As the briefing unfolded that day, my zest for adventure began to be overtaken with qualms of repeating recent Mediterranean military history. If, as seemed likely, the enemy could have taken Vis as easily as he had occupied Brac, Korcula, Solta, Hvar, Mljet and the other Dalmatian islands, was he not waiting for the Allies to repeat the folly of Crete, Kos and Leros before swamping the island with his superior military might, in order to collect prizes from the garrison of a poorly supplied Yugoslav brigade of resistance fighters, reinforced with British troops and their valuable equipment? The Germans could actually see Vis from their other island bases and had mainland airfields a mere ten minutes flight away: our logistical links were half a days sailing away in Italy, through seaways where the relative strength of naval power was finely balanced.
The remnants of No. 2 Commando, licking their wounds after a mauling at Anzio, were the first integral British Army unit to arrive on the island, among a plethora of advance parties from Commando and anti-aircraft units, with a mission to defend the islands at all costs. ‘C’ Battery’s hurried presence in its anti-aircraft role reinforced my niggling misgivings. Our knowledge of the significance of the operation was scant, but it would be unfair to attach blame or shame to any party for that. It had taken several courageous, diligent, undercover British military missions, parachuted and then secreted deep into mainland occupied Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1944, for the Army to be sufficiently convinced of the situation to enable them to report to the Prime Minister. We were heading to the assistance of the Yugoslav Partisans, whose leader was a mysterious character called Tito. Partisans to us then meant any resistance fighters – guerrillas in fact. But in Yugoslavia the name ‘Partisans’ served to distinguish Tito’s devoutly Communist band of fanatical fighters from those other Slav opponents of German occupation who were imbued with strong Royalist leanings. Their leader, an ex-regular army officer of the pre-war Yugoslav monarchy, General Draze Mihajlovic, had chosen the name ‘Chetniks’ for his band of followers.
It is probably overly simplistic to state that both factions, whilst seeming to operate from the start with a single common objective, were violently opposed to each other. The British military missions, paradoxically not wholly manned by true military types but liberally sprinkled with men of the Special Operations Executive, had revealed that Partisan/Chetnik differences were not limited to ideology. Both factions were jockeying for position after the war by destroying each other in the second battle (their civil war) before the first battle (for freedom) had been won by the ejection of Nazi occupiers. Pledged to support Yugoslavia, Britain initially infiltrated token material consignments of arms and supplies by nocturnal air and sea-drops to the royalist Chetniks. It was doubts about the effectiveness of their use against the common enemy that had prompted the formation of several British military missions. The missions’ reports justified Churchill’s anxiety. Mihajlovic represented no effective resistance to the German occupiers with whom he shared a mutual antipathy towards Communism. Indeed, frequent instances of collaboration with the enemy were revealed as the Chetniks craftily conserved their resources for the ultimate internal fight for power.
Another dormant, simmering and opportunistic faction of Yugoslavian politics had seized upon Hitler’s invasion as a heaven-sent opportunity towards furtherance of its claims for the separation of Croatia from the state of the South Slavs. As fascist as Hitler or Mussolini, their leader Ante Pavelic had enjoyed for years the protection and patronage of Mussolini within Italy’s frontier, awaiting stroke of good fortune such as Hitler’s invasion had presented. Always reluctant members of the collection of South Slav states which constituted Yugoslavia after the First World War, these radical Croats known as the Ustasi lost no time in pledging support to the invaders, and in currying favour by perpetrating atrocities and injustices against Serbians, in particular, to a degree which made Hitler’s men seem almost angelic.
We knew nothing of all this when LCI 260 stealthily negotiated the last few miles of the voyage, through black Adriatic waters to moor at the sheltered jetty of Komiza – the western port of Vis island – at 23:00 on 21 February 1944. Neither did we know that within 12 hours, Winston Churchill would announce to Parliament that future assistance by the Allies to Yugoslavia would be directed wholly to Tito’s Partisans. It was a purely military decision: to hell with the post-war political implications. If the Partisans were killing Germans, they were the ones worthy of support. To have been otherwise influenced by fears of post-war communism would have made a mockery and a nonsense of Western reliance on, encouragement for and support to the Soviet Union.
My first glimpse of the Partisans, in the minimal amount of artificial light necessarily risked to facilitate unloading the LCI, made me glad they were on our side, and even more glad that they seemed to know that we were on theirs. For a start, they all appeared to be huge, bulkily framed individuals who strangely belied the deprivations of three years of occupation. Their peculiar assortment of uniforms (mostly acquired from captured or killed Italians and Germans), their purposeful demeanour and conspicuous, bristling armoury of pistols, grenades, knives and ammunition, presented a fearsome aspect reminiscent of Hollywood’s version of banditry in the Mexican mountains. But there was a major difference: they were not all male. In our low lit surroundings, only voices distinguished male from female. A surprising revelation!
Only the briefest of nodded instructions were possible as British Navy officers nervously indicated that a rapid discharge of our cargo of armaments and supplies would help their chances of sailing clear of enemy patrolled waters, before daylight’s dawning exposed them in their dash back to the relative safety of the eastern Italian coastline. There was no doubt about our being welcome, however. The Partisans radiated a ready friendship and respect, which required no knowledge of each other’s language for its communication. They set about unloading the ship with a frenzy and energy which was breathtaking, and which soon had the LCI’s crew smiling again and the rest of us wondering and worrying about how we would have managed without Partisan help. In a fraction of the time allowed for the off-loading operation, the jetty was littered with our gear and the vessel was quietly chugging its relieved way into the darkness, leaving us with a strange feeling of being abandoned. Our silent, valedictory waves to the crew and their reciprocation seemed to imply a mutual recognition – though I suspect an exaggeration – of each other’s danger.
Our officers, having been briefed by advance-party colleagues and a Partisan interpreter, had been able to tell us that we were to spend the rest of the night in a schoolroom in Komiza. Morning, we learned, would signal our move over the nearby mountain range onto the island’s central plains which we were to defend. Each man loaded up with as much equipment as he could possibly carry – in addition to his own not inconsiderable personal kit and small arms – and set off in a silent, single-column stagger to follow the Partisan guide, who incidentally carried more than any of us with apparent ease. Our instructions were to maintain silent, visual contact with the man ahead of us so as to avoid losing our way in the veritable maze of haphazard housing. This was a positive discouragement to dallying so that, loaded as we were, not even the cold February night air could neutralise the clinging, sticky sweat of our heavily burdened hike.
The reason for silence escapes me now as much as it did then, because I remember experiencing one of those out-of-place giggling fits born of musical comedy male voice choruses (typical of The Pirates of Penzance or Maid of the Mountains) as fitting the occasion more appropriately. After a few minutes of what seemed like mountaineering, there was no mistaking a bustling, whispering hubbub coming from the rear of the column. I was glad when it caught up with me: even more so at being softly told by one of our officers to halt and rest my load. He passed me and continued up the hill into the night accompanied by a voluble, agitated but unintelligible Partisan who disappeared with him into the alien darkness. After what could only have been a couple of minutes they returned – leading the column down the hill. “Some bloody fool took the wrong turning and