The Secret Rescue (29 page)

The Germans moved into Grama Bay the following morning, and the Allied men anticipated that more would be coming to join them from the south. Quayle divided the men into three groups and ordered them to meet on the other side of the mountain in Dukat. “[Meto] wanted to know if we should proceed with our plans for the evacuation of the nurses,” wrote Smith. “After assuring him that we could still evacuate the nurses successfully in spite of the Germans, he started for the village of [Dukat] to send his cousin to Berat with the messages.”

Kukich and Smith traveled together up to the mountain, with Kukich carrying his wireless equipment and Smith carrying both of their packs. After struggling through deep snow and a hard rain through the night, they spotted six Germans coming south from Orso Bay near Vlorë the next morning. Believing they’d been seen, they pretended to backtrack down the mountain first before continuing over the top, hoping they’d lost the Germans.

For the next three days, Smith and Kukich lived off a few K rations as they made their way to Dukat, where they met other Allied men. Though the Germans had somehow overlooked Seaview, they now knew the Allies were operating in the area. Quayle decided that from then on Seaview would be used only to receive sorties and would no longer house personnel for long periods of time.

By March 10, some six weeks after arriving on his second mission in Albania, Smith still had no word on the nurses so he sent another messenger to Berat. Meto continued to assure Smith that his cousin would arrive any minute with the nurses. “If my cousin does not return within ten days, you can shoot me,” he told Smith. “I’ll bet my life on him.”

By this time, he and Kukich had been living for several weeks “in a combination uniform of Italian, Albanian, English, and American clothes” and had sent a note alerting OSS they were both in need of “complete kit.” Smith also requested ammunition for the M1 carbine he carried on this mission.

On March 14, Smith received a wireless message that said, “If nurses can be successfully evacuated in next thirty days continue, if not, return to Bari without further instructions.” Smith decided at that point that he would give Meto’s cousin until March 21 to arrive. If he and the nurses weren’t there by then, he would start his journey to Berat.

Kadre Çakrani, the BK commandant in Berat, gave the three nurses various updates on the rest of their party, and in January he came with news that the other Americans had finally escaped from Albania. By February, however, the restless women had become increasingly suspicious that their Albanian friends weren’t doing enough to help them escape and decided they had to do something themselves. They told Nani and his brother Kiçi that they were going to try to walk out on their own.

When Çakrani came to see them that night, the worried men told him what the nurses had said. His immediate solution was to take them for a ride to get them out of the house they’d been hiding in for some three months. The commandant’s driver picked them up outside the door leading from the wine cellar and drove them and the commandant up to the hills, where they spent the evening looking at the moonlight in a field and talking. A week or so later, he invited them to dinner at his house. The outings helped break up the monotony of the long days, but the women were still anxious and determined to get back to Allied lines.

Shyti, Meto’s cousin, had finally arrived in Berat, and on his next visit, likely in early March, Çakrani told the nurses plans were under way. To prepare, he needed the nurses to make black headscarves and blouses and skirts for themselves to wear during their escape. The plan was for someone to drive them as close to the coast as possible and, from there, they would meet Lloyd Smith and walk to Seaview to be evacuated by boat.

Goni bought the material for the women from a shopkeeper, insisting it was for a bride who didn’t wish to be seen. She bought navy-blue material for Maness, blue-gray for Porter, and tan for Lytle and helped them make the clothes. Two men, likely Shyti and Sulejman Meço, another of Meto’s cousins, who would act as their interpreter, then came to the house and told the women they would take their pictures the following morning so they could finish creating their official passes with fake identities. Shyti had arranged for the passes in Tiranë where he lived and included the appropriate stamps from Berat. It had taken a while to make the arrangements, which had delayed the escape plans, but the passes would hold up under scrutiny if necessary. The nurses were given their fake Albanian names that night so they could practice their pronunciation. Lytle’s name was Arife Hamitaj.

The following morning the men came and took the women’s pictures, and that evening the commandant brought their finished passes. Lytle’s included her actual birth date and indicated she was a Muslim housewife who’d been born in Gjirokastër and lived in Berat. The commandant and his driver took them out for one last secret drive that night. As they passed the airfield that the American planes had strafed during the failed air evacuation, they had a flat tire, momentarily causing great concern. Fortunately, the driver was able to fix it and no one bothered them.

The following afternoon, March 18, Meço arrived earlier than scheduled. The women dressed anxiously in their new clothes, wrapped their uniforms and personal items in bundles to carry, and left behind the clock someone had taken from the plane’s instrument panel. They wouldn’t need it anymore.

With everything ready, the party used the passageway connecting the basement to the neighbor’s house, and a car, driven by a BK soldier, and a pickup truck were waiting for them outside. The women and Meço piled into the car, carrying cookies from Goni and the neighbors. Maness, who sat in the passenger seat, was given a rifle and told to rest it between her knees with the barrel pointing up in case they had any trouble. Lytle and Porter rode in the back while their personal belongings and uniforms were placed in the truck with Shyti, the commandant’s driver, and other BK soldiers.

Luck was not with them as they started their journey. The driver of the car got lost on the way out of town, and they had another flat tire near the airfield. The delays only added to the tension the nurses already felt. While the driver fixed the tire, several German soldiers passed by. The women continued to look down as local nurses would; their behavior also prevented anyone from noticing Porter’s and Lytle’s blue eyes. When the gas cap came off the truck, the BK soldiers went back to look for it, further delaying the nurses’ escape.

When they finally continued on, they were stopped several times by German guards and had to offer a letter that allowed them to pass through. At the port city of Vlorë, a guard stood by Maness, who still held a rifle between her knees, as he read the letter permitting them to continue on, which almost certainly sent panic through the passengers in the car.

Hoping the worst was over, the party stopped at dusk to eat, while some of the men stood guard watching for partisan attacks. Shortly after, most in the group returned to Berat by car and truck. It was time for the women and their escorts to walk.

The small party hiked along the trail until they came to a stream, which they forded one at a time with the help of a mule. They continued walking until they came to a house where they could get some sleep in preparation for the rest of their journey the following day.

On the morning of March 19, a young British corporal woke Smith in the shepherd’s hut where he was staying, so excited that Smith assumed the Germans were coming and grabbed his gun belt and pack. Instead, the corporal told him the nurses had arrived. Meto said, “See, God——, Major, I told you my cousin would bring them.”

Smith met the nurses on the trail and brought them and their BK soldier escorts back to the shepherd’s hut where he was staying. Two British men who were also at the hut gave each of the nurses some Albanian money as a souvenir, and the nurses, who had very little with them, reciprocated with an AAF sleeve patch. They took pictures outside the hut and waited for night to come so they could cross the same German-patrolled road where the other Americans had traveled just a few months before.

When night finally came, Smith led the party, including those who had brought them from Berat, to Xhelil Çela’s farmhouse, the safe house used by OSS and SOE. They stayed for several hours, resting and drinking tea, until Smith said it was time to go. It was about two thirty in the morning, and like their colleagues who had gone before them, they had to get as far up the snow-covered mountain as they could before daybreak to avoid being spotted by the Germans.

By eleven that morning they were at the crest of the trail, and they arrived at Seaview a little after two in the afternoon, upon which wireless operator Kukich alerted OSS Bari of their arrival. The miserable weather forced the nurses to spend the rest of the day in the caves, where they sat in front of a fire and ate stew while one of the British sang them songs. They spent their last evening in Albania sleeping in bedrolls in the lice-infested caves, but they had much to be thankful for. After months of being trapped, they were finally free.

They spent almost all of the next day, March 21, watching the rain until an Italian motor torpedo boat arrived for them around eleven thirty that evening, finally bringing an end to their 135-day journey in Albania, almost ten weeks after the others in their group had made their own night crossing of the Adriatic.

Eight days later, the three nurses left Italy for the United States to reunite with their families and celebrate their miraculous return. It would be another seventy years before their story, and that of twenty-seven others, was fully told.

Epilogue

S
ome of the Allied men who helped the Americans escape from Albania were honored for their work months later. Capt. Lloyd Smith, who escorted the larger party about eighty miles through enemy lines and the three nurses between twelve and fifteen miles, was first nominated for a Distinguished Service Medal but then awarded the higher Distinguished Service Cross. Exceeded only by the Medal of Honor, the award recognized Smith “for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy during the period 7 December 1943 to 21 March 1944. Captain Smith’s resolute conduct in the face of great peril, throughout an extended period, in the successful accomplishment of an extremely hazardous and difficult mission exemplified the finest traditions of the armed forces of the United States.”

Lt. Gavan Duffy was awarded the British Military Cross in recognition of “exemplary gallantry” for his work in Albania, including the rescue of twenty-seven Americans. Of his time with the Americans, he wrote, “For the party in general, they behaved splendidly, especially the nurses whose courage and faith were a tonic to the people escorting them on what might have been quite a disastrous journey. High tribute should be paid to Capt. Smith who did magnificent work in the latter part of the journey. Tribute should also be paid to the people of the villages through which we passed, most of whom were extremely hospitable even when a reprisal by the Germans would be the price to be paid.”

Sgt. Herbert Bell, Duffy’s wireless operator, was awarded the Military Medal for his service in Albania, though not specifically for the rescue. Bell had been ambushed while crossing a road in the fall of 1943, and “in the face of enemy fire and with great coolness, seized the mule carrying the wireless set which was about to bolt, and led it to a place of safety. Whenever a move was necessary owing to the close proximity of the enemy, Bell, however great the risk, devoted himself to security and packing of his W/T equipment.” He was later dropped to work with local partisans in northern Italy, where he spent several months.

Lt. David Brodie was awarded the Legion of Merit for his service from October 1943 to May 1944 in which “he pioneered in planning, constructing and operating a large communications system in Italy for the purpose of communicating with undercover agents, through clandestine satellite radio station, in enemy-occupied territory.” His citation specifically mentioned that he “directed, by radio, the evacuation of a group of United States Army nurses from enemy-held Albania.”

Capt. Victor Smith and Maj. Alan Palmer, who became the senior British officer in Albania later that summer, both received a Mention in Despatches for their efforts to rescue the three nurses stranded in Berat.

Countless other people in Albania, as well, helped ensure that the Americans survived. Hundreds of villagers and many partisans and BK shared what little they had at great risk to their own lives. Had they not given the Americans food and shelter during that brutal winter, none would have made it back to Allied lines. The other British and American officers and noncoms, who faced unbelievable hardships with few resources, also did as much as they could for the stranded party while facing monumental tasks.