The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 22. PROMISES INSTEAD OF PLANES ENGLAND AND AMERICA had certainly promised to send effective help. Colonel William J. Donovan, personal emissary of President Roosevelt, had been in Belgrade (I was in Sofia at the time). How much had been promised would not be for me to say, even if I knew positively, which I don't. I can say this, however: that the public impression was of promises both large and definite. I believe-anyone who knew the people well believes-that the Serbs would have done what they did if we had given them no promises at all. By the people as a whole those promises were not much considered; they did not weigh heavily in causing them to resist domination at any cost. The leaders took a more pragmatic view. For them those promises by England, America, and also Russia were the decisive consideration. They believed them. There was no misunderstanding-it does us no good to hedge at this date. Promises were made. They were not kept. If the Serbs had bargained for their resistance, they could have got almost any price. But no, it was a "gentlemen's agreement." And the Serbs carried out their part. In a war aimed just as much at America as at Europe, the Serbs gave us without price the three most vital months in the annals of civilization. Serbia at the end would present no bill-that I knew- because the Serbs are like that. But history would write down her figures and add them up. Would the final sum in America's account with little Serbia be written in black or-red? I wondered. A gentlemen's agreement is so agreeable gently to forget! Anxiously, in the following days, we weighed the situation. And slowly my hopes of effective help began to sink. The campaign in Syria had come just at the wrong moment. Would the British be able to disengage a sufficient force to be effective in the Balkans ? It seemed to me desperately unlikely. We knew there were at least thirty Axis divisions besides columns of tanks and a vastly superior air force massing on the Austrian, Italian, Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian frontiers of Yugoslavia. To these we could hope to oppose only fourteen complete divisions, almost none of which was wholly reliable because of the admixture of Croatian troops. I was sure that the Croats meant treachery. But I could not prove it. And the Serbs could or would not believe it. They have a curious tender streak in term, narrow but stubborn. Treachery is foreign to their own natures; hence they cannot predict it in others. At such times the onlooker sees more than the participants. I was not alone in fearing that the Croats would change sides. But I did not dream-nor did anybody else, so far as I know-that they would go completely berserk. We knew only that the Serbs would fight, and we knew that Serbia was in a frightful position with small hope of effective help. Would America at least send us planes? How often in that time I thought of my brother General Billy! If only he had been alive, how well that good fighter would have understood and loved the Fighting Serbs! I looked at my St. George sitting on his battle charger, and his face seemed to change to that of my brother. And the horse changed to a plane. I saw him leading a great flight of American planes across the seas to help the Serbs.... But-my brother was dead. He died, fighting for his dream of air power to which America had turned a deaf ear. Must the Serbs now die fighting, also ignored? There was little, so very little, that I could do. But if there was truth in the belief, held by men through the ages, in survival after death, then my brother would help me to help the Serbs. And who can say that he has not done so ? We believed that the Army could hold for fourteen days-with great good luck for twenty days. Then, when the Army fell, we, the Chetniks, would go into action. Arms and munitions were hidden in caves and buried in the forests in places where of old the Serbs had known how to stand. We had our secret airfields in the mountains. We could not guess that the Croat Colonel Kren, of the Royal Yugoslav Army, chief of the Fourth District of Aviation, would on April 3 fly to Germany and disclose to the enemy the position of every one of these airfields, which were, of course, immediately bombed out of existence. (This man is now a general of the army of the Independent State of Croatia and chief of Croat aviation, which has made such a brilliant record against the Russians. Fliers can't be "coerced.") My own role was to be this: if the British succeeded in landing in force on the Greek coast and coming up through Macedonia, I was to act as liaison officer on the Chetnik staff. Though my Serbian was certainly weak, I spoke sufficient of the other necessary languages, i.e., German, French, and Italian. \ If the British did not succeed in getting through, my job would be to act as intelligence officer, spy, in the most important place I could get to. America was not yet in the war, and my American passport would be invaluable. We calculated that the flying field at Podgoritsa, on the Montenegrin-Albanian frontier, would be the very last to fall. I was to make for that point and proceed from there to wherever my services would be most useful. We believed that the Montenegrins would give the best account of themselves: partly because of their eagerness for the fray and their pride in never having been conquered, partly because they would be fighting the Italians. But mainly because of their lack of admixture with Croats. We were proved right. The Montenegrins were sweeping the Italians into the sea when Yugoslavia collapsed behind them. Everything turned out much worse and also better than we thought we could expect. The army of Yugoslavia collapsed in eight days, and the army of Serbia is fighting still, today, almost two years later. The Chetniks fought splendidly from the beginning, and the Chetniks are fighting splendidly today. What we had no means of foreseeing was that a great leader would arise with a brain and a personality capable of reorganizing, combining, inspiring, and leading the shattered remnants of a defeated army and an undefeated organization of guerrilla fighters. We could not guess that, faced with an impossible situation, the single-minded will to liberty of the Serbs would produce one of the most brilliant military figures of the war, General Draja Mihailovich. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel