Showing posts with label Yugoslav Partisans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yugoslav Partisans. Show all posts

Sunday, December 17, 2023

The Invasion of Yugoslavia 1941 - THROUGH FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS, Chapter One

 

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At the hour of national crisis
he was brought down like a bull by a terrier, and his memories returned to him only slowly, the good and the bad, but mostly the bad. There was shouting in which he had joined, then a weakness outside his experience and the confusion of not understanding why the slipway was rising to meet him. As is usual with accidents that occur in public places, there was also a crowd that gathered from nowhere to watch in horrified silence. He remembered the woman who stepped from it to bully him kindly, ‘Put your head between your knees, Captain, before you knock yourself out,’ and he remembered his reply, ‘I’m not going to faint,’ just before he did.

So he couldn’t recall Miloš Lompar, aged seventeen and frantic with remorse, attempting to staunch his desperately bleeding shoulder with a rag stained with lubricating oil, nor Commander Filip Kolarov (whom everyone expected to be the hero) recruiting five sailors to transport him from beneath the blood-stained propellers of the torpedo boat and into the waiting ambulance without dropping him. Upon his arrival at the hospital, the rural surgical ward, which dealt mostly with tonsils, appendixes and adenoids, at once increased in self-importance thanks to all the excitement, and he was hurried inside with as little delay as a starting pistol. From a morning that had threatened mundane routine, his shattered shoulder had given the ward meaning and purpose and, by the time of the afternoon ward-round, it was all back together again and reposing below its soft white pillow as contentedly as if it belonged to the hospital and not to him.

This general sense of achievement originated in a surgeon, white-coated and elegantly balding, surrounded by a retinue of medical students who beamed in unison every time he opened his mouth. Arranged around them stood a scrub nurse and a ward sister who looked like she had ironed her scowl on that morning. Before their eyes, Dr Rastoder had performed veritable miracles of surgery, keenly assisted by at least two of those present – possibly more – and had only had to consult the textbook once.

'Awake at last!' he chirped. He smiled. His audience smiled. 'Eighty stitches! - and that's not counting the two severed tendons I repaired, some puréed muscle and a skin graft. You have a great deal to be thankful for, Captain Marković. You’re lucky you didn't lose your arm. Damned lucky!’ he stressed with a very personal determination.

Marković sensed a conspiracy and, in confirmation, one of the students twirled his moustache.

'How long...?' he began.

He pushed himself into a sitting position with his left hand and was at once overcome by a wave of dizziness. On a wheeled table to one side he saw the hazy remains of a blood transfusion, a throbbing jug, the ghost of his dead mother, and a glass that replenished itself with water. At the very end in proud isolation a urine bottle grinned at him, half-full.

'You've been unconscious for five hours,' returned the doctor. Acknowledging the urine bottle, he added, 'More or less.’

Marković grimaced. His mother eased him back onto his pillow then floated away, and the mountain of snowy bandages on his right side settled comfortably down beside him. He watched the crowd observe it with pride.

‘Wiggle your fingers,’ ordered the angry ward sister.

He wiggled his fingers and a shudder ran through the shoulder.

The scrub nurse glanced apprehensively at the surgeon.

‘Perfectly normal,’ he purred. ‘Touch your toes.’

The medical students tittered.

‘Just my little joke.’

‘Can I go home?’ asked Marković. As they seemed so cheerful, he allowed himself hope. ‘I need to get back to the apprentices.’

‘Those two who landed you in here?’ Dr Rastoder inverted his eyebrows and proceeded in a voice of doom. ‘There are more immediate things that you need to know. An infection from any wound that extensive is inescapable. We expect one quite soon, don’t we, sister?’

The ward sister nodded grimly.

‘You’re not serious?’ exclaimed Marković.

‘I’m afraid I am, Captain.’

‘But I’ve heard about trials of…’

‘Penicillin? Rumours, at this point. Your one stroke of luck is that Yugoslavia’s not at war with Germany yet. In that case there would be the possibility of catching an infection from someone fresh from the battlefield.’

Marković levered himself up cautiously. He stopped. He checked both sides. Reaching one arm beneath the injured shoulder, he hauled it up beside the other one and searched around for the exit.

The surgeon cut him off shrewdly.

‘Don’t even think about it.’

'I can’t stay here.'

'You're no good to anyone dead.'

‘It’s only a shoulder!’

‘You wait,’ declared the surgeon.

‘Next patient,’ said the sister.

The team moved on, and the medical students beamed back like a round of applause.

The frustration of his predicament and the pain made him grumpy, of course, and, by the close of that first day, as dinner was served with regimental efficiency from the other end of the long ward, there was no one in it who wasn’t heartily sick of his clenched teeth and thunderous face. When, at lights out, the same sister who had stood by his bed during the ward-round pinned on her veil like a helmet and marched towards him with his night's morphine flashing from her syringe, he glared at her with such indignation that she declared in a tight-lipped tirade that she'd met a lot of patients like him. Oh yes, she had.

‘Take a good look around you, Captain. The worst tonsils, appendixes and adenoids of my acquaintance are models of virtue compared with you – God give me strength! And you needn't think you can expect pain relief to order later on when you can’t sleep, so you’ll have the injection when I tell you and do something about your manners while you’re at it.’

As bad luck would have it, the instant he had accepted the shot and she was massaging it in, he fell asleep in full view of the whole ward, and everyone said they hoped he stayed that way.

The next day was visiting day. Its hours were from two o’clock until five on Wednesdays and Sundays. No illicit visiting was permitted except when compassionate grounds intruded upon the mental health of the ward sister to whom the disruption of her routine occasioned great anxiety. Before the double doors could be flung open to gift-bearing relatives the beds must be made to perfection, the floor must be swept clean of every cowering microbe and the surgeon must complete his rounds. Pills, elixirs, injections, and enemas must be distributed and their associated smells dispersed through the open windows.

At the very end of the day’s queue, as if the act of waiting might atone for their guilt, slunk two gangly boys. Accompanying them was a commander with a sharp eye and a resolute bearing that invited trust. Indeed, a head or two had already turned at the click of his boots on the floor, though he had cloaked his agreeable features with a severity appropriate to the occasion. Marković could see that he regretted doing it, but the boys were completely fooled. They had been very careful to dress in full uniform, to comb their hair and shine their boots, but the perfect presentation could not obscure the terror on their faces nor their quaking knees.

As the trio approached the bed, the officer came to a halt, removed his hat and placed it beneath his arm.

'Lompar!' he commanded.

At once one of the boys handed forward a small bunch of flowers, relieved of half its petals by his quivering hands. At the sight of his commanding officer sprawled down the bed undressed and unshaven, he mumbled an apology only distinguishable as such by the flush of shame that preceded it.

'Ilić!'

The second youth now produced a package of waxed brown paper that he unwrapped to reveal a small nut cake. He saluted feebly and stammered as he stepped back, 'Miloš and I are very sorry, sir.'

Marković smiled wanly and acknowledged them without criticism, for he could see how miserable they were, and he was only grumpy.

The commander waved the youths away.

'All right, dismissed!'

The boys fled. At once the atmosphere lightened and the officer sprung upon the crisp white sheets and positioned himself comfortably on the bed, flipping up the back of his jacket where it subsided too far into the springs.

‘I knew you’d want to see them, Anton,’ he began - bounce, bounce.

‘Oh, don’t sit on the bed, Filip, for God’s sake!’

‘Why?’ Now that he didn’t have to put on an act, he slung one leg across the other, and the bed chortled a little creak in response.

‘Because that old nursing sister will kill me. You’re not allowed to sit on her beds.’

‘Really?’ Filip released his long limbs and extracted a chair from beside the bed of the elderly man next to him. ‘May I?’ he enquired, engaging the fellow in such a charming smile that the man looked suddenly shy, as if few people had ever taken the time to acknowledge him. ‘Thank you.’

He settled himself comfortably on the chair and tapped a rhythm upon his hat.

‘Which old nursing sister? They all looked nice to me.’

‘Boadicea. The one wearing the armour. She hates me.’

‘Nonsense.’ He flourished a cavalier hand into the depths of a canvas satchel and announced, ‘Housekeeping!’

‘What a pleasant fellow you are!’ grumbled Marković.

‘I am on your side, Anton,’ returned Filip genially. ‘Even if you have already made an enemy, though, personally, I doubt it. Now, the Chief, out of the generosity of his heart, has packed you two shirts, your most threadbare trousers he could find – he believes old clothes are suitable for convalescence - your toothbrush, some odds and ends, and a razor to cut the cake.'

‘To shave.’

‘To cut the cake. Poor Petar’s mother insisted he bring it. You won’t be able to use the razor to shave, so beguile one of those nice nurses to do the honours. Girls love that sort of thing. Makes them feel like mothers. Let them bring out your legendary charm.'

'What legendary charm?'

‘Intimacy, Anton, that female equator you haven’t crossed yet. Now observe! You need a shave and that was a good looking nurse who just slipped behind those curtains across the aisle. She’d be an ace with a razor, I bet.’

‘I can shave myself.’

‘Then here’s a shirt. Get her to help you dress.’

‘Can you leave if you’re going to provoke me, please?’ said Anton, attempting to make himself comfortable with his single arm.

Filip grinned at him, poised like a barge pole above the mattress.

‘It’s true, then, what they say about hospital beds being the delusion of a Spartan mindset?’ he asked.

‘My shoulder hurts,’ said Anton in reply.

‘It’s your own fault.’

‘It was not my fault.’

‘It wasn’t your boat.’

‘In that particular case, Filip, it didn’t need to be.’

‘You still haven’t told me what you think of the bed.’

It did no good arguing with Commander Kolarov. While he breathed he would pursue his theme of sympathy being detrimental to recovery and the ward, which had tensed for a clash of opinions, settled back down, pleased that no one had ruffled its professional façade by arguing about whether sympathy might be helpful or not.

‘The wonder is,’ conceded Anton at length, ‘that you're expected to get better sleeping in one.'

This answer relieved Filip of a social burden, and even the elderly man in the next bed expressed his mottled pleasure with lips crinkled by the absence of teeth. But Anton was disappointed because he would have liked some sympathy from Filip and it looked like he wasn’t going to get any. He lay on his bed between the convivial commander and the sensitive old man and thought about the pleasure of his own company, as he often did.

He had regular features similar to the vast majority of his compatriots who agreed, to a man, that he looked good in the right light and the right mood, but could appear fractious when the sun disappeared behind a cloud. Anton said his feelings were none of their business, and this was generally true except for the present circumstances. Yet he had made no attempt to adjust to the hospital, claiming in his defense that he didn’t care what people thought of him. By contrast with the two rows of men and boys all washed, dried and thoroughly institutionalized, he stood out by his refusal to acquiesce peacefully, which no amount of soap and water could remedy.

From behind the curtains floated a faecal odour. The pretty nurse withdrew with a bedpan and hurried from the ward. Filip frowned.

'I hate to see you like this, Anton. Smile. Be grateful. Tell them a joke. You can look like the grim reaper but, if you make them laugh, they’ll love you.’

‘I would appreciate some sympathy, Filip.’

‘You won all hearts yesterday when you fainted on the slipway.’

‘Go to hell.’

Kolarov laughed.

‘Not today, my friend. Got the incident report to write.’ He pulled out a pencil and paper from the same modest satchel, crossed his legs and began scribbling. ‘What happened?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Then you’d better think of something quickly for the sake of bureaucracy. I put the boys through this this morning.’

'You weren't too hard on them, I hope?'

'Me?’ replied Filip, his head still sunk in the paper.

‘I thought they looked pretty scared.’

‘Well, one look at you would be enough to scare anyone.’ He tapped the pencil on his teeth and continued writing. ‘If you must know, there were safety procedures that everyone overlooked, including you.’ The commander was not given to reprimand, but the blistering white bandages reflected the sun into his eyes and circumstances wrung it from him. He paused in his writing and placed his hands open in front of him. ‘What were you even doing there, Anton?'

'The boys were curious.'

‘Petar, who hadn’t removed the fuse before you started lecturing him on engines and Miloš, who insisted afterwards that he heard you shout “turn it off”?'

‘Well, why did he start it in the first place?’

'Because he’s seventeen and he’s wondering to himself what might happen if he flicks that switch. That’s what seventeen year old boys do. You shouldn’t have left him and gone off with Petar to explain how propellers work. Miloš panicked when your sleeve got caught, Petar said that he forgot about the fuse, and so did you.’ Kolarov shook his head, most particularly at Anton. ‘Disregard for protocol, Anton. This is when these things happen. Now that we've lost a man we can't afford to lose, I realize the advice is a bit long in the tooth, but you always have to learn the hard way.’

‘You really think I’m that bad?’ Anton muttered.

‘You know I don’t,’ replied Filip, 'You’re one of the most capable men I’ve got but, right now, you look like a bear with a sore tooth and I’m sorry about the boys, but you picked a bad time to be their friend instead of their leader.’

‘Why? You’ve had some more news from Belgrade? '

Filip tossed aside his pencil and drew his brows together.

'Well, you heard about the prince, that he capitulated to Hitler?'

'Yes. And?'

'And the alliance with Germany has not gone down well in the capital. Prince Paul’s gone. General Simović saw to that and now they’re ranging the streets singing “better war than the pact.” The fellow on the wireless said he’d never seen such jubilation.’

‘We’re at war?'

'Not yet, but the staff at the German and British embassies have left Belgrade, so it’s coming. Hitler knows the strategic value of the country and after the capitulation of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary he expected us to agree easily. Our show of defiance will have let that famous rage of his off its leash.'

'But are we ready?'

‘No, we’re not ready! We’ve been treading on egg shells to keep their eyes off us. Now the Nazis will wipe Yugoslavia from the map.'

He spoke calmly but the underlying tension in his voice conveyed its own urgency and through the window to the west the grey limestone peaks trembled at his words from the water to the sky. What a desperate place was a hospital when the enemy would come over the mountains.

Anton pushed himself up until their eyes were level.

'Listen, Filip, I’ve got to get out of here.'

But Filip only rose and replaced his hat.

‘The minute I hear anything further, I'll tell you.' He patted the bed affectionately. 'You just sit tight and get better.'

He headed towards the exit. On his way out he met the pretty nurse who was struggling to load the cleansed bedpan into the top level of a cupboard. With a gracious smile, he took it from her, slipping it in easily and, out of the corner of one eye, Anton caught him wink at her.

****

By the third day, he was managing a rumble around the ward without dizziness, to the distress of the other patients who wished he'd push his throttle in and not appear so menacing: one hundred and ninety centimetres of bone and muscle, as dense and dark as the trunk of a black poplar and just as communicative. Since regaining consciousness, he’d scarcely exchanged two words with anyone except the old man beside him whom he’d found hiding beneath the bedclothes in anticipation of a visit from his wife.

However, early on his fourth morning, while watching out the window for Germans, his wolf-like reflection in the glass so alarmed him that he composed himself in a secluded cubicle in the bathroom and, with Kolarov’s threats of female intimacy ringing in his ears, attempted to shave with his left hand. In order to avoid cutting himself he was forced to proceed so carefully that an hour wore away in utter concentration until a white veil swished into his cubicle and he glanced up to see the senior sister frowning down at him. She watched without speaking as he scraped cautiously around his neck, all the while exhibiting that female exasperation for his sex that assumed he would make a mistake merely because he was male.

Finally, she slanted her head to one side and remarked, 'All you had to do was ask, Captain.'

'You are disturbing me,' he informed her.

They had supported his injured shoulder in a sling and he had put the trousers on that Filip brought. One arm he managed to ease into a shirt and he had draped the sleeve of the other over the bandages and fastened three buttons up his chest. Thus attired, he fancied that he looked on the road to recovery. The nurse and her caustic quip had soured that achievement. He was all lather and inexperience.

'You are going to cut yourself,' she said.

'I am not going to cut myself, sister,' he replied coolly, wiping his face with a towel. 'And now, if you please, I'm certain you have better things to do with your time.'

'I do, as a matter of fact. But it took me a while to find you. Your commander is waiting by your bed.'

So certain was Anton that Kolarov could only be there to inform him of catastrophe, and that the nurse had deliberately delayed the announcement because she was a ball-busting man-hater, that he pushed passed her before he broke his own rule and swore at a woman in public.

Sure enough he found the commander pacing around the bed, unable even to sit.

'What?' demanded Anton. ‘What?’

'Thank God!' Filip motioned him aside, brushing a ribbon of sweat from his forehead. 'Where can we talk privately?'

They returned to the cubicle. At the sight of the commander, the sister departed politely.

‘The Luftwaffe has bombed Belgrade,’ Kolarov reported. Punctuated. ‘Yesterday. Easter Sunday. With civilian casualties in the thousands. For our jubilation, Hitler has sworn to teach the Slavs a brutal lesson.’ He paused and Anton heard the suffering in his voice. ‘Four waves and they didn’t even target the military.’

‘Where then?’ asked Anton in a taut whisper.

‘Homes and businesses. The whole city’s ablaze.’

‘Do we mean that little to him?’

Disbelief was in his voice, yes, but a growing recognition of something that was merciless as well.

‘It’s intimidation, Anton. Don’t credit Hitler with any sophistication.’

‘And how did we respond?’

‘Not well. A few dog fights. I told you we weren’t ready, and there is the sense also that some of our positions were betrayed.’

‘What about the naval base? I haven’t heard any planes. How soon will we be attacked? What about my boat?’

‘The Nebojša’s dived at Tivat but nothing’s happened yet. She’s sitting on the bottom of the bay.’ Kolarov checked his watch. ‘It’s half past eight. She’s been there for an hour and a half. Late last night Naval Command was warned by the British about a possible attack this morning and all craft have been ordered to change their positions daily, as long as they have the fuel to do so. Other than that we wait to see if and when the army surrenders. When, I think, sooner than if.’

****

After Kolarov had left the ward, Anton felt bereft. He stared at the two long rows of beds, some empty, a few occupied, and experienced a loneliness he had not felt since he was a child at the end of a long summer's outing. Something had delayed his family – the bank, the tram, he couldn't remember now - and, by the time they arrived, everyone else had gone home except him. Distressing for a man to recall the small hurts of boyhood.

The German attack on Belgrade had profoundly shocked him. As a member of the military there should have been some action to take, yet he could do nothing.

‘Destroy Paris,’ he thought bitterly. ‘Slaughter French civilians without provocation and see how the world reacts.’

Once, as a student, he had been to Paris: a new city then, only seventy or eighty years old, but already the darling of the Western world, as dedicated to style and indulgence as London was to finance. Paris was not to know that to Serbs Belgrade had had the same reputation for pleasure, and he doubted whether it would have cared. Paris was a teenager and just as self-involved. The Nazis would not ravage a city younger than the age of consent, but their ideology justified the destruction of a Slavic population.

The morning sun flooded the long ward and Anton sat on his bed with his head in his hands contemplating with increasing despair the fate of his boat. Since nine o’clock he had heard the drone of bombers and, in reply, the sharp report of anti-aircraft fire. He knew the planes would have to have come from Italy. The Italians had long coveted the Yugoslav coast and were undoubtedly taking advantage of the German invasion to launch their own. The bombers would be targeting ships anchored in the bay and he doubted whether a civilian hospital would be evacuated.

Lunchtime came and went. The sun began its swift descent upon the crags around the water. Three o'clock struck and Anton watched the minutes glide on until a quarter past when the day-nurses, anxious but professional, would gather in their small glassed-in office for the handover to the evening staff. As his case arrived, they would discuss its particular features, his treatment and his progress. Quickly they would move onto the next patient, one or two men after him, then the last one; close their books, smooth their veils, and seal his doom for another night.

His shoulder would not heal while it was condemned here, for healing is holistic and his heart was broken. Briskly he seized the satchel from beneath his bed, sat with it on the sheets and thrust the flap open with his foot. He shoved in his few belongings, ignoring the insistence of the evening nurse who came bustling up, that he wait for the doctor.

On observing that he had no intention of waiting for anyone, she repacked his satchel with hydrogen peroxide, iodine and bandages and begged him to return tomorrow. But he had made up his mind and her plea fell on deaf ears. As she chased him down the ward, he threw the strap over his shoulder and left without a backward glance. He could imagine her expressing his medical sacrilege in outrageous adjectives.






 


 



Thursday, August 3, 2023

HELL HATH NO FURY – the poetry of women Partisans in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945





‘You who burned my house and killed my child, who shelters
beneath a foreign wing, a traitor who accepts a salary from the
enemy! Did you know that I carry a firearm now? I’ll get you!’ (1)

With the barrel of her gun up his nose, he pleads that he only did what he was ordered to do, but the feeble excuse doesn’t save him.

‘I have a gun always ready,’ she replies with the same mercy he showed her. ‘Aim that bullet into the disgusting fascist! We will obliterate the black blood of fascism forever.' (2) (3)

This female Partisan is well aware that her old mother is sitting at home worrying about her, yet the urge to fight is too strong to resist.

She writes, 'The struggle was difficult, bloody and angry. Everything is broken, falling apart, crumbling. Beside the narrow muddy path you still experience the smell of spilled blood. Yes, many young lives fell, young patriots, heroes. The struggle was an appalling Golgotha and those heroes, mother, were your children. I know that you worry, mother, but I can’t help you now. I still feel that the only place for me is in the brigade. Believe me, mother! The hour is near when I will return to your place for ever, and then surely your wounded heart will stop suffering.' (5)

Still concerned for her mother, she tries to explain how she feels, 'I am a woman fighter, a young partisan. I fight for my people as long as freedom does not prevail. I carry a rifle in my hand, I move boldly forward until the last village is free. Hurry everyone into the struggle, all those homes which are still reluctant to get involved, so that after this war you will experience no shame. When they ask you: "Where were you, comrade?" what will you say?' (6)

But here is a surprise! Her mother responds that she wishes she could be a Partisan nurse. The instant one young soldier recovers from his wound, she knows exactly what to tell him, 'And when his wound eased, I would say to him: “Go, comrade, and keep fighting! Avenge your other friends and don't let the enemy prevail. Don't complain about your young life while one of the bastards remains."' (4)


These women entered World War 2 without illusions. Their country was divided between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and their allies, the Ustasha in Croatia, and Hungary. Owing to the widespread destruction of their villages, they often had no homes to return to. At first, they supported the men as nurses and typists, and continued the same domestic tasks as they had in the villages. Then, e
arly in 1942, at their request, Tito allowed them to bear rifles. 

Many girls joined the Partisans to avenge brothers who had fallen in battle. One such was the Croatian poet Anđelka Martić who, after the war, became a well-known translator and children's author. She wrote to her brother, 'You are no more, but the place in the line of soldiers at which you waited is not empty. Your young sister gladly took your heavy rifle in her tender hands. Now I am walking where you would have been, by the mountain, stifling my pain for you in a blaze of colour. Dream quietly, brother, I know what you wanted. Until the end your faithful rifle will be heard.' (7)

This poem was written in 1943 when Anđelka was 19. Many girls were younger. The British liaison officer to the Partisans, Fitzroy Maclean records a twelve-year-old girl throwing a grenade into a bunker full of Germans, all of whom were killed. She may well have been the girl who wrote this,

'I am a little female partisan ready every hour, so that in the fight I can avenge my dead brothers. One brother still remains to me, and I would give him all of my little heart, although I fall too. I will give my life for our dear people, I am fighting for freedom against the Kraut forces. I will give my life to defend mother, and in this way I will say to my own dear Dad: "Don't, Dad, regret the lives of your darling children. We must all fight to destroy the devil.” Therefore, I go forward into the holy battle to avenge my brothers, because freedom is here, shining at the door.' (8)

Freedom is a constant theme in the women's poetry. Even when they waited by graves, they looked towards freedom, and everywhere they recorded their love of the countryside. To me this reads as if nature was in their hearts and souls, therefore it understood their struggle.  

 'On the graves of our comrades the cyclamens are without number. Their red is everywhere in the forests through which the fighters move. We twitch the gentle stems, we roll up the small flowerets and our thoughts lead us back into a warm childhood. Once we ran in the woods, gathering red cyclamen, our song filled the paths and tracks. But today the forests have become the graves of our fallen comrades, the sons of our land. The scent of cyclamen spreads everywhere. It announces our freedom, and these graves stand as a symbol of victory.' (9)

'A lonely grave in a pine forest. Silence everywhere, only the wind whistles, while with tearful eyes a mother weeps for her son. But the forest trembles! It is ardent, it is quiet. The branches are sobbing, too! Why does your wood disturb the silence on a peaceful day, forest? It is because the trees are telling the story of that dead partisan. The forest is whispering to his mother about our struggle, about our joy when the people win, and about how much her son’s grave is worth.' (10)

I have found no reference to communism in the women's poetry, although there is some hero worship of Tito. From the poems I learned much about the beauty of the land and the connection of its people to it. Basil Davison, another British officer who worked with the Yugoslav Partisans, wrote that they weren't interested in politics, they just wanted their land back.      

'Bend your ear to the ground and listen to the murmur. That it is not the murmur of the wind. It is neither waterfalls nor mountain rapids, nor the moaning in the dense forest of firs. Because it rumbles loudly, vigorously and terribly from the strong walk of the victorious.' (12)

Meanwhile, our Partisan blows the smoke from the barrel of her gun. At her feet, the Nazi lies dead.

'Oh, my rifle, I will never part with you! You will be with me at the end of my wrist until the last day.' (1) She turns to her comrades. 'Through fire and blood, through the persecution of these violent monsters, through concentration camps, harshness and humiliation, you are welcome, women, mothers, our daughters, to your new baptism of fire. You have found yourselves alone at a terrible price, but you have created a new and combative woman.' (11)


Yugoslav Partisan women fighting for freedom. Artist, Zlatko Prica
Illustration, Zlatko Prica

  
Note: The poems are written almost entirely in rhythmic, rhyming stanzas. To replicate this in an English translation, I would have had to rewrite the poems, which I decided not to do.             

For a complete account of these courageous women, I recommend Women and Yugoslav Partisans by Jelena Batinić, Cambridge University Press, 2015. 


THE POEMS

from PO ŠUMAMA I GORAMA  (Through Forests and Mountains)
Poems of the Fighters of the National War of Liberation, Zagreb 1952

1. A Woman Under Arms by Franjo Mraz

2. Female Partisan on Guard Duty by Slavica Havelka III ćeta I bataljan II brigade 33 rd division

3.The Female Partisan by Gabro Vidović-Buco 1941

4. The Conscientious Mother by Života Čitaković borac, IV batajon “S.O” II. Prolet. brigada

5. To Mother by Verica Gabor, Hospital company, II brigade, XXXIII div.

6. Young Partisan by Ana Langeneker, delegate 1st Brigade 32nd division

7. To My Fallen Brother by Anđelka Martić 1943

8. A Female Partizan by Micika Biškup II. Brig., XXXIII, div.

9. Cyclamen by Anđelka Martić XXI. NO brigada

10. The Lonely Grave by Anđelka Martić
 
11. You Have Arisen by Mileva Jorgić I batajon, XVII. Ud. Brig. XXVIII, div. 

Saturday, July 8, 2023

WINTER BATTLES: BOSNIA 1941

December 1941: Fleeing the German destruction of Užice in Serbia,
Tito and the Partisans crossed the River Drina in winter,

Tito and the Partisans crossed the Drina in winter


Tito and the Partisans climbed the mountains of Bosnia in winter to escape the Germans


climbed the mountains of Bosnia on the other side, 



Tito and the Partisans climbed through the forests of Bosnia in winter to escape the Germans

and walked through the forests.    


Bosnia Herzegovina is a very mountainous country. In winter it is snow bound.



As someone who has actually driven through Bosnia in the snow, I have difficulty understanding why the Nazis thought that they could successfully invade the country. Even today, the roads seem to be a collection of mule tracks up and down the formidable Dinaric Alps with the addition of a few optimistic motorways. In Eastern Approaches (Jonathon Cape pub. 1949) Fitzroy Maclean writes, 'the Germans, with an elusive enemy, with unreliable allies, and without enough troops of their own to occupy the country effectively, could do little more than garrison the large towns and try to guard the lines of communication between them'.

However, during the war they needed bauxite from the mines near Mostar, the mediaeval capital of Herzegovina, for use in the construction of aeroplanes. Bosnia Herzegovina is also rich in coal, iron ore, zinc and lead. There were two ways to transport coal and ore to Germany. One was along the system of Bosnian narrow-gauge railways built by the Austrians which was extended between the wars to connect the coast to Belgrade, and the other was by sea to Trieste. The railways ran the gauntlet of demolition by the Partisans, and ships in the Adriatic risked being sunk by the Allies. 

The Partisans needed Bosnia to connect with their operational zones in Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia and Montenegro. The Nazis waged a series of offensives against them. They were assisted in this by the Italians, the Croatian Ustasha and the Chetniks. The Partisans held up to twenty-eight German divisions in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro which suited Churchill as the Allied Invasion of Sicily approached.

To understand the creation of the Partisans from a motley collection of local fighters engaged over the centuries in battling Turks, we must go to Bosnia in December 1941.

'Tito and his staff had formed a conception of Partisan warfare which deviated from past Soviet practice...where a Partisan unit was an auxiliary weapon of a regular army...To the Yugoslavs the Partisan units were the army, organized in mobile formations and in territorial defense units.'

from The Embattled Mountain, FWD Deakin, Oxford University Press, 1971.

Between December 1941 and May 1942 Tito formed five Proletarian Brigades of up to 1000 fighters each, as a military striking force under his direct command. By November they had increased to 28.

 Deakin continues, 

'The immediate task of the First Proletarian Brigade [in December 1941] was in ensure the hold of the Partisans over the key strategic areas of East Bosnia.'

The chief difference between these forces and the old local fighters was their mobility. They no longer defended only their home territories. 

'Long before the Allies, the Germans and Italians came to realize that the Partisans constituted a military factor of first rate importance against which a modern army was in many respects powerless.,,During each of [their seven] offensives, the extensive troop movements involved exposed [them] more than ever to the attacks and ambushes of the Partisans.'   

from Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean  

The contrast between the Partisans and the Germans was striking. The Germans in Bosnia were an efficient modern army, often using Alpine troops, with field kitchens and heavy artillery, 'lumbering, snail-like'. The Partisans were organized into small, mobile, lightly armed units who were familiar with the terrain. Much of the reason for the failure of the Germans to subdue the Partisans was their inability to embrace change. Tito told Deakin that the Germans 'had missed the lesson of creating mobile units with special anti-Partisan training. German forward units were always pressing behind the Yugoslavs and could never move with speed in self-contained columns to attack the Partisan forces from the rear. By not winning every grim race for each mountain crest, the German operation failed in its central purpose of annihilating the Yugoslav main operational group.' 

Yet the Germans were supported from the air, as we read in the poem The Bombed Forest by Josip Cazi, a Partisan Political Commissar. Papuk is a mountain in Slavonija in Croatia.

'This morning over Papuk a reconnaissance plane is searching, an ominous buzzard in that dreary first light...Death comes from the air, seeking with fiery claws the heart of the Partisans.'

The forest burns all day. Frightened animals run from the wildfire. 

'But at sunset Partisan songs sweep through it like an inexhaustible fountain. Along the slopes the column of soldiers moves out into the lowlands. They will go into action at night – the cycle of history is still turning. Above Papuk the fires die in the evening.' 

The typical enemy tactic was encirclement, and getting out of the ring was the Partisan aim, as we read in A Partisan Letter by Josip Cazi,

Yesterday, with a fiery partisan sledgehammer, we fought the fascist regiment on Mt Psunj, so hurriedly that I didn’t send you the letter I had written. We penetrated the ring by a stormy impact, blasting the fiery chain in a bloody assault. And while to you, my orphan, I write this letter, our columns on the September roads are singing of victory in the morning sun.

'The ring' is a constant observation in British eyewitness accounts. For example, from Partisan Picture' by Basil Davison (Bedford Books, 1946) at the Battle of the Neretva River, from January to March 1943,

To hold the ring the German Command then made an arrangement with 12,000 of Mihaylovitch's chetniks, commanded by Col. Stanisitch and General Djukanovitch and others, by which the latter would attempt to seal off any further partisan retreat by taking up positions along the left bank of the River Neretva. [The fourth offensive.]

The fifth offensive ended with the breaking of the ring in Montenegro and the escape of Tito and the main formations into Eastern Bosnia. That was in mid-June 1943 [the Battle of the Sutjeska].

An account of the same battle from The Heretic by Fitzroy Maclean (Harper and Brother, NY, 1957), 

'"Now that the ring is completely closed," ran a captured German operation order, "the communists will try to break through. You will ensure that no able-bodied man leaves the ring alive."' 

 'If guerillas are to survive in conditions comparable to those in which the Partisans were fighting,' wrote Fitzroy Maclean in Eastern Approaches, 'they must...deny the enemy a target.' The Partisans did this by 'extricating themselves, fading away, reappearing elsewhere and attacking the enemy where he least expected it.' They did not stand and fight to the last man. We see this 'escape in defeat' in the poem The Battle at Twenty Below Zero. Having sown the seeds of dissent among the local population, they returned later to the same area from which the enemy had driven them out. No author is given, but it was evidently written by one of the brigades in 1945. Gradina is in northwest Bosnia.  

The sun itself is flaming on these clouds,
and on their serene heights, a grey aspect,
but on the people and villages, snows are falling.


The hoarfrost is silent, the chirp of the birds dies.
Until the middle of November its sting has dug in.
But the heart of the people beats like a burning spark.

The column of soldiers steps into the blizzard, the angry ice,
on callused feet, by swift, firm steps.
The bold ones focus on the view in the distance where autumns produce bloody fruits.
In their hearts they carry spring blossoms and their deadly rifles are loaded with freedom.

Hurry! It will be an onslaught in Gradina,
Because Tito’s heart has won the battle of the cold,
An irresistible heart for freedom.

Shh! The soldiers creep on, still on track,
What leads to the bunker? The stone tower?
The shots…the cheers… and the escape in defeat?

Five dead Nazis and three frozen traitors,
Because the stiffs in uniform have no heart.
The thermometer says: twenty below zero.

 In a further post, I will comment on the poems written by and about female Yugoslav Partisans. To close, here is a small sample.   

From A Woman Under Arms by Franjo Mraz

Oh my rifle, I will never part with you!
You will be with me at the end of my wrist until the last day
To protect the paths of freedom along which the conquered are moving.
Tremble, look, listen to the woman warrior, the woman Partisan!

                                                                                     

(Images M Walker 2023. The first three images were taken driving from Belgrade over the Drina to Sarajevo and the last on the motorway from Sarajevo towards the Neretva River and Mostar.)

https://www.mwalkeristra.com

Sunday, June 18, 2023

TITO'S WAR CAVE

 


‘Despite his experiences at Drvar, Tito had not lost his liking for caves,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill’s liaison officer with the Yugoslav Partisans. Less than a fortnight after his dramatic rescue from a cave near Drvar in Bosnia during Operation Rösselsprung, Tito installed himself in yet another cave halfway up yet another mountain on the island of Vis, three hours south-west of Split on the Croatian coast. At this time, Vis remained the only island in the Adriatic unoccupied by the Nazis.



Tito lived and worked here from 7th June to 19th September 1944.



The plaque reads: "Here, from June to October 1944, were maintained the working parties of the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Communist Party and other assistants in the War of National Liberation."

The cave looks 117 degrees ESE towards the expanse of Adriatic islands and left towards the World War Two Allied airstrip. The runway is east-west and can easily be seen with the naked eye.

To get to the cave on Mount Hum from the town of Komiža is a 10km drive or 2km as the crow flies. A slim, tortuous road that I suspect was once a donkey track, clings to the side of the mountain and looks directly over the sea, which was a vivid blue the morning we visited. Travelling down slightly, we passed through two villages and finally made a left turn at Borovik which, despite the name, doesn’t seem to be a village at all, then along a very narrow road up the mountain. About two thirds of the way to the top, we parked and walked up a steep winding track a further hundred metres to the cave.

The location is mountain quiet. Wild rosemary and oregano lightly scent the air and dry trees rise to a height of no more than 3 m. The dimensions of the cave are: 4m across the entrance, width 4.5m, depth 9m – a flat floor without a slope - domed ceiling to 4m. Three steps at the back lead to a flat area of 1.5m in depth. Although the steps suggest another room, there is nothing further back.

The cave is in a magnificent position with expansive views over the aerodrome, the Adriatic and the islands heading south down the coast. It looks down into a plunging valley which forms a V on two sides that expands at the bottom left to the airstrip and the sea. “A war cave entrusted to eagles!” I think. A perfect spot.

Grapes and olives are grown in the interior of the island and the rich red soil near the aerodrome, but in the remainder of Vis the soil is poor and supports only dry scrub. Harsh winds and an abundant scattering of limestone add to the impression of barrenness and a stark reminder that a farmer’s life is not as easy here as in the fertile northern plains of Slavonia and Serbia.


The cave is marked by a red dot and A is the airstrip, but don’t let the map fool you. Vis really isn’t very big. The landing area looks far away on the map, but once you’re there it is clear that everything is close to everything else. For a fascinating account of Vis airstrip, see Forgottenairfields europe .

See also: Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean, Jonathon Cape 1949

Photo credit LIFE The Balkans Time Life International 1966.

https://www.mwalkeristra.com/




https://www.mwalkeristra.com/




Tuesday, June 13, 2023

TITO'S LAST STAND

Komiža, Vis - port of the Partisan 
and Allied navies

 

September 1943 – Fascist Italy capitulates to the Allies. Nazi Germany invades the Dalmatian coast and its Adriatic islands. Only Vis remains unoccupied.

January 1944 - Tito declares that Vis must be defended.

Island of Terrible Friends by Bill Strutton is the sixth eyewitness account I have read about World War 2 in Yugoslavia. The previous five were Embattled Mountain by Bill Deakin, Eastern Approaches and The Heretic by Fitzroy Maclean, Irregular Adventure by Christie Lawrence, and Partisan Picture by Basil Davidson. We have these British soldiers to thank for grit, honesty and a rough admiration of ruthlessness, and those contemporary politicians in Belgrade and Zagreb who rewrite their history in order to honour themselves would do well to read them.

War is a terrible thing and although one may commence a book of this sort believing that the British were British and the Yugoslavs were Yugoslav, and never the twain shall meet, yet these British authors give praise where it’s due. ‘But if the Commandoes imagined they were fighting a tough war, the [Yugoslavs] were fighting a far more desperate one, right by their side.’

Island of Terrible Friends is written like a novel and records the mission of Major James Rickett from the Royal Army Medical Corps to set up a field hospital in January 1944 on the Adriatic island of Vis for the 50 Commandos there at the time. Also present were 1000 Partisans and a steady stream of wounded civilians escaping from the German occupied coast.

The commando’s task was to harass the Germans.

Commando Lieutenant Barton ‘dressed as a peasant and with two Partisans to show him the way, loaded his Sten gun on a mule under a burden of firewood and walked passed a number of German sentries right into the village of Nerežiše on the island of Brać, garrisoned with 200 Germans. One of the Partisans stood guard outside while he knocked on the Commandant’s billet, was admitted, thrust past a screeching woman to a bedroom upstairs, and there, in the faint light of a candle, fired a burst at the German Commandant who, half risen and gaping wordlessly, leaned over and fell. Barton calmly helped himself to the dead commandant’s automatic, his compass, an excellent pair of binoculars and a rifle. [Then] he beat it with his two Jugoslav comrades through a thicket of sentries.’

With scant medical stores and a general reply of ‘No’ when he requested any more, Rickett begins treating injuries with a lack of everything except desperation, removing a ruptured spleen, for instance, by a Tilley lamp fuelled by rakija until he was able to ransack a Liberator that crashed on the island, for wire and switches to light his hospital.

‘The sea around [Vis] was busier after dark than Piccadilly in the blackout’ and the Germans were always at their door. Each morning Messerschmitts circled, attacking the settlements of Vis, and the Partisan Navy of tuna boats and trawlers camouflaged themselves in the steep bays, caves and inlets until setting out on their missions to sabotage the Germans bases on islands so close that they could be easily seen with the naked eye.

The British opinion of working with the Partisans varied between admiration and outrage. ‘Twenty-eight German divisions [were] drawn and pinned down in the Balkans by Partisan ebullience.’ Yet, their discipline and ruthlessness that sometimes shocked the British reflect the harshness of pre-war peasant life recorded in such works as Irregular Adventure by Christie Lawrence and Rural Women in Croatia-Slavonia in 1900 by Elinor Murray Despalatovic.

That these famers, labourers and housewives could so irritate the Germans to the extent of gaining their respect as an army, Strutton doesn’t seem to have appreciated as well as Basil Davidson or Bill Deakin, or even Fitzroy Maclean who was from the Scottish aristocracy. Strutton writes to entertain an English audience, and his descriptions of the Partisans lack the intimacy of the other writers. They are devoid of the solemn Partisan purpose and discipline that drove the resistance movement and was like a holy thing to them. It might be a language problem, as I noticed he made mistakes when transcribing what the partisans say in such simple things as numbers.

One can easily see from the photos of the Partisan Navy in the Adriatic Naval War (Freivogel/Rastelli, Despot Infinitus 2015) with what pride the sailors respond to Tito’s inspection of their fleet. ‘Continuously at sea in spite of adverse weather and taking every risk in the face of German and Italian revenge.’ Yet Strutton often describes the Partisan Navy like a ramshackle afterthought without an understanding of the lives of its members.

One scene, however, I cannot forget. A stricken Allied bomber crosses the island, blazing from nose to tail, and crashes into the sea. One young man alone parachutes out. Upon landing safely, he collapses in tears of shock all over an elderly peasant woman who has no idea who he is and can’t speak his language. She soothes and strokes him, calling him ‘my son’, until transport arrives to take him to hospital. It reminded me of the words of Jesus: wherever the Gospel goes in all the world, this story will be told in memory of her.


Through Forests and Mountains. Yugoslavia in World War 2 (mwalkeristra.com)



Friday, October 23, 2020

Poems of World War 2 - Josip Cazi and the Yugoslav Partisans



        



 






Through Forests and Mountains - Kindle edition by Walker, Margaret. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.


THE BOMBED FOREST  

                         by

                  Josip Cazi                                            


This morning Papuk was awoken at the crack of dawn, but not from birds chirping or squirrels clicking - a reconnaissance plane was searching over Papuk this morning, an ominous vulture in that dreary first light.

And round about the peak and its rugged sides ruby flares spread like blood into the branches of the firs, scarlet in the crimson dawn, as if snarling wings had cast over Papuk a bleeding squadron of fire.

The forest collapsed. Appalled and shaking, it roared and death flowed from the air like fiery rain. Lightning felled trees centuries old. Lucifer danced through Papuk and all its hell. Demons shrieked and shrieked all day, demanding the Partisans from the heart of the inferno.

But the heart they sought - in the mighty bosom of the mountain with its immense heartbeat - from it lashed hundreds of flaming arrows. From it shot thousands of thunderbolts, and the vultures slanted and slid. They overturned and fell in flames into the fiery forest. 
 
 
The wounded forest screamed appallingly: the cries of frightened deer and howling wolves by the thousand, in pain and with panicked voices. In the lake of fire flowers seemed to bloom, an inferno hissed from the surging flames, yelping and reeling.


All day Papuk was shaken, thundering and booming, all day Lucifer danced beside Papuk.
But now it is quietened and, as the day wanes, the glowing fires, in a hundred colours proud and exquisite, quiver in the forest, my mother.


And at sunset, Partisan songs sweep through it like an inexhaustible fountain. Along the slopes the column of soldiers moves out into the lowlands. They will go into action at night – the cycle of history is still turning. Above Papuk the fires die in the evening.





            MEETING 

                 by 

          Josip Cazi 


On rainy evenings we used to walk through the muddy factory town beside the Danube, Jelice, my blue-eyed girl - both tired from work.

But now you’re a fighter in the brigade of the Slavonians, my factory girl, the apple of my heart, whom I met on the slope of the mountain after many years. You used to be a child of the suburbs, the daughter of a fisherman.

Our meeting would be brief: a warm handshake.

Your mother?

     - in the camp.

Your house?

     - devastated.

Your fields?

     - unploughed weeds.

But the column of soldiers is moving on now. Again the brief grip of the hand, the regard in her blue eyes, lit up with joy. The warm trembling voice and sweet smile, like a fragrant, blossoming rose.

Jelice, my blue-eyed apple girl, my partisan rose with the wild hair, my fragrant quince in the blushing dawn, in pearls of dew.

My small hero.

Long ago you already entered the mountain peaks and I am still, for a time, down on the plains.

Through the forest glades and dewy shrubs I have a vision that the sun sent me your fragrant and dancing hair in greetings of golden ribbons.



A PARTISAN LETTER  

                by  

         Josip Cazi 

                        

Fireflies! In the bruised dawn the warm gold invigorates them. We are resting in the high mountains beside the forest. In the top of the beech tree, whose pearl overflows, a rooster is crowing at dawn and a blackbird plays on its silken flute.

The entire night we were in a hellish shootout and now we are in a meadow full of flowers. We are celebrating gladly by the woods and up the hill is heard the song of our comrades.

Hey, what are you singing about? About yearning, that like a barque sails through the soul. Oh, when I have a voice and when I sing the blood of my heart would pour into our song.

But you know how much I think about you, while my exertions mock me in the whistling shots and spattering shells, and death that follows them swiftly. My dear darling, this moment I am embracing you. This moment I care for you like a loving parent.

Oh, how I would love in any way to come to you, to lay your gentle head on my chest and shower you with kisses. After so many days and nights, my desire, my early dawn, my most beautiful flower among flowers!

Here in the sky the morning star is fading with all its grains of dazzling gold. Its name is dear to you, and so you are to me.

And the bird from our nest, our small son, our little treasure?

I heard that for fourteen nights and days you endured devastation while the mountains of Slavonia burned, with our toddler in a sling in your arms. The poor little thing, our white dove. Slavonia was a blazing sea. The villages were on fire, the bushes choked. Ancient forests – our mountain jewel and the shield of our land – all were swallowed in a fiery hell.

Oh, how you are, my sufferers? It was severe for you. Did the little one cry a lot? Where are you now? – for black sorrow gnaws at me. Over and over again I hope that I will meet you somewhere in some village, some refuge or on some Slavonian road. Your eyes are looking for me. My heart expects you.

Daddy! – some little orphan piped up yesterday as, all happy, he twitched my moustache. The grandmother scolded him bitterly but, to me, while I was caressing the golden strands on the child’s head, brimming tears trembled in my eyes – and I saw in my thoughts your two dear faces.



THE KISS

    by Josip Cazi  1941




At the first sight of our free homeland I sunk my head into the juniper bushes.

The morning smoked and froze. It expanded over the bay and the partisans held their rifles cocked in their arms behind a rocky outcrop.

Oh, free woods! Oh, free mountains! My native land!

I am kissing you, naked cliffs, full of zeal and joy like the son returning home to his old mother.

 

Hey! To the forest where the timid deer runs,

Where he smells the firs and the green pines.

To the hills where all wounds are healed,

Buds like flowers, in sunny freedom.


Hey! When would you come to me, my comrades, and rejoice, and with bowed head kiss the free cliffs over our bay.