The Secret Rescue (24 page)
Authors: Cate Lineberry
As two of the P-38s had left the airfield, they had passed three German canopied trucks parked on a road north of the airfield and strafed them with machine-gun fire. The trucks burst into flames as someone on the side of the road using small arms fired upon the P-38s. The planes strafed the area where the shots had come from before continuing on their path back to Italy. As the formation of planes made its way toward the Adriatic, machine guns fired at them but none were hit.
Duffy wanted the group to leave the area immediately in case the Germans decided to get a closer look at the airfield, but he needed two men to stay behind to report back if they did. Hayes and Abbott volunteered. Before the others headed back to the villages, Baggs offered his coat to Abbott, who had likely left his behind. The two friends picked a spot just behind the crest of the hill and lay down so they wouldn’t be seen. About ten minutes later, the young men watched as the German equivalent of a jeep came over the bridge from Gjirokastër and stopped at the base of the hill roughly three hundred feet away from where the Americans were perched. Two enlisted men sat in the front seat while two officers rode in the back. Gripped by fear, Hayes and Abbott remained as quiet as possible, refusing even to scratch the lice that crawled across their bodies, as one of the officers got out and took a quick look around the area. Satisfied there was nothing to see, the German climbed back in and the vehicle sputtered away, as Hayes and Abbott relaxed with relief.
They spent the rest of the afternoon watching the field for any signs of trouble, but only a shepherd came to graze his flock. As the hours passed and the men thought about the failed air evacuation, Abbott reached into the coat pocket Baggs had lent him and found walnuts. He checked the other pocket and found even more. The hungry men ate them, figuring they were fair game, but the discovery made them wonder if some in the group were getting more food than they were. Late that afternoon, before darkness made the journey even more difficult, the men headed back to the village to report what they’d seen.
When Duffy returned to Dhoksat, he set up a partisan guard for the village and sent a message to Cairo. “Very regrettable [aircraft] arrived to-day. Do not [repeat] not send aircraft unless you receive all clear. Germans are now in [Gjirokastër] hence the absence of party on airfield today. Self saw four MK IV tanks also troops. As it appears to be just a looting expedition by Germans expect them to leave any time. Propose staying here until all clear. Am now with Tilman who tried to send word of Germans as did self. [Ground] signal will be five [repeat] five men on runway holding strips of yellow parachute[.] If no signal do not land. Operation flight today perfect.”
Lloyd Smith spent his twenty-fifth birthday, which fell on Christmas Day, in the caves at Seaview, where he learned the Americans were retracing their steps now that German activity was blocking their route to the coast. The following day he received a message from OSS Bari telling him to take the next boat back to Italy. Plans for the air evacuation were now in place, though Smith didn’t know it at the time.
While he waited for a boat, life at the base continued to present challenges. On December 29, OSS officer McAdoo described the situation in a letter to Fultz, head of the OSS Albania desk in Bari: “This job here is no cinch. It’s tough as hell and a terrible strain, even when we aren’t sick. As of today, we have one man [Italian] dead of pneumonia (Christmas Day); two [Italians] to be evacuated, who we thought might die two days ago; and I myself have been feeling like hell… I have had (1) dysentery—cured; (2) two bad colds—one still with me; (3) terrific rheumatic pains in both hips, which makes mountain travel a real agony… (4) conjunctivitis of left eye—seemingly cured.… The last time I did the mountain (1200 meters), one day over, next day back—much rain, some snow and ice, a wind so strong that when it comes you have to hit the ground or be blown away—it was terrific.”
Not mentioned in his note was another tragic event. A few days after Christmas, SOE officer Maj. Jerry Field, who had established Seaview in early November, was seriously injured by explosives near the creek below the caves. One officer reported that an explosive detonated in his face, and Field had bounced off rocks as he fell from the blast, leaving him unconscious with broken bones, wounds to his stomach, and an eyeball that had to be “put back in with a spoon.” Another officer said Field was using explosives to fish and was diving into the creek when the blast occurred. By the time of the accident, Field had become fed up with dealing with the partisans and the BK, and the SOE had already planned on replacing him. Leake, the head of SOE’s Albania desk, wrote of Field: “It seems that he has so low an opinion of the character and intentions of both parties that he refuses to have any dealings with either.”
Field was replaced with twenty-eight-year-old Quayle, an actor and recent SOE recruit. Quayle had joined SOE after being in the British Army for three and a half years and was desperate to see some action. After his training, he learned he would be sent to Albania. “I felt nothing but joy and relief to be going at last,” he wrote. “I had all the optimism and confidence of youth; others might be captured or killed, but not me—I was immortal.”
Quayle’s last few attempts to reach Seaview by boat had failed. He had been waiting in Brindisi to try again when news of Field’s accident reached him, and he learned he would take Field’s position. “Exactly what the job was there was no time to explain,” he wrote. “I would have to find that out when I got there. ‘Do the best you can,’ I was told. ‘Send out all the Intelligence you can, and make yourself a bloody nuisance to the Germans. But whatever you do, keep open the base at Sea View [
sic
]. It is vital.’ ” Quayle and twenty-seven-year-old Nick Kukich, a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant from Ohio who was trained as a wireless operator, boarded the
Sea Maid,
a sixty-foot diesel-engine fishing boat, which crossed the Adriatic and delivered the men close enough to Seaview that they could row ashore. “Ahead was a narrow beach, hemmed in by precipitous cliffs and lit by an enormous fire against whose leaping flames the reception party stood silhouetted.” When Quayle arrived, he saw Field with his head wrapped in bloody bandages and lying under blankets. As Field was transported by stretcher to the boat, he said to Quayle, “I wish you joy of the damned place.”
In the middle of this chaos, another message had arrived from Bari, which instructed Smith to continue with the original plan. With recent reports indicating that the Germans had left most of the nearby villages, he was able to resume his search. “This is [standard operating procedure] with the Germans,” Smith wrote. “They move into a village, kill a few Partisans and after a few days move out again.”
The villagers were surprised to see Duffy and the Americans when they returned from the field, but they let them continue their stay, since Duffy had received a message that the aircraft would stand by in case the situation changed. By New Year’s Eve, however, Duffy decided to move the party to Saraqinishtë, a village to the east that would put them closer to Sheper, Tilman’s base camp, and farther away from the Germans in Gjirokastër. Not only were the villagers in Dhoksat and Qeserat running out of food, they were also fearful of a German attack. “We were not exactly thrown out of the village, but Albanians can be very passive! Very passive! Indeed,” Duffy wrote.
That afternoon, the party headed to Saraqinishtë and arrived a few hours later. They were parceled out to homes, and spent a quiet evening saying goodbye to 1943. Few, if any, were in the mood for celebrating, and most went to bed early that night wondering if Duffy would signal Cairo to schedule another evacuation.
Hayes and Abbott woke on New Year’s Day to find their female host entering the room wearing a black dress with colorful embroidery. She had brought some food and muttered something to them in Albanian that included the word
kishë
. She continued pointing out the window until the men finally realized she wanted them to go with her to the Greek Orthodox church. They ate quickly and followed her to the nearby stone building built on the edge of a sharp drop-off.
They entered a small, dark room lit with a few lamps and candles, and their host motioned for the two young men to take their places in the stand-up pews that lined the walls. Two other nurses, Tacina and Rutkowski, came in shortly after with their host, and the service was soon conducted by a priest with a full beard dressed in a black cassock and a stiff, cylindrical black hat. When it was time for Hayes and Abbott to receive Communion, their host walked them to the altar, where they were served a small piece of bread from a basket. As they were about to walk away, the priest held up his hand to stop them and spoke to another man standing nearby. The man ducked behind a screen and came back carrying two small loaves of bread and gave one to each of them. The men thanked him and pocketed the bread in their field jackets.
On the morning of January 2, a messenger arrived at the house telling the two medics to meet in the center of the village. When they arrived, Duffy told the party he’d had no choice but to cancel the air evacuation. Snow and heavy clouds had moved into the area, he couldn’t guarantee the Germans’ position, and now two of the nurses were feeling ill. With all three factors against them, he had wired SOE Cairo to tell them that the party would proceed to the coast.
With the group still far from their destination, he also told Cairo to have Smith meet them in Kallarat around January 7. Both parties would have to travel for several days; Smith would head east, while the party moved northwest. In the meantime, Duffy would send Thrasher and Stefa ahead of the group to make arrangements with the local village councils for food and shelter.
That day was one of the coldest they’d experienced in Albania. As the bone-chilling wind whipped around them, Duffy announced that Cairo had informed him that the Germans had left the area that had previously blocked their journey to the coast. He and the group would leave immediately for Dhoksat, where they would spend the night before continuing on. It was good news, but few in the party reacted to it. Most had become skeptical of any plans and couldn’t help but wonder what would happen next to stop them from escaping.
The walk was mostly downhill and relatively easy, but the wooden pegs in Hayes’s right shoe were coming loose after a few hours of traveling. It could be another week before they reached the coast, and he feared it would never last that long. When they reached the village, Tilman greeted the party, and Hayes and several others took the chance to ask him once again to help them get more shoes. To their surprise, he replied that he thought he might be able to help them. The men were skeptical, but all they could do was wait to see what happened.
The following morning, on the way to the party’s meeting spot, the repair on Hayes’s shoe completely gave out and the front half of the sole fell off and exposed the threadbare sock he’d recently tried to darn using suture needles and parachute risers as yarn. As he looked at the damage, he wondered just how he was going to make it to the coast.
When most of the group had gathered together, Tilman greeted them with a smile and said, “I have a present for you.” Someone, likely Williamson, brought over a bag and dumped roughly ten pairs of shoes on the ground. The Americans, especially those like Hayes who was in dire need, felt like kids on Christmas morning. The shoes, along with other items, had been dropped by parachute in Sheper over the past few days. Everyone who needed new shoes, including the nurses, tried on various pairs and traded with each other when they didn’t fit. Hayes had grabbed a pair that was too large for him, and Owen, who was still wearing Shumway’s snug flight boots, asked if he wanted to switch on the condition that Hayes give them back at the end of the journey. He wanted to keep them as a souvenir and wear them to football games. Hayes didn’t mind; he was just happy to have a pair of shoes. Tilman then brought out some leather sleeveless vests, which he gave to all the enlisted men whose field jackets didn’t offer much protection from the weather that grew colder by the day. His final gifts to the group were a scoop of dried peas for each of them and a roll of toilet paper, which they’d run out of long before. They suddenly felt very rich.
T
he group began its journey, once again, to the coast. Though the men and women didn’t know it, the next several days would require them to put forth a “super-human effort.”
With reports indicating that the road to the coast was now clear, the British had decided to send the two men ahead to various villages to make arrangements for the rest of the party, using gold sovereigns provided by the British to pay for food and housing.