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7A 127 12 JOINING THE PARTISANS Robert, Julius, and I trudged through the snow for several days until we inally reached the village of Kordunsko Zagorje in the Partisancontrolled area of Kordun. My most ardent desire was to get out of Yugoslavia, to reach southern Italy and join the American army—or if that was not possible, the British army. But there was no hope of that in the snowed-in Kordun in late January 1944. My remaining option, if I wanted to enlist in a ighting force, was to join the Partisans. AssoonasIarrivedinKordunskoZagorje,Imadeawelcomediscovery: my good friend Vlado Horvatić, whose veterinary skills I had so admired eighteen months earlier in Novi Vinodolski, was in the Partisans. He was Chief Veterinarian (and the only veterinarian) at the Partisan animal hospital, situated in the village itself. We were very happy to see each other and agreed that it would be ideal if I were to be stationed there with him. To increase my chances, Vlado advised me to tell the local Partisan command that I had been a veterinary student before the war. Thus, in early February 1944, I became a Partisan. There was no formal signing up or swearing in; I simply reported to the local commander, who told me to wait in the village for orders. Robert and Julius, who were in their ifties and no longer of ighting age, would be allowed to lodge in the vicinity, together with several other Jewish refugees, mostly women and elderly men. I spent a few days waiting and hoping that I would be posted to the animal hospital when, out of the blue, a dream opportunity to get out of Yugoslavia presented itself: word had arrived that Partisans with lying experience of any kind were to report to Corps Headquarters. I managed to ind out that the Allies were for the irst time going to provide Tito’s 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 127 FI 128 12 JOINING THE PARTISANS forces with aircraft. A number of Partisans were going to be sent to liberated southern Italy and then onward to North Africa, to undergo pilot training. Flying was comparatively new to Yugoslavia; there had been few trained pilots even before the war, and it was unlikely that many would now be with the Partisans. Technically trained people with much knowledge of aviation were not numerous either, and I assumed that the Partisans would be hard put to ind suitable candidates. Although I had no relevant knowledge or experience at all, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to try and get out of the country and, once I was out, to “defect” and volunteer for the American army. I was so desperate that I was prepared to stop at nothing, certainly not at a bit of innocent forgery. I had been a member of the International Boy Scouts in Vienna and had passed the test for semaphore signalling, Morse code, and marine knots. Although I had lost most of my personal documents, by an inexplicable stroke of luck I still had that certiicate. I got my hands on a typewriter and artfully added a note stating that I had taken a course in glider piloting as well. I sent this “annotated” document to General Headquarters, accompanied by a letter in which I embellished my lying achievements. As I had hoped, very few other Partisans could show any connection at all with aviation. I was selected for the pilot training program and ordered to report at once to a small regional command post in the Lika. I said goodbye to Robert, Julius, and Vlado and set out for the command post, where I met up with the nine other Partisans who had been chosen for the mission. We were briefed and each issued a Schmeisser, a small but vicious German submachine gun. These weapons had been salvaged from German corpses and were highly prized by the Partisans. I got further conirmation of our importance when each of us also received a supply of canned food—a rare and precious delicacy at the time. Our instructions were to make our way to a location near the coastal city of Zadar, where a British submarine would pick us up at an appointed time. We were to move only at night and would have to cross two roads travelled and defended by the Germans. This represented the major danger to be faced, but it did not seem insurmountable. We were a...

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