CHAPTER 7

"Soon after six the sun woke me and I propped myself on my elbow for the first cigarette of the day. Below the shore curved toward the port, a broad street following the sea wall. A hundred yards from the hotel a Bofors gun cocked its flared muzzle at the transparent sky while its crew drank coffee and chatted with a little band of urchins. The air was still and warm. A few fishing boats lay in the gentle swell just off the shore, nets bobbing behind them. Two destroyers, their night's patrolling finished, steamed slowly toward the port, moving north, one behind the other and about a mile off shore. Holiday mood!

I turned Tim and Radic out and we got dressed.

When we had finished breakfast we set out in quest of taxi-cabs, walking half a mile to the railroad station. Back from the water-front Bari had the look of any old Italian town. Only the water-front streets that had been built up by Mussolini looked modern and clean. Our quest was successful and by eight o'clock we had acquired a fleet of five little Italian cars and five volatile gesticulating drivers to whom we had agreed to pay a flat rate per day and supply all gas. At the head of this little procession we advanced on the fort to pay a call aboard the Bog s Nama. She was lying at the lighter pier, tied up on the north side, near the end; and she was quite as Tim had described her.

A tattered barefooted young man, with a light machine gun slung across his arm, stood watch at the gang-plank and all the men and women who could be seen beyond him on the deck were armed with pistols. All were dressed in outlandish clothes and nothing was needed to make the Bog s Nama a pirate ship except a black Jolly Roger floating from the mast. Petrinovic was back from the hospital, adding a touch of color by sauntering on the deck with his head wrapped in bandages. The man with the machine gun saluted us crisply in the Partisan style with "Zdravo!" and the clenched fist to the temple as we went aboard.

Mladineo, who had been finishing his breakfast below, appeared at once, alerted by the grape-vine telegraph which constituted the ship's communication system. We were introduced to Petrinovic, who appeared none the worse for his accident, except for the romantic bandage, and a "slight headache," he explained, as though it were nothing, then we made a tour of the ship.

"Two weeks ago we took her from the Italians who had had her for two years," Petrinovic said, "and we have had no opportunity to clean her up. They kept her like a pig-sty."

The ship was dirty enough, in truth.

"How many are you aboard?" Tim asked.

"There are twenty-seven of us," Mladineo answered, "counting members of the crew and a variety of passengers we brought along, having room for them, in the hope that they might be of some use."

Further questioning revealed that of the twenty-seven, twelve were women, all dressed in the Partisan garb, which meant with the blue cap bearing the red star on the front and a skirt or slacks of grey material. The rest of the outfit varied in effect, but military shirts from one of the half-dozen Axis armies operating in Jugoslavia were universal. Individuality found expression in the way they were worn rather than in any variations in their cut or style.

The ship had a small dining saloon where the remains of breakfast were still in evidence and a forward cabin that was half forecastle, half captain's saloon. Just what it was intended for it is difficult to say, but it was comfortably appointed with two long benches, nicely upholstered, down either side. The space behind the top of the benches, between them and the bulkheads which were actually the sides of the little vessel, were wide enough to serve as bunks for four men—two on a side, end to end—and appropriately fitted with cushions. Eight men could sleep there and five or six could dine comfortably at the triangular table rooted to the floor in the center.

That pleasant little cabin became our harbor office, then and there, and it served us in this capacity almost continuously for some weeks, our official Headquarters moving to other ships only during the days that the Bog s Nama was actually at sea.

Olga arrived soon after we had settled ourselves in this compartment to drink a glass of rakjia, the Jugoslav white brandy which is made of the pulp left in the wine presses after the juice of the fruit has been squeezed away. That drink was an inescapable formality whenever one went aboard a Partisan ship for the first time, no matter what time of day it was.

Tim had seen Olga in her working clothes the day before: she called on us now in her best Partisan uniform.

He was right about her beauty. She was lovely, splendid of physique and radiant of expression. She possessed an odd charm, half childish, half inspired . . . rather like her husband, in a way. Her uniform, which she had made herself, was of heavy grey material, full skirt and tunic of military cut, open at the throat for comfort—she was too direct and guileless to wear it that way to expose the fine architecture of her neck. Beneath the tunic she wore a man's white shirt. A polished Sam Brown, to which was fastened her automatic pistol, emphasized the trimness of her waist. She wore no stockings, but unlike most of the Partisans on board she had a pair of shoes, very good flat-heeled brogues that completed the neat and efficient effect of her dress.

Mladineo, the bridegroom, acutely conscious of her charm, blushed as he introduced her, but her brown eyes were level and there was nothing to suggest the slightest self-consciousness in her demeanor.

"This is Olga," he said. She walked into the room easily and shook hands with us, her broad palm firm in its grasp, like a man's. There was a friendly warm smile for each of us. I was struck by her dignity and presence.

An unshaven, bedraggled individual who answered to the name of Peter brought another glass and she joined us in the indispensable rakjia, then we settled down seriously to decide who should do what on that Sunday morning and when we should sail the first cargo of supplies across to Tito's forces on the coast.

We learned that the Bog s Noma had no more food aboard. She had no coal in her bunkers. Her engines were in such a dilapidated condition that it was not certain that she would be able to make the trip back to Vis without repairs. She had no water aboard, and her condensers were leaking. But she had a three-inch gun in excellent condition mounted on her poop and there were two hundred rounds of the big stuff it fired in coffers made fast to the deck.

We learned, too, that there were a number of other Jugoslav ships in the port of Bari, some of them under their own flag, others flying the Italian colors. Just how many there were in all no one knew, and there were wild guesses of all sorts to be heard, according to Petrinovic. There were several of them in the Port of Bari. That was helpful. We could check on them quickly. But there were others reported strewn along the coast in half a dozen or more little ports from Man-fredonia to Taranto.

One thing was clear: the Jugoslav ships could be divided into two categories. A few of them had been brought over by Partisan crews. These were ships that had been under Jugoslav registry, up to the time of the war when they were taken over by the Italians. The Partisans had "taken them back," as they put it, in September, immediately after Italian capitulation, and a few of the ships so recovered had been sailed to Italy by crews that knew no better way of keeping them out of German hands. The second category of Jugoslav ships on our coast included all the vessels of pre-war Jugoslav registry which the Italians had captured and still held, having used them to ferry themselves back to their own shores after capitulation.

Ships in the first category flew the Jugoslav flag with a red star in the white field—the Partisan flag, an emblem that had no legal status in the world; and there might be a good many of them. Ships in the second category lay in Italian ports under the Italian flag and were now probably part of the Italian Navy—which meant they were under the jurisdiction of our friend, Admiral Power. That might prove helpful.

But the legal position of ships in both categories appeared most indeterminate and unsatisfactory. Those in the first category were doubly prize ships, having twice changed hands in the course of the war; those in the second category were prize ships too, although they had changed hands but once, and our problem was to find some way of making them change hands again.

It seemed to me extremely doubtful that any of the ships in either category would be allowed by British naval authorities to clear Italian ports unless their legal position was first established.

And there was one other big problem. Where were the mine-fields?

Several of the ships that had come to Italy had done so because they had no idea how to find their way back to the Dalmatian coast, having once left it, without being destroyed by the mines Italians and Germans had sown on their side of the narrow sea. They had come across to Italy and followed some Allied vessel into one of the Adriatic ports, keeping to deep water until they could see their way in. We would need access to the charts of the mine-fields on the Italian coast, which should be fairly simple; but we would also need to know where the mines were on the far shore and in the channels between the islands that lie just off of it, and this might be difficult information to obtain.

"Anyway, there's plenty to do," Tim said, his high spirits coming to the rescue again. And to me he added, "I see now what you meant last night when you said we'd be ready to sleep when the days were over. . . ."

We divided up the tasks before us, then. Tim and I would take two cabs and set out for NOIC's office—(the "Naval Officer in Charge," it will be remembered)—to see what we could do about coal and food and repairs for the Bog s Nama, to arrange for loading her when the supplies got in from Taranto the next day, and to see whether she could be cleared. Radic and Mladineo would make an inventory of the Jugoslav ships that could be found in Bari and in other ports along the coast.

Olga would be busy with Petrinovic aboard ship organizing our own "security" system, keeping a check on the movements of the persons who lived aboard and establishing discipline. It was to be anticipated that sooner or later the port security officers would want to know a good deal about every man and woman with the Partisan cap that passed the sentries at the entrance to the docks, and unless we were ready with the information they would consider us very careless.

I pointed out that the situation was precarious in the extreme and that there was no authority in Italy that could go to bat for the Partisans if anything went wrong. Their only hope lay in being as self-sufficient as possible, in imposing upon themselves a very strict and impressive discipline, and attracting as little official attention as possible in the port during the few days that—we hoped—would give us an opportunity to regularize their position.

The advice was well-received and I saw a stern look cross Olga's young face. She was picturing herself laying down the law. The gaiety was gone from the brown eyes and she nodded her head solemnly.