CHAPTER 20

The Dalmatian coast has been a famous playground since Roman times because of its lovely climate and wild, beautiful landscape. This was our first look at it. As we stepped ashore, we found ourselves at the foot of a towering wall of mountains whose jagged crests were wrapped in purple mist. They rose from the sea so steeply that only at the very bottom had human ingenuity contrived to terrace and scrape sites for a few houses. The village before us had been heavily shelled and there appeared to be no single house that had escaped, but there were fragments of houses in which people lived. A great profusion of flowers added a note of tenderness to the roadways and alleys, as though nature, in its most gentle mood, were trying to heal or conceal the rude scars of war.

We learned later that the Italians had tried to take that village from the sea when it was held by fifteen Partisan riflemen who repulsed their first attempts at landing. The Italians had retreated to their ships and shelled the village all day. As it was only as big as a postage stamp, they hit everything in it and next morning their landing party bravely went ashore again; but eleven of the fifteen riflemen were still doing business. They retreated again under fire to their ships, not without casualties, and once more they shelled the village

with big naval guns. This time they blasted every house and every copse and bush, every rose-covered arbor and every grapevine. Then, on the following morning they landed once more, but there were still riflemen alive—six of them now— and as the Italians came ashore the rifles cracked again. In disgust the Italians went back to their ships and left the indestructible Partisans in possession of the ruins.

They were still in possession, happily, in spite of the skirmish that had been going on as we came in, and they are probably still in possession now, several months later, as this story is being written. They belong there, like the flowers that lined the paths we followed as we left the sea; they have their roots there and others like them will flourish when they are gone. Shelling rose-bushes and little houses is a waste of powder; it destroys neither of them, as Italy's naval officers discovered; and although it was disagreeable for the Partisans who make their homes there it did not drive them away.

We were taken to a little house smothered in banks of flowers and introduced to its owner and his wife and daughter. They had hidden up on the mountainside during the shelling and done their best to patch up their torn roof and broken walls when it was over. Everything in the house had been wrecked, but they had put some of the furniture together again so that it now teetered and rocked on unequal legs. Their greatest sorrow was that the crockery was all damaged beyond repair and that the kitchen sink—a stone slab some craftsman had hollowed into a big basin many years before —was cracked. Water still came to the house from a spring on the mountainside and ran into the sink, but it no longer flowed out again through the system of stone troughs that had originally been provided; it ran down the sides and onto the floor and out through a hole in the wall. . . .

We were made to feel very welcome by this litde family and given rich purple grapes to eat after they had been washed, shaken, and heaped on a scrubbed wooden trencher. Everything in the house was spodessly clean.

Our host then had a long conversation with Steve and a messenger who arrived from headquarters. Colonel Ilic, it seems, had come in person to meet us. He had just arrived, but he was very tired and asked that we excuse him until one o'clock as he wished to get some rest.

"How did he get so tired?" I asked Steve. Steve asked the messenger. The messenger replied. Steve translated:

"Walking. He has been walking a long way."

"How far?" I asked. Again the interpreter went to work.

"Sixty miles," he answered, after a litde dialogue and a few mental calculations.

Tim and I exchanged glances. We were tired. Apparendy we didn't have what it takes.

"In how many days?" I persisted.

"In forty-eight hours—since Friday morning," came the reply.

"Our compliments to the Colonel. We shall also be glad to rest," I said.

Steve and the messenger then embarked upon an animated conversation which lasted several minutes before Steve turned to me:

'The officers at Headquarters are sorry they had no suitable facilities ready for us here. They are sending some beds down at once."

I protested that it was not necessary, that we could rest perfecdy well on the floor, but my objections were brushed aside. The beds would be right down. '

The messenger left then, after posting two guards in front of the little house among the rose trees. Tim lay down on the bare coiled springs of what had once been a couch, the covering and stuffing of which had all been blown away. Steve, seated on a wooden box beside a limping table, laid his head upon his folded arms and instantly fell asleep. In the kitchen there was a shelf that had survived the holocaust and I claimed that for my bed. We all kept our weapons near at hand, but I removed the heavy service pistol belted to my waist and laid it at my head, where the smooth leather holster served as a pillow.

Black-out!

But there was no sleep for us yet. We had scarcely abandoned ourselves to the delicious sensation of releasing too-urgent reality and floating away when one of the guards entered to announce that there were two British soldiers who wanted to talk with us. Would we see them? All three of us were immediately awake.

We knew there were British officers in Tito's liberated territories, but there were not supposed to be any troopers. There were not even supposed to be any officers in this region. Could they, nevertheless, be two of the lads we had known in Cairo and drunk with on the eve of their departure for the great adventure of parachuting in?

"Show them in," we shouted.

The two young men that entered were clad in battle dress— the British army's field uniform. Both were clean shaven and wore carefully knotted neckties. They looked fresh and healthy and wonderfully happy. One was a private, tall and slim and fair; the other was a black-haired lance-corporal of dark complexion, rather short and spare of build. They introduced themselves as escaped prisoners of war from Stalag-blank-blank in Bavaria, hundreds of miles away. They spoke a familiar-sounding Lancashire dialect—and it seemed improbable that the Germans had any agents who could do that. We wrote down their serial numbers. Both had been captured in Greece in April, 1941. I questioned them closely. Their story was astounding. After escaping from the camp, they had walked the immense distance through German territory in the very clothes they now wore, surviving a hundred close scrapes with patrols and garrisons. The lance-corporal spoke good German and they had begged food from the peasants along the way, passing themselves off for a couple of German soldiers on a holiday. The simple peasants had helped them freely, not recognizing their uniforms. The pair had slept in haystacks and avoided cities, doing much of their marching in the night.

Only once had they been captured, said the lance-corporal, who told most of the story. That happened as they were coming through Slovenia.

"We thought we were for it that time," he said, "and our captor was a nipper ten years old! He had invited us in to give us some food. The little chap was alone in the house. We waited while he went out to the kitchen and when he came back he had a rifle pointed at us."

"He was a Partisan," the private said. "That's when we first heard of the Partisans and learned that we had crossed into Jugoslavia."

"Did you have any trouble convincing them that you were not a couple of German soldiers?" I asked.

"We had plenty," the lance-corporal answered. "For a while we expected to be shot, then one of the Partisans decided to send us down the line to the nearest headquarters. There we were questioned for a long time before it was finally decided that we were authentic Englishmen: our troubles were over then."

"Did they give you any papers?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. They gave us these safe-conducts, and we have had no trouble since. Everyone has been wonderful to us."

The boys showed us the little slips on which words were written in the Cyrillic alphabet. These were the passports that had taken them through several hundred miles of "occupied" territory. They had seen many battles on the way and had had a few close scrapes with German troops, but most of the time they had simply sauntered down the road, making friends with everyone they met. They had been well fed and comfortably housed and treated most hospitably. What they had tried to do was get to the coast and make their way outback to England; and they had finally reached the little village we were in that very morning, just about the time we came in from the sea.

"We passed near that town up the coast," the private said. "There was a little battle going on there when we came through."

'Well, the gods are with you," I said. "The first Allied contact with this coast took place half an hour ago and five hundred yards from here; and when we leave tonight—we'll be glad to take you with us—we'll be the first Allied soldiers to return from Jugoslavia. You'll be home, back in England, in a week."

The conversation was interrupted at that point by our host, who came to say our beds were ready. So we excused ourselves from the lads to follow the old man into adjacent rooms, where we found real beds with mattresses and white sheets. The whole family was engaged in their preparation. They had been most embarrassed by the appearance of their home and their inability to provide for us more handsomely. Now they beamed with pride as they hurried out. We tore off our clothes and plunged into sleep as a diver might hurl himself from a springboard into cool water.