First SEALs (14 page)

The pilot turned the big bird northwest, away from the impending danger, toward the heel of Italy's boot. Once there he could safely follow the coastline to Bari. Soon heavy fog engulfed the plane, precluding visibility. The crew managed to finally establish radio contact with Bari, and the tower agreed to turn on the homing beacon for ten minutes. But the crew's relief was as short-lived as their luck. Much to their dismay, the
C-53 suddenly lost all contact with Bari, as the plane's radio communication and magnetic compass simultaneously failed.

Flying blind, the pilots attempted to find a place for an emergency landing. Through a break in the fog, they observed an airfield and moved in to take a closer look. Their hope of a safe landing turned to terror when they made out the black swastikas adorning the wings and tails of enemy fighter planes lining the airstrip. A sharp crack of anti-aircraft fire sounded over the dull drone of the engines. The pilot and copilot desperately hauled back on the wheel, pushing the C-53 upward and into the cloud cover. Now flying at over eight thousand feet, the crew and passengers felt a sudden drop in temperature, as biting, frigid air entered the cabin. The plane seemed doomed, as its wings began to ice because the ground crew had neglected to reinstall the rubber de-icing boots normally fitted on each wing.

Suddenly, a German
Focke-Wulf
190 bore down on them, aiming to destroy the defenseless cargo transport. Knowing he couldn't possibly outrun the German fighter, the pilot's only chance to save the plane and its passengers was to duck back into the dense clouds and attempt to elude the enemy's guns. But hiding the C-53 in the cover of the clouds only exacerbated the icing problem. For fifteen tense minutes, fear gripped the pilots and passengers alike, as the ailing transporter lumbered from one cloud formation into
another, engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the nimble German fighter plane.

But now the crew faced yet another peril: the plane was nearly out of fuel. In a last ditch attempt to find a safe area to put down, the captain lowered his altitude. As the pilots' visibility improved, they saw sharp craggy mountain peaks directly ahead of the C-53. Desperate, they scanned the unfamiliar landscape feverishly searching for a place—any place—to land. The pilots headed the plane in the direction of a patch of flat ground next to a small lake that offered the best chance for a successful emergency landing. The plane descended, and the pilots lowered the landing gear and, with a combination of skill and sheer luck, deposited the plane onto the tiny field. Both men applied the brakes as the lake loomed in front of them. The dry, open pasture soon gave way to mud, and the wheels sank into the soupy mess, abruptly halting the momentum of the big bird. The nose tipped forward, and the plane's tail jerked upward, violently throwing the crew and passengers forward. The C-53 hopped up briefly, shuddered, then collapsed like a dead beast into the thick of the marsh.

Miraculously, everyone on board survived. However, the pilots had inadvertently landed the medics and nurses of the 807th smack in the midst of an Albanian civil war. German forces occupied the nation and were actively engaged in an antipartisan operation designed to clear the countryside of opposition to the Third Reich. They found themselves surrounded by hostile forces intent on eliminating them.

It would fall to Jack Taylor, Sterling Hayden, and Lloyd Smith to get them out.

W
HEN THE
OSS
HEARD
about the downed aircraft, they quickly began plotting a rescue operation. “
It was learned that several of the nurses were in poor physical condition as a result of hardships
they had endured while traversing difficult mountainous country behind the German lines in Albania,” Allied reports noted.

With rescue by air seeming impossible, the Maritime Unit became the natural choice to conduct the rescue operations. Hayden explained, “
When the brass in this outfit heard about that they became all fired up—one man in particular who had just arrived from the States.” This major called the OSS agents into his office and told them they were going to rescue the nurses. Although the officer had no combat experience—he had recently been the credit manager for a restaurant chain—he had planned out the mission in intricate detail, “
like we were holding up a bank.” Hayden, Taylor, and the others agreed to the mission, but only if they could have a larger role in the planning.

That task fell primarily on Taylor's shoulders. As MU's representative in Italy, Taylor had started to wear many hats, including that of operations officer. Although a gifted planner, Taylor despised sitting behind a desk and yearned for adventure. The mission into Albania would give him a chance to do both. And the mission would pose plenty of danger—an earlier British attempt to make contact with the nurses had already failed.

As in Egypt, a lack of high-speed boats plagued the Italian MU section. To evacuate the nurses from Albania, Taylor had a few craft at his disposal—the
Yankee
, the
Maryk
, and a British MBT boat. Initially crewed by partisan personnel, the vessels would eventually be manned by MU staff as they filtered into the theater. Hayden and Taylor, who were the most experienced seamen of the lot, would skipper the boat for the rescue mission.

But before they could get the nurses out of Albania, someone first had to get into the country and find them. For this task Taylor chose Lloyd Smith, the Special Operations operative who accompanied Hayden on the trip from Cairo to Italy. He would infiltrate the country and make contact with the survivors of the crash.

Rough seas delayed the mission twice. In early December, Taylor, Smith, and Hayden set out in the underpowered craft. Smith
was armed only with Taylor's .357 Magnum, which he won in a poker game en route to Italy. Moving through the German-infested waters of the Adriatic, they dropped Smith off at the small Albanian port of Seaview. At the same time, Taylor and his crew delivered some badly needed supplies to the Albanian partisans fighting the Germans. While Smith searched for the medical team, Taylor and Hayden planned to conduct numerous dangerous additional supply runs over the coming months.

Meanwhile Smith linked up with fellow Secret Intelligence (SI) agents who had been working in the country along with elements of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), including future actor and star of
The Guns of Navarone
Sir Anthony Quayle. With zero knowledge of the culture or language, Smith (with an assist from the British) somehow had to locate the nurses, who were in hiding nearly a hundred miles away. He would need to traverse treacherous mountains and survive the cauldron of an active civil war raging among the various resistance groups within the country.

Like most insurgencies, the Albanian resistance was divided into several major groups each with their own agenda: the Nationalists (also known as Ballists), the Royalists (Zogists attempting to restore King Zog I who had fled the country in 1939 after the Italians invaded), and the Communists. Elements of the Albanian establishment openly collaborated with Germany. Communist partisans, allied to the Soviet Union, refused to cooperate with the other factions and often fought against the other resistance groups. Smith would have to navigate through this cultural and ethnic jungle, and of course, he would need to avoid the Germans.

At first, guides provided by the SI men helped guide him through the hostile territory. Smith constantly found himself negotiating for his life with the violent groups. He wasn't afraid to pull out some big names to accomplish the mission. At one point he encountered a large group of heavily armed Ballists (whose ever-so-welcoming-to-foreigners motto was “Albania for the Albanians, Death to the Traitors”). He recalled, “
I arrived at the
small town of Dukati and was met by fifty armed Ballists, who tried to persuade me not to enter partisan territory.” Smith implored the armed fighters to let him through, saying that he was on a mercy mission, stating, “
We have people in your country that are by themselves; they are not soldiers but medical personnel. Right now, our President knows that they are in your country. I am sure that he trusts you people. He expects your help.”

The mission did indeed have a high profile, and President Roosevelt was briefed on it. Smith's name dropping worked, and the Ballists provided him with three guides. They trekked deeper into partisan territory that was occupied by Germans who were actively trying to crush the insurgency. Once there, he had several close calls, including numerous occasions when he and/or his guards were almost taken prisoner. But Smith and his small group of guides always seemed to be one step ahead of the Germans. Smith recalled one such incident: “
It was still raining and since my clothes were wet, I decided to stay in Dhermi that day. I received word that over a hundred Germans were making a house-to-house search of a nearby village for Partisans and weapons. Suspecting that Dhermi would be next on their list, I moved to a house at the extreme western end of the town and made ready for a fast getaway. Before they arrived, I moved to a cave and spent the remainder of the night sleeping there with a shepherd and his flock. This is standard operating procedure with the Germans. They move into a village, kill a few Partisans, and after a few days move out again.”

Smith's mission was like finding a needle in a moving haystack. He and his guides were moving through hostile territory and so were the nurses—both groups trying to avoid roving patrols. To find them, Smith split up his small group of guides, and they fanned out in three different directions. By working with the SOE missions on the ground, bribing local strongmen, and relying on a lot of persistence and luck, Smith eventually found the medics and nurses on January 6, 1944. Now the sizably larger group had
to somehow make its way back through hostile territory and link up with Taylor.

Once again traversing the enemy-infested waters of the Adriatic, the
Yankee
, piloted by Hayden and Taylor, made it to the rendezvous off the coast of Albania. According to plan, a small boat made its way to the
Yankee
. Hayden, clad in a large, dark overcoat, stared down at the nurses and Lloyd Smith. With his bellowing voice, it is likely that it was Hayden who hollered, “
Crawl up. Hold the rope tight!” The nurses clambered aboard safely. Taylor, Hayden, and the crew greeted the exhausted Americans who had spent nearly two months behind enemy lines in Albania, giving them ample quantities of rum and candy along with blankets and pillows. Twenty-three Americans were finally safe in the hands of two of the best seamen in the Adriatic, but the count was three short.

D
ESPITE THE AIR RAID
and base relocation, the OSS supply operation continued from Bari. Sterling Hayden received orders to undertake another highly dangerous mission in the Adriatic. The Allies had heard that Germans were attacking and invading several islands off the Dalmatian coast. Hayden was to travel by boat to the islands of Korcula, Vis, Hvar, and Brac to make contact with Tito's officers and “
to find out on the spot whether the islands in question had actually been occupied by German landing forces.”

Heedless of the predicted bad weather in the area, Hayden set out for Yugoslavia on Christmas Eve. But the night's storms proved impossible to overcome. His ship stranded not far from the Italian coast and soon sank. Undeterred, “
Captain [Hayden] managed to get ashore and returned to Bari, from where he proceeded on board another ship on the morning of the 25th.”

The weather wasn't much better on Christmas day, but this time Hayden managed to make it to the island of Korcula. Under cover of darkness, he came ashore and made contact with Tito's
operatives in the area, who confirmed that the Germans were, in fact, attacking the islands. When morning broke, Hayden set out in a Jeep, accompanied by a Yugoslav officer and two partisans, to ascertain the situation for himself. Suddenly, Germans waiting in ambush began firing at the vehicle. They shot and killed the driver sitting next to Hayden. “
However, Captain [Hayden] and the remaining Partisans managed to shoot their way out of the ambush and escaped with the Jeep.”