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, early 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)

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. 

12. Spring by Nada Valenčić 1944

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JASENOVAC, THE OTHER AUSCHWITZ

To my Fellow Fighters by Anka Poznevija 33^rd Brigade

Yugoslav Partisans 

Comrades, my fighters, this poem testifies to you,

And my heart, which has seen and suffered many hurts, sings to you in thanks.

You rescued me from the concentration camp,

I was stuck there a long time

With thousands of those comrades,

Many fears I survived.

 The camp – the atrocities awe me by that single word,

The camp – full only of hungry skeletons,

The camp – from the smallest children in the grave.

Wire, walls, solitary confinement, dungeons…

A scream, hunger and moaning -

These are the beauties of the camps. 

Those words  - ‘Mother! Water, only give me a drop of water,’

You hear through the night’s silent cavern the supplications of the children,     

But the mother hasn’t water to give him,

She has only poor, powerless arms….

From thirst and grief the babies bite their own arms…

Then everything gets quieter,

Slowly the moaning and the noise fade,

Only the iron bar frantically tightens

The rusted barrier.

Comrades, you got me out of this fearsome horror.

I have no other words than these: comrades, thank you! 

The concentration camps of World War 2 hold a macabre grip over the modern imagination. Books on the topic sell in their millions. Tourists with questionable ethics wield selfie sticks in the death chambers. Of these Nazi camps of horror, Auschwitz remains the best known. 

Recently, however, a discussion with a girl on Goodreads led me to the website of Jasenovac, one of many Ustasha-run death camps and inevitably, when huge numbers and sadistic savagery are involved, the most notorious. Situated in Croatia near the border with Bosnia, Jasenovac was established in 1941 by the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, a Nazi puppet state run by the Ustasha, the fascist terrorist organization nurtured by Mussolini and put in power over Croatia and Bosnia by Hitler. Its principal victims were the Orthodox Serbs, the Jews, and the Roma people. 

I must be twisted because, once I was on the site, I wacked the family name into the search bar – MIKATOVIĆ – and to my dismay discovered a relative: Paolo Mikatović from Dekovići. My mother was born in Tar in Istria, seven kilometres away. All the Mikatović’s had lived in the same area since the sixteenth century, so poor Paolo must have been a cousin. 

Google images of Dekovići reveal a farming hamlet so modest that it seems to turn its eyes from the camera. I was filled with sadness for its remoteness, its anonymity, and its slim connection with an infamous location. 

Seeking further information about Paolo, I wrote to Poreć, the nearby regional centre. They replied, but couldn’t help me. I knew that there had been a strong Partisan presence in that part of Istria because I took a photo of the Partisan cenotaph in Tar, and the Tar/Varbiga Partisans even have a Facebook page. I can only assume, therefore, that Paolo joined the local anti-fascist fight, was captured by the Ustasha and subsequently imprisoned in Jasenovac. 

I made the villain in Through Forests and Mountains a Ustasha supporter because I needed someone who was psychotic. When you read about the crimes of the Ustasha, psychotic is the only word suitable, and I urge those with an interest in them to read the Balkan Essays of Hubert Butler. 

Butler, an Irish writer who had taught in Croatia, set out to make ‘a study of the Christian crisis’ in Croatia from 1941 to 1945. 

What Christian crisis? 

First, a bit of background. The temptation for Christians under Fascism during the first half of the twentieth century was that no matter how much they disliked Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or the Croatian Ustasha, they always retained their church. Indeed, the Ustasha were very devout Catholics. Theirs was ‘an extraordinary alliance of religion and crime’, writes Butler. Their leaders went to daily Mass and local priests blessed the troops before battle. One renegade priest, Father Ribar, was arrested and killed in Jasenovac for refusing to celebrate High Mass on the anniversary of the founding of the NDH and to sing the ancient hymn of praise Te Deum Laudamus. Communism, by contrast, was the atheistic villain. Communism was feared by the churches. Yet Butler writes that, after the war, the Yugoslav communist authorities were very careful not to lie about their evidence regarding the activities of the church. 

The Christian crisis to which he refers was the mass murder by the Ustasha of their fellow Christians, the Orthodox Serbs. He continues, ‘I think there can be few parallels in European history for the religious massacres in Croatia in 1941 and ‘42 or for the lack of moral courage which Christians have shown in admitting them with honesty’. Four British authors, Hubert Butler, Stella Alexander, Evelyn Waugh, and Fitzroy Maclean, wrote that the Croatian church was sympathetic to the Ustasha, if not actually collaborating with them. A fifth, Marcus Tanner, noted that ‘the clericals were held back from opposing the NDH by their conviction that Croatian independence was a good thing.’ Many saw in the village massacres carried out by the Ustasha an opportunity to make converts of the terrified Orthodox peasants who queued up to be baptised Catholic in the hope of saving their lives. 

I am a Christian so what do I think? 

The French writer Celine Martin, sister of St Therese, noted that her mother had a ‘veritable cult for the church, for the Pope and for the priesthood,’ but Father Harry from St Agatha’s-down-the-road told me that Jesus didn’t come to found a church, he came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. Let Jasenovac stand as a salutary lesson for all Christians who justify division and murder between brothers. Jesus told Christians to make peace. 

References:

Marcus Tanner, Croatia, Yale University Press 1997 

Hubert Butler, the Balkan Essays, the Irish Pages Press 2016 

Stella Alexander, the Triple Myth, Cambridge University Press 1987 

Evelyn Waugh quoted in Hebblethwaite, Peter Paul VI the First Modern Pope 

                         Harper Collins 1993. 

Fitzroy Maclean, The Heretic: the life and times of Josip Broz-Tito. 

                         Harley and Brothers NY, 1957 (Published in the UK as Disputed Barricade) 

Celine Martin, the Mother of the Little Flower 

                         Tan Books and Publishers 2005

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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)

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

CHETNIKS versus PARTISANS

                IRREGULAR ADVENTURE   by  Christie Lawrence

BOOK REVIEW 

This absorbing book must rate as the greatest war story never heard of. It is the memoirs of British commando captain, Christie Lawrence who, having been taken prisoner at the Battle of Crete, has a series of adventures in and out of occupied Serbia commencing in June 1941. He escapes from the Germans at least twice, travelling across Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria by foot, train and truck. While on the run, he veers between starvation and abundance, in one day in a village of hospitable peasants south of Belgrade, consuming more food than I eat in a week and more alcohol than I drink in a month. The soil in Serbia must be very fertile and there seems to have been an inordinate number of plum trees, most of which were used to make slivovitz.

At one stage in his travels, Lawrence actually lays eyes on the very border of Turkey he is trying to reach before being recaptured and put on a train to Germany. After braining his guard with a wine bottle, he abandons the bread, cheese and salami in his backpack and leaps from the train, crossing two rivers, nearly drowning both times. Eventually he is rescued by yet another village of well-fed Serbs, and here he is nursed back to health in the home of a government forester.

‘[The forester] found you about half a mile from the river…He held you upside down and a lot of water ran out.’

Three other men present were Chetniks under the leadership of Kosta Pećanac, two from the Royal Yugoslav Army and the third was,

‘tall with aquiline features and a beard. He had gaily coloured peasant’s dress with elaborate embroidery. Round his waist and over one shoulder he wore a bandolier full of rifle cartridges, and from his belt hung three Mills bombs. A rife was slung over his back and at his side was a revolver in a big black holster. A large knife in a brass sheath completed his armament.’

Lawrence explains that there existed various Chetnik groups in rural Serbia at this time, each under the command of a local vojvoda, or warlord. They were a tradition left over from the days of the Ottomans, against whom they had waged guerrilla warfare. 

After he has recovered, Lawrence meets Kosta Pećanac himself who formally enrolls him as one of his Chetniks. Pećanac sends him to meet a further Chetnik general, Ljubo Novaković and, once at the general's headquarters, a company of Partisans turns up.

'What do you think of Serbian soldiers?' [Novaković asked me.]

'I think they have very little discipline and are not well trained,' I replied.

'Why do you say that?' asked a Partisan leader.

'Because they take no precaution against being seen from the air...they leave their arms in the open and stand about as though they were at a fair.'

'Perhaps you are right,' said the Partisan. He went away and made his men move under the trees and take their arms with them. The Chetniks watched them scornfully.

'Only the Partisans are afraid of a bomb or two,' [they] said. 

At this point, matters become disjointed, and the fragmentation is accompanied by Lawrence's philosophical treatise on why. Throughout the first half of the book, he takes a fiendish delight in portraying Chetniks as colourfully dressed relics of a glorious past, and Partisans as 'tough and sullen', silently 'watching everybody with...sharp black eyes.' I suspect that, as a representative of the British Empire, he felt justified in this deprecation, but I almost retorted that British interference in the Balkans had created resentment in Bosnia, started World War 1, orchestrated the coup d'état in Belgrade in World War 2 – and so on and so forth.

Kosta Pećanac, 'always half Fascist', announces his intention of collaborating with the Germans and decamps along with the men loyal to him. The Germans pay them a salary. Lawrence marches off with Novaković and eventually arrives at the town of Kruševac in time to witness an assault against the Germans by two companies of Chetniks, a large company of Partisans, 'and the usual huge force of semi-armed peasants.' This is followed by dramatic observations of Chetniks and Partisans together fighting the Germans for the town of Alexandrevac. The first battle Lawence was actually involved in was a joint Partisan/Chetnik assault on Kaljevo in the second week of October, 1941, against the Germans and those of Pećanac's men already on their payroll.

Lawrence eloquently captures the bewilderment of an occupied country before adequate resistance has been organized: the savage German reprisals, the power play between the various Serbian leaders, of whom there seems to be a revolving number, the infighting and arguments. Various peasant goups follow one leader blindly, while others just want to go home.

'These communists, what do they want? They want to attract recruits and be strong...so that when Yugoslavia is liberated they will be able to seize power. They are only working with [General] Draža Mihailović because he is too strong for them at the moment. And he is as bad. He wants a Serbian dictatorship over the rest of the country. He is not a Yugoslav, he’s a Serb.

‘Have you seen how these petty little local leaders squabble about a man and a gun? Novaković went away because he wanted to be a commander and Đurić let him go because he wanted to be commander. And Jakšić prefers Đurić to Novaković because he is the stronger man….Then you look out, [Lawrence]…They will fight for your support and try to murder you if they don’t get it.’

I was never entirely sure who was on whose side, what proportion of the many Mafia-like local warlords were accepting German money for personal gain, and which side the poor peasants caught in the middle might be persuaded to choose next. 

Draža Mihailović appears to have made a critical error in late 1941 following the battles at Kraljevo and Kragujevac. These battles resulted in terrible German reprisals against the civilian population.

'In order to save the lives of his men and preserve the skeleton of an organization, he was forced to disband most of his companies. [Some went home,] many others he sent to serve nominally under the Germans in the companies which Nedić (the quisling prime minister) was raising to fight against the Partisans and ...Draža himself. Draža did not intend [for them to serve under the Germans] His idea was to preserve himself and a certain number of his companies...He meant that they should serve with Nedić's militia long enough to get arms and clothing, and then escape to the woods and hills.'

'Are they still serving with Nedić? I asked.

'Far too many. It was a good idea when Draža thought of it, and provided it could have been carried out as he intended.

'How could it have been a good idea? I insisted.

'Because it provided Mihailović with groups of men whom he could use for his defence against the Partisans, if they attacked, and who also kept him informed about German intentions...They always use a screen of Nedić's men as advance guard. And more than half of the men they use are, in fact, Draža's own.'

Lawrence asked why it had ceased to be a good idea.

'Because hundreds of officers and men...have heard that some of Draža's officers have been sent into Nedić's militia and have, of their own accord, joined without orders. Draža has, in fact, no control over them, and yet, whatever they do, they do in his name, and often openly collaborate with the Germans.'

Lawrence concludes:

'Mihailović's order, after his defeat in the autumn [of 1941] to stop fighting the Germans seemed reasonable enough, for one cannot fight effectively until one's organization is powerful enough.'

Upon hearing that a British officer is staying with General Mihailović, Lawrence sets out once the winter snows have melted to locate his compatriot. After a southerly walk of a week and a half, he arrives at Milanovac, one of the Serbian towns destroyed by the Germans, and here learns from Mihailović's chief-of-staff the cost of revolting against them.

'The total result of our revolution was that we killed about seven or eight thousand Germans, and lost 125,000 men and women shot by them. Three towns and fifty-three villages ...were burned out, and our organization was virtually destroyed...we are now rebuilding it on different lines...Sabotage is our aim and it must be so arranged that subsequent reparations...will be kept small.'

If Lawrence's aim is to confuse me then, by the spring of 1942, he has succeeded. For example, as he proceeds south he is accompanied by two men whose names he has changed to Ivanović and Milenković. They inform him of their plans to organize guerrilla warfare in the Toplica province of southern Serbia and their personal reasons for doing so.

'I want you to understand,’ said Ivanović, 'that we owe no especial loyalty to Draža Mihailović.

'Are you,' I asked, 'in fact, a communist?'

'No,' said Ivanović. 'I have never been a communist. But I am an enemy of the present regime, though a personal friend of the King.'

He took out of his wallet some photos of himself and the young King bathing together on the Dalmatian coast.

'Tell me, I said, 'has Mihailović really a strong following all over the country?'

'Theoretically yes, practically no,' said Milenković.

'It is the British radio which has given him his reputation,' said Ivanović.

Lawrence asks them how they plan to proceed.

'We must make friends with [both Chetniks and Partisans,' replies Ivanović.] 'Subtlety...is the thing. We shall tell the Chetniks that there is no difference that matters between ourselves and them – that our one difference is that they co-operate with the Germans to fight the Partisans, and we fight them on our own. We shall offer to collaborate with them at every turn, whereas, in fact, we shall co-operate with them not at all. One day they will wake up to the fact that we are much too strong for them, and then we shall destroy them.'

'And the communists?'

'The communists will have nothing to fear from us. With them we can work, but we shall eventually be their masters.'

Here follows a spiel of convoluted reasoning involving England, Russia, Partisans and Chetniks which so frustrates Lawrence that he accuses his friends of 'running with the hare and with the hounds'. Yet, despite feeling that he is 'being used as a pawn in a semi-political intrigue' he likes them better than any leaders he had so far met because 'they were unquestioningly working against the Germans.' They then eat a meal together in a café in the town of Kuršumlija alongside enemy Bulgarian officers, Chetniks, officers of Kosta Pećanac working with the Germans, and four officers of Nedić's militia, none of whom take any notice of them. That night, they eat ghoulash at another café and exploit two drunken Germans to escort them safely home in case the occupying Bulgarians shoot them for being out after curfew. When at long last Lawrence meets Mihailović at the end of April 1942, and the general remarks 'you cannot understand the intricacies of Serbian politics,' I was inclined to agree with him.

Mihailović seems overtaken by matters generally.

'That morning I met Mihailović. I was shocked at his appearance, for he looked an old man...He was small and slight with grey hair, a thin, lined face and gold-rimmed spectacles. His voice was tired and he spoke with a worried preoccupied abstraction.'

Lawrence asks him why he has forbidden his generals to take action against the Germans.

'You have heard,' said Mihailović, “of the results of my revolution last autumn...I resolved that I would never again bring such misery on the country unless it could result in total liberation. We cannot, for the moment, maintain large illegal guerrilla companies. The misery which they cause to the peasants is too great....It is far better that my men should stay at home, work on the land, and look after their weapons if they have them. When the day comes for us to rise, we will rise.'

'Then, until Germany's final collapse, you intend to do nothing more active than organize?' I asked.

'I did not say that. I said, until the Germans are too weak to deploy sufficient forces against us to retake what we shall have taken from them. In future, I do not intend to capture a town until I know that I can protect its inhabitants.'

Lawrence's adventures come to a sticky end when he is betrayed to the Gestapo by a mad Serbian warlord dying of tuberculosis, and accused of being Jewish.

The lives of the people he meets paint a picture of Serbia at this critical early stage of its occupation. Daniele, 'a very good machine gunnist', is a Slovene who had joined the Partisans 'partly from fear and partly from hate' after Belgrade was invaded and her husband left her because she was a Jew. A Serbian merchant accepts pay from the Germans in order to feed his village and fund resistance activities. The Orthodox priests of the monastery on Mount Rudnik regard 'it as their duty to offer aid to anyone who was willing to fight the invader...sometimes to the communists, sometimes to the Chetniks, and always to fugitives from German “justice"'. A peasant pulls out his flint box to light Lawrence's cigarette, and down in the valley we hear the sound of women batting linen.

I have been unable to find Irregular Adventure for sale anywhere, but there are copies in university and state libraries.

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THE BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN - GOULBURN MEN WHO WERE PRISONERS OF WAR

 

 

  

     GOULBURN EVENING                              POST

         Wednesday December 19th 1945
  
   Goulburn Men Who Were                Prisoners of War
                     _____________

           Story of Adventure and 

                Real Romance

Gunner DW Walker, son of Staff Sergeant WC Walker of Sydney, and a Goulburn native, and Private RW O’Grady, also born in Goulburn, both came back to Australia by the Aquitania, and they found on the Aquitania, when they compared notes, they had a lot in common. Both started out life by being born in Goulburn. Walker, who is a nephew of Mr Ted Walker, of Goulburn, enlisted in Sydney, and O’Grady in Goulburn. Although in different units, both were taken prisoner at the First Battle of El Alamein. 

Walker, at the armistice, escaped in Italy and did sabotage work. O’Grady was taken by the Germans to Austria and released by the Russians. Both found wives in the countries where they were imprisoned and are bringing them to Australia. The stories of both of them are human stories shot through with romance, faith and hope but, above all, a courage that endured in the face of severe trials.

Private O’Grady was serving with a machine gun corps when taken prisoner at El Alamein in the desert fighting. The four months following he spent in an Italian guarded camp at Benghazi.

“It was not a very pleasant turn-out,” Private O’Grady commented.

“How did they treat you?” he was asked.

“Oh, wickedly,” he returned. “For food we had one very small loaf of bread per day, a tin of bully beef between two men and a bottle of water. We were also given and issue of five cigarettes every few days.

“We went out one day to work,” Private O’Grady recalled, “but we were so weak we could not do anything.”

                                                              THEY WERE LUCKY 

After Benghazi – Italy. The prisoners were transported in two ships. On this occasion Private O’Grady was lucky. He found himself in a boat where there was plenty of food. It happened to be a cargo vessel laden with food for Libya but there had not been time to unload her.

“Every prisoner on board was sick because,” Private O’Grady explained, not having a square meal for so long a time, he ate to overcapacity.”

Apart from this, conditions on the ship were very bad. There were 500 men in the fore hold and 500 men in the stern, and none was allowed on deck except for a few minutes.

                                                                    RED CROSS 

From Taranto, where the ship put in, the prisoners were taken to a prison camp at Brindisi. There again, the food was very poor except what came through the Red Cross. Things remained like that until Italy capitulated in 1943. Then the Germans took over and Private O’Grady was sent into Austria – to a place called Spital. From there he was drafted to work in a magnesite factory at Treben but after a while he was shifted to another prison camp at Wolsburg and from there to Mureck. 

Conditions here were “fifty-fifty” as Private O’Grady put it.

“If you had a last wartime guard over you,” he said, “you had a fair time of it, but if you had a young fanatical guard it was not so good.”

                                                     BEGINNING OF ROMANCE 

It is at this point of the story that the first hint of romance emerges.

“One day,” Private O’Grady recounted, “I went into a milk depot to weigh myself. I wanted to see how I was going for weight. And there it was that I met my future wife, Edith Romer of Budapest. She was finishing off her schooling in Austria when the war broke out and the Germans sent her to work in the milk depot. We saw a lot of each other and things began to progress. Just at that time Red Cross parcels were not coming along because railway transport had been knocked out by bombing, and my girlfriend helped me with food.”

On April 1st of this year the Russians were making rapid headway on that front and the Germans gave orders for all prisoners to be evacuated.

“But I didn’t want to go,” said Private O’Grady. “I wanted to be liberated by the Russians. So at ten o’clock one morning I got out of the window of the laager and hid in a barn until nightfall. Then I went to the house where my girlfriend was all alone – her aunt had gone away – and there I stayed for five weeks.

“In the meantime between 15 and 20 SS officers were put up in the house. They were always wanting to peep into the room where I was hiding. But my friends put them off with excuses.

“A colonel of the partisan army was keeping me company just then and, one afternoon when he and I were listening to the wireless and my girlfriend was digging in the garden, the door of our room was opened and in walked an SS officer. He examined the Colonel’s papers, but I had none to show. My girlfriend came in and told him I was a Polish worker from the milk factory.

“He said I should have to go with him to the commandant and be recognized. We all went outside but I then managed to return to the room and hide in a big cupboard. Afterwards I went to an attic and remained there until nightfall. In the interval my girlfriend went to the milk depot and asked a Pole to tell the SS officer he was staying at her house if he questioned him. I was very lucky. If I had been ‘rumbled’, my friend would have been shot.”

What follows is soon told. The Russian forward sweep encircled the territory in which Private O’Grady had been held prisoner. Hostilities ceased on May 8th and on May 13th Private O’Grady and Edith Romer were married at the Roman Catholic church in Mureck. Trouble ensued when he tried to get his wife out of the country.

After a while he sought the aid of a Russian born Belgian - man who had a force of about 100 men under him and had carried out a lot of sabotaging – and together they got a couple of Jeeps and took the bride with them.

In the end Private O’Grady reported to an Allied Repatriation Unit at Klagenfort where he asked if he could take his wife on the [unreadable print] …..…informed that his marriage was illegal because he had not first obtained permission. However, he and his wife got to Naples where they were remarried.

In October they got permission from the War Office to go to England.

                                                            GNR DW WALKER 

Gunner Walker was serving in an anti-tank battery when taken prisoner at El Alamein in July 1942. He was sent from there to Benghazi, then to Tripoli and next to Northern Italy. For a time he worked in a camp at Piedmont.

On September 8th 1943, when Italy capitulated, he was liberated and a month later he joined the partisans. He remained with them until November of last year. Then a British mission landed by parachute in the area and he worked with it until the end of the fighting.

“I met my wife (Marina Savini is her maiden name) while I was with the Partisans in Northern Italy,” Gunner Walker said. “That was in September of last year. We were attacking one day and our party was split up. At the beginning I was able to see her pretty freely, but then the Fascist activity became very strong.

“While I was with the British Mission my wife-to-be kept myself and other members of the mission in her home for some time. Unfortunately somebody split on us and she was kept in prison for two and a half months but later was liberated by the partisans.”

Gunner Walker and Marina Savini were married at Biella in Northern Italy on May 26th last. They landed in England on October 1st at Eastbourne.

                                                                    THEY LEFT 

Asked how it came about that he was liberated and why the Germans did not get him across the Alps into Germany, Gunner Walker said they had heard that the Italians had thrown in the towel and the Italian guards were not very particular at the time. It was in September 1943 that he was freed. Actually he walked out of the camp and took the risk. He joined with the Partisans and found them operating in the territory near the Swiss border. He fought with them more or less as a sabotage man and in general actions until the British Mission arrived in 1944.

Before that British parachutists had joined up with them and he was regarded as the sabotage expert of the group. He had plenty of excitement, and it was when making one of the attacks that he met the girl who was to be his future wife.

The charge against her was one of espionage and “being engaged to an ex-prisoner of war”. There was price on the heads of all Australians who had escaped. She was 17 and had been at college until she linked up with the Partisans. She was valuable, as she could speak French and English as well as her own Italian. She was working with the Partisans until the end of the war. Her arrest for espionage came about a fortnight before the armistice. The fight at the gaol lasted about two hours; this was at Aosta near the French border. Walker was one of the nine men who made the assault on the goal and liberated her.

There were actually 80 got away from the same camp as Gunner Walker. They were guarded by “out of service” men and mostly left the Australians to it. However, the Germans got 30 of the 80 and ultimately only four were left of the 80 who got away. The others were captured, shot or got away into Switzerland. All four were doing sabotage work when the armistice came.

On all Australians the sum of 1800 [?] lira was offered dead or alive and they had in the… [?]… of the time… [?]… whom they could trust. 

In fact, the Australians were badly wanted by both sides. The Partisans liked them and, when they got one, generally made him a captain. The Fascists wanted them too but for a different reason.

This article refers to my father-in-law, Doug Walker. 

Below is his award from the Italian government, signed by Field Marshal Alexander.