. The Forgotten 500 by author Gregory Freeman is a new and important book that not only introduces the public to such men, but explains why they and their rescuers deserve a prominent place in history. This book is a celebration of human fortitude and integrity and is so much more than just another book about World War Two.

‘Heroes’ has become an all too common term in this day and age, to the point that heroism has become trivialized. Gregory Freeman reminds us what true heroism is really all about, the kind of heroism that can, and should, leave us in awe. He doesn’t just tell us, he shows us. That would have been enough to make this a valuable book in any library, but Freeman strove for more and has accomplished it. He was bothered by the fact that these heroic acts that he had discovered had not only been virtually ignored, but were actually deliberately suppressed as if they never happened. His research led him to painful discoveries that he could not help but include in this story of heroism, and the light that he sheds on the dark side of ‘Operation Halyard’ makes The Forgotten 500 not only a valuable book, but an essential one. Just as he reminds us of the great things that men in the worst situations are capable of, he also exposes the lengths taken to cover up acts that should have been widely heralded as triumphant examples of the human spirit but instead were sacrificed to the manipulations of political expediency. We owe both the dead and the living to move, once and for all, ‘Operation Halyard’, possibly the greatest rescue of American lives from behind enemy lines in the history of warfare, from being a mere footnote in history to being a shining example of what men of integrity are capable of. Mr. Freeman, with The Forgotten 500, is paying the long overdue debt.

During the second half of World War Two, hundreds of American airmen were sent on dangerous missions over Europe during which their job was to cripple the oil production that was feeding the Nazi war machine. Freeman describes in vivid detail the nature of these missions and by tapping the memories and experiences of the airmen and faithfully capturing them on the pages of The Forgotten 500 he paints a graphic picture of what was endured by these patriots who did their job and followed their orders regardless of the retaliation that was sure to follow. These missions would cost many of their lives. Those who survived the Nazi retaliations had to bail out of their planes over foreign territory in order to get a shot at survival and they did so, not knowing what their fate would be. Their desperation landed them in the hills of Yugoslavia, mainly in Serbia, enemy occupied territory that was, luckily for them, also the land of General Draza Mihailovich, his Chetnik forces, and the peasants who were loyal to them. When they landed in the hills and forests of Serbia, the airmen were now among freedom fighters, loyal above all else, to the democratic Allies, though they did not know it as they fell. Among the hundreds who fell, most were Americans.

Once on the ground these men were soon found by the Serbian peasantry and it was these strangers who spoke a foreign language on foreign soil who would shield them, soothe their wounds, feed them, house them, and protect them, even at the sacrifice of all that they owned and even their lives. The fallen airmen would soon learn that their benefactors were acting on the orders of General Draza Mihailovich, the Serbian hero, who in the beginning darkest moments of the war, had been heralded as being a legendary warrior for the whole free world, but who, in recent times, had been abandoned by the very democracies to whom he had been so loyal. Though he had been abandoned and left to the wolves, both the Yugoslav communists who were bent on destroying him and everything his organization stood for, and the Germans who continued to view him as their primary enemy in Yugoslavia, Mihailovich, upon learning of the fallen airmen, gave out the order to do whatever necessary to protect them, heal them, and in the ensuing months, evacuate them to safety regardless of the cost to himself. This man, whom the airmen had been told to avoid, would end up being the man who would save them. In cooperation with American OSS personnel, whose struggles and ultimate triumphs are faithfully recorded by Freeman as ‘Operation Halyard’ came to fruition over the course of 1944, General Mihailovich and his forces would prove just how profound ‘doing the right thing no matter what’ is.

Though this story has been competently tackled by other historians and authors genuinely interested in doing justice to the events of 1944 in enemy occupied Serbia, this story has never been appropriately publicized in the western world because it has not been “politically correct” to do so. It has remained a taboo theme in many political and publishing circles which has dismayed and frustrated so many of the veterans of ‘Operation Halyard’, both the rescued and their rescuers, for decades. Many spent the duration of their postwar years striving to right this wrong. Many have since passed away without ever experiencing the contentment of seeing justice done and a debt repaid. Mr. Freeman and his publishers, with The Forgotten 500, may well be the catalyst for finally changing all of this. When one becomes familiar with the obstacles that have been pervasive in getting this story told over the last six decades, one cannot help but appreciate the courage and the fortitude that it took to produce and publish this book. As much as I admire Freeman’s talent for telling a great true story as it deserves to be told and for his attention to detail that makes this story come alive on the pages, I admire his publishers even more. Instead of dismissing this story, they have chosen to bring it out in the light, thus vindicating all of those both on this side of the world and on the other who lived this story.

The heroic details of the bombing missions and the subsequent bailouts over enemy occupied territory and the great rescue evacuations that followed in 1944 are the “easy part” of this story. Author Freeman didn’t settle for the easy part. In The Forgotten 500 he delves into the more complicated tangential issues that cannot be ignored in the telling of the story of the Halyard Mission.

A primary such issue is that in the name of political expediency, enforced by both the Yugoslav postwar regime and the British, the Americans stayed silent about this chapter of the great heroism of their own sons and the selfless sacrifices of their rescuers. Not only did they stay silent, they kept it silent. Classified.

Another difficult issue that Freeman addresses is the abandonment of General Mihailovich by the Western Allies to whom he had been so loyal. British spies and traitors, such as James Klugmann, had a role in the story that was pivotal, even though he was not directly involved in ‘Operation Halyard’. It takes an astute researcher to piece together the relevant collateral elements of the ‘Halyard’ story that make the deeds of the rescuers all the more extraordinary. Freeman clearly did his research in piecing together the often convoluted chain of events that led to the Allied abandonment of Mihailovich. For that, any serious student of World War Two history should be grateful.

Freeman writes:

“Not until 1997 would the world understand that the switch of allegiance was orchestrated largely by a Soviet operative who convinced the British that Mihailovich could not be trusted… Communist moles had infiltrated both the OSS and the SOE, working to besmirch the name of Mihailovich to promote the postwar Communization of Yugoslavia under Tito…Klugmann, who was closely associated with the infamous British traitors known as the Cambridge Five,…was principally responsible for sabotaging the Mihailovich supply operation and for keeping from London information about how much Mihailovich forces were fighting the Germans and how much success they were having.”

James Klugmann, a devout communist and ultimately a traitor to his country of Great Britain, is among the many collateral players in the Mihailovich story and Freeman doesn’t shy away from exposing his role in influencing the misguided British policy that would have tragic consequences for General Mihailovich and ultimately the fate of Serbia itself.

Freeman writes:

“The recently declassified files reveal that, for instance, Klugmann had great influence over Colonel Sir William Deakin, the senior intelligence officer in Yugoslavia…”

It was Deakin who was mainly responsible for convincing Churchill to switch sides from Mihailovich to Tito. In this endeavor he was greatly supported by Fitzroy Maclean, who became the chief of the British mission at Tito’s headquarters. Freeman explains who these people were and just how strongly they influenced the disastrous British policy in Yugoslavia during the war. The author could have determined that this was all material for another separate story, but he chose to include it in this one, The Forgotten 500, because he understood from the very beginning that there was more to ‘Operation Halyard’ than met the eye. He competently weaves politics and the story on the ground together in such a way as to give the reader the big picture. Freeman, unlike many historians, is able to see the forest, not just the trees.

He understood, too, the significance of Mihailovich’s integrity in rising above and beyond the betrayal perpetrated upon him and his people.

“Klugmann and his fellow traitors may have been driving the efforts to defeat Mihailovich from abroad, but there were many more British officials who unwittingly helped them along the way…Meanwhile, Mihailovich and the peasants in the hillsides who were loyal to him watched over the downed American boys with a stoic determination. Their abandonment by the Allies would not cause them to abandon these young men who were helping them to fight back the Nazis.”

In the summer of 1944, because of destructive but successful British political manipulations, it was no longer ‘politically correct’ for the Allies, including the Americans who deferred to the British in policy relating to the Balkan sphere, to deal with Mihailovich in any way. Yet, there were now hundreds of downed Allied fliers, most of them Americans, who were being protected by Mihailovich and his men and had to be evacuated. This presented quite a political dilemma. Thanks to the efforts of American officers such as George Vujnovich and George Musulin, an ACRU organization (Air Crew Rescue Unit) was created and it was decided to send Musulin to the hills of Serbia, accompanied by Mike Rajachich and OSS radio operator Arthur Jubilian, to run the evacuation operation that would come to be known as the ‘Halyard Mission’.

It was going to be a rescue attempt unlike any ever attempted by the OSS or anyone else, and indeed that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Over the course of several months in 1944, hundreds of Allied airmen would be evacuated and not one would be sacrificed. All, without exception, would make it back to their homes and their families alive. Not one American would be turned over to the Nazis, even though the Germans were offering substantial rewards to the local natives to give them up. Though the Allies had turned their back on General Mihailovich, he refused to turn his back on them.

Gregory Freeman describes the evacuations in vivid detail and with the due well-deserved respect that is appropriate given the magnitude of the obstacles that were faced, both politically and on the ground, to make Halyard a success. The reader is put in the middle of it all as an observer and the reader cannot help but wonder how it was possible to keep such a magnificent true story in the darkness for so long.

The reader will also be struck by the irony of the concentrated attempts that were made by Allied officials to sabotage this rescue operation, a rescue operation that was intended to save the lives of their own boys. In The Forgotten 500 Gregory Freeman makes sure that the irony is not lost on the reader.

Freeman writes:

“Musulin, Rajacich, and Jibilian soon realized that the British were not just unenthusiastic about the mission. They were actively sabotaging it, or at least that’s how it appeared to the American team.

The outright hostility of the British was made evident on the next attempt to jump into Pranjane, a few days later. Musulin learned that on the first attempt, when there were no ground signals, the problem actually was that the pilot had flown to the wrong coordinates. They were in the wrong place, so that explained why there was no welcoming party. Knowing that, Musulin wanted to double-check the coordinates soon after they took off on their third attempt to go rescue the airmen. He went forward and asked the pilot to confirm their destination. The pilot read out the coordinates he intended to take the men to and, as soon as he checked the spot on his own map, Musulin exploded in anger.

‘That’s Partisan territory!’ he yelled. ‘Where the hell did you get those coordinates?

The pilot, visibly intimidated by the large and very angry American, explained that he had been briefed on the mission by his British superior and he was just following orders…”

The mission was aborted. Then Freeman writes:

“The three Americans were astounded that British had so completely fouled up their efforts to get into Pranjane, but they still had a hard time believing that their tea-sipping allies were actually trying to sabotage Operation Halyard…”

They didn’t give up, however, and eventually, everything was in place, despite the obstacles, and the series of evacuations would proceed. Success, pure and complete, was achieved.

Freeman doesn’t just capture the events of ‘Operation Halyard’, he is able to capture the essence of General Mihailovich as well. He describes the impression that Mihailovich left on the Americans, such as on OSS radioman Arthur Jibilian:

“Like every other American who met Mihailovich personally, however, Jubilian was taken by the way a man of such simplicity could at the same time give such an impression of grandeur. Jibilian and the other Allied soldiers were most impressed by Mihailovich’s sense of dignity in the face of extreme hardship and insurmountable odds and the humble way he received accolades from his followers, consistently coming away with the same unshakable impression that they were standing in the presence of greatness.”

The drama of ‘Operation Halyard’ would end in December of 1944, and due to the perseverance of men with the names of Vujnovich, Musulin, Petrovich, Rajachich, Lalich, Jibilian and others, it would end as a virtually perfect success story in the face of almost insurmountable odds. Every downed airman survived. General Mihailovich, however, would not share their fate. His life would come to an end a year and half later, when he was executed by the Yugoslav communists. The airmen whom he had saved were left to their tears, devastated by the news, and many would dedicate the rest of their years to vindicating Mihailovich, his Serbian people, and to seeking justice for the man to whom they felt they owed their very lives. Many in the Allied world who were following the capture, trial, and execution of Mihailovich, were left to wonder “how it could have been allowed to happen.” Gregory Freeman’s The Forgotten 500 goes a long way in shedding light on “how could this have been allowed to happen.”

Freeman does not accept the fact that “it was allowed to happen.” With the publication of The Forgotten 500 he is doing his part to make things right. Given the truths contained in this book, I wondered who Gregory Freeman was. He accommodated my curiosity with the following response:

“As you probably know already, I am not of Serbian descent and have no personal connection to this story at all. Instead, I was drawn to the opportunity to bring some measure of justice to a hero and local Serbs who risked their lives for my country and who ultimately were betrayed by history. I wrote this book because that wrong should be made right, not just for Mihailovich and the Serbian community, but for the American public as well. After all, we can’t say “thank you” if we don’t know what they did.”

I highly recommend “The Forgotten 500”, not just to my American and Serbian friends, but to anyone interested in historical accounts that are not tarnished with propaganda, lies, and political correctness. I also recommend this book to anyone who is inspired by a great story about great people who did great things. Those of us who know the “Halyard” story and its significance will smile with satisfaction. We should, indeed, be pleased. It’s about time.

To learn more about “The Forgotten 500” and author Gregory Freeman, please visit www.gregoryafreeman.com

Review by Aleksandra Rebic
September 2007

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I found another review, this one by a non-Serb, a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, Father James Thornton.

The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II, by Gregory A. Freeman, New York: The New American Library, 2007, 313 pages, Hardcover.

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WWII’s forgotten: Serbian heroes: Gregory Freeman’s superb book, The Forgotten 500, recounts the story of the American and Allied airmen rescued by Serbian General Draza Mihailovich and his heroic fighters.

Since the close of the Second World War is now more than six decades in the past, even the younger surviving participants in that war are well into their seventies and eighties. Consequently, firsthand memories of that greatest war of the modern era are quickly fading. The neral history is, of course, preserved in books and various film documentaries, and will therefore not be forgotten. Yet, many of the more obscure events of those grim years—events that serve to expose the conflict’s hidden causes and lamentable aftereffects, and that provide salient lessons for the future—are dropping from view with the passage of time. Let us consider the case of the Serbian freedom fighter General Draza Mihailovich, and of his rescue of more than 500 American and Allied airmen during the air offensive against German military targets late in the war.

By late 1943, the Allied conquest of North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy provided bases for American bombers to strike German industrial targets previously beyond their reach. But the bombing campaign was costly in both men and materiel, the Luftwaffe fiercely defending the airspace over the German homeland and German-occupied countries. The first bomber raid on the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti, for example, cost the American Air Corps 54 planes and 532 airmen.

Often, bombers damaged by flak or shot to pieces by Luftwaffe fighters struggled to return home, but could not make it the whole way. Since the flight back to bases in North Africa or Italy carried the planes over Yugoslavia, many were the men forced to parachute into the mountains of that rugged land. Although some were promptly captured by the Germans and dispatched to POW camps, others were blessed to land in the craggy regions dominated by the Chetniks, the Royalist resistance fighters of General Draza Mihailovich, who had refused to surrender when the Germans invaded in April 1941 and instead withdrew into the highlands of Serbia to continue the fight.

This superb book by Gregory Freeman, The Forgotten 500, recounts the story of the American and Allied airmen rescued and sheltered by General Mihailovich and his heroic fighters, and of the loving care given these men by the Serbian people, who shared their homes at the risk of their lives and who unhesitatingly shared their meager supplies of food, already insufficient for themselves and their families, to keep the Americans alive and free. Mihailovich himself made clear the importance of the Americans in a blunt warning. quoted by Freeman. to the officers charged with the duty of protecting the Americans: “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.”

What Mihailovich was saying was that the Americans were his number one priority, a priority above even that of the general’s own fellow countrymen. Indeed, the Royalist Chetniks were a resistance force to be reckoned with, the largest resistance army on the German-controlled continent. But that force could never hope to defeat the Germans by itself. America and Britain, Mihailovich was convinced at that time, offered the only hope of the restoration of an independent, free Yugoslavia.

Tragically, America and Britain were deceived by communist agents within their own ranks, who sought to besmirch the reputation of Mihailovich by circulating the outrageous lie that he was collaborating with the Germans, while assuring everyone that the rival communist Partisan leader, Josip Broz Tito, was the true friend of the West. This was confirmed beyond question in 1997 when, as the author shows, declassified British documents revealed that a Soviet agent, James Klugman, “was principally responsible for sabotaging the Mihailovich supply operation and for keeping from London information about how much Mihailovich forces were fighting the Germans and how much success they were having.” Upon reaching America, that disinformation was amplified by Soviet agents in key positions within our own government. Because of Klugman’s activities, supplies were rerouted to Tito, thus assuring the post-war communist takeover of Yugoslavia. Yet, despite this horrifying volte-face, General Mihailovich remained faithful to his Western Allies, not only assuring the safety of the 500 airmen, but assisting in “Operation Halyard,” the extremely perilous airlift operation that returned all the men to Alliedcontrolled Italy.

At the conclusion of the war, Tito seized control of Yugoslavia and, upon capturing General Mihailovich, put him on trial for treason. The trial was, of course, a blatant farce in which propaganda replaced hard evidence, as Freeman abundantly demonstrates. Many of the rescued Americans, indignant and heartbroken at this treatment of a genuine hero, volunteered to go to Belgrade to testify for the Chetnik leader, but were denied permission to enter the country. To the American request, Tito responded in typical communist double-speak, “The crimes committed by Mihailovich are too great and terrible for any discussions to take place on whether or not he is guilty.” Among these “crimes” was Chetnik opposition to communism, needless to say an inherently treasonous act in the eyes of Tito.

The American veterans, having been banned from Yugoslavia, formed a “National Committee for the Defense of Draza Mihailovich and the Serbian People,” distributing literature and seeking publicity for their cause in the American press. Yet though successful to some degree in influencing American public opinion, the efforts were for naught insofar as Tito was concerned. No one was surprised, therefore, when Mihailovich was found guilty and, 48 hours later, stood before a firing squad.

Two years after the scandalous mock trial, elements in the American government came to realize its wartime error, posthumously awarding General Draza Mihailovich the Legion of Merit, the highest decoration given foreign nationals by the United States. But even at that time, Freeman writes, there was fear on the part of spineless officialdom that the award would offend dictator Tito, and so, astonishingly it remained a classified secret until 1967, when it was finally made public. Only in 2005 was the Legion of Merit presented to General Mihailovich’s daughter, Gordana Mihailovich, by that time a retired physician, 78 years of age. The author relates that she wept when the medal was handed her, and she then kissed a photo of her long-dead father. The presentation received scant coverage in the world press.

The Forgotten 500 is subtitled The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II. It is the “untold story” that is here told at last. Conveyed primarily from the point of view of the Americans sheltered by General Mihailovich or involved in the rescue operation, it is a gripping narrative, dramatically brought alive and filled with suspense and excitement. One feels the frustration of men determined to recover the trapped Americans but repeatedly thwarted in their efforts by duplicitous government functionaries, and the elation when the airmen are ultimately brought to safety. The book is enhanced by endnotes and a comprehensive bibliography.

A short postscript: most of the downed servicemen rescued by Mihailovich during the latter years of the Second World War regarded America’s abandonment of this loyal ally as an unqualified betrayal. Unhappily, the betrayal continues, In 1995, a delegation of the same rescued men returned to the mountains of Serbia to commemorate the 50th anniversary of V-E day. There, they were greeted by 50,000 Serbs who cheered them and who chanted in unison, “USA!, USA!” In few countries of the world were Americans more respected and loved than in Serbia at that moment.

Yet, in March 1999, the United States launched a 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia to force it to abandon the province of Kosovo to Marxist KLA terrorists.

Under NATO’s protection, those terrorists promptly set about murdering innocent Serb civilians and dynamiting more than 100 churches and monasteries, many veritable jewels of Christian medieval art and architecture elating back to the 14th century.

In February 2008, Kosovo, under the NATO-imposed control of a KLA-sponsored regime, declared its independence from Serbia. Amazingly, the United States promptly recognized that action, although the establishment of a terrorist state in Europe clearly contributes to the rising tide of chaos in the world and is obviously contrary to America’s own long-term interests. May God have mercy on us and forgive our country for its cynical and perfidious leaders.

Father James Thornton

“The New American”
July 7, 2008

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