The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 30. BETWEEN THE ENEMY LINES TOWARDS EIGHT O'CLOCK we arrived at Hum, a small railway junction; I was ready to gnaw my boots. Imagine our delight when the colonel in command came up to us and, realizing our condition, led us around to the back of the station, through the kitchen, and into a little room where members of his staff were swallowing a hasty meal. Eagerly we ordered-of course, bacon and eggs, washed down with a large glass of wine. For that good deed alone I could never have forgotten Colonel Barbich. This Serb, a Herzegovinian surely by his typical long thin nose and narrow eyes, was the outstanding figure I met during this journey. If ever a man was marked out as likely to emerge a leader, a hero of his people, it was this officer. Slim, handsome, and tall, but not unusually so among his tall and handsome countrymen, there was a quickness yet restraint of movement and decision, combined with a careful concentration of thought in his small bright eyes, that inspired great confidence. His straightforward frankness and the graceful courtesy of his manner to all alike was matched by the grim ferocity of his determination to meet and deal with a savage catastrophe. His job now was to collect from all directions here in Herzegovina, near the Croatian-Dalmatian coast, whatever troops could be spared and trusted, and send them to Mostar to try to subdue the revolt there. I conferred with Colonel Barbich upon my best course of action, and he advised us toe go to Trebinye. Barbich, if still alive, is certainly now in the Bosnian mountains with Mihailovich. While the Serbs have ten men such as he, or five, or even one, the fight will go on remorselessly. We arrived at Trebinye in the evening and managed to get a room in the crowded hotel. Hardly had we ordered some food when the commandant of the town arrived personally to inspect my Chetnik pass. It was the first time it had been examined. He was satisfied but unfriendly, and when I mentioned my hope of transport to Montenegro he became actively negative. I never discovered the cause of his hostility. Next morning early a visitor was announced: Mr. L., brother of a teacher in the British Institute at Belgrade. Hearing I had arrived, he very kindly came to place himself at my disposal. He was exceedingly helpful. At breakfast I was approached by one of the strangest figures I ever met. He was a German, but with Swedish papers, called Schacht. He assured me he was a nephew and had long been secretary to the famous German Finance Minister, Schacht. This great, hulking, even handsome fellow was for sheer unadulterated cowardice the worst specimen I have ever come across. He professed himself a well-known anti-Nazi. The Nazis were approaching, and his terror was ludicrous. He shook, he wept, he cringed, and, his damp, fat hands clutching mine, he implored me to save him- save him-save him! To gain my pity he actually showed me a hypodermic needle containing, he sobbed, poison which he intended to plunge into his veins and die a "fearful" death rather than be taken alive. I said to him as I always do to these idiotic soi-disant suiciders who never have the guts to really bring it off (I have met not a few): "So you are going to kill yourself because you are afraid you might die!" Sometimes that cuts off their dramatics, but not with him; his self-pity rose to howls. I went to consult the commandant. The wretched Schacht followed me like a beaten spaniel, and when I found the officer in the street he frantically elbowed me aside and said he was speaking for both of us in demanding transportation. The commandant, already in a very gloomy state, was understandably furious, and any hope of his assistance was spoiled. Schacht at that moment came much nearer to death than he probably has since. I told him in carefully explicit and concise terms what I thought of him and ordered him to keep away from me, as I did not wish even to be seen in the street with such a worm. I left him standing there pathetically wringing his hands and sniffling: "You don't understand, you don't understand . . ." I like to think of him as hiding till the end of the war in some mountain cave (these cowards never die!) and living on roots while fondly hugging his hypodermic, now no doubt well rusted. I went to see the (civil) prefect, and to my surprise and annoyance found an old would-be admirer from Cetinje now installed as jackin-office. He informed me that I would not be permitted to leave Trebinye without a written order from him. And he assured me, with many leers, that I would certainly not get it unless I accepted his visit at the hotel. Here was a nice situation! I insisted upon telephoning to Dubrovnik (Ragusa) to the British consul. Mr. Harcourt informed me that several Americans and British were gathered there . . . then the line went dead. All that day air alarms. Italian reconnaissance planes kept sailing busily over the circle of mountains on which I had once counted twenty-two ancient and newer forts testifying to the restless history of the province. That night my two girls told me they had discovered that the hospital was full of wounded but had almost no nurses. I now felt very uncertain of being able to get them through to Montenegro, and it seemed to me pretty sure that, given defeat, Trebinye would eventually fall to the share of the Italians, who are conspicuously superior to the Germans in their treatment of the Jews. Dubrovnik's fate was not so certain. I therefore felt forced to advise the girls to remain here. Next morning they joined the staff of the hospital, and we parted in sorrow and anxiety. What I anticipated did occur, and though there has been much Chetnik activity and fighting round Trebinye I hope to see them when I return to Serbia. After again failing to get a laisser-passer from the disgusting prefect, I decided to try to leave without the permit. I would make for Herzegnovi, a small town on the Boka Kotorska, southward of Dubrovnik and between it and Montenegro. There I might conceivably get a sailboat to put me across onto the Montenegrin coast. So Mr. L. and I planned how to outmaneuver the prefect. Aware that I was probably being watched and that the removal of my bag might be reported, I sent it out of the back door by a half-witted boy to the station. Mr. L. and I then wandered as if bored round the town, visiting the quaint old Moslem quarter, and at last arrived as if by chance near enough to the station to see if a train came in. None, it appeared, had gone or come that morning. People had been waiting since dawn. There were no air alarms that golden afternoon. So we sat on the wall beside the murmuring river, dangling our feet and talking about poetry, about the old Serbian heroes, about everything except the war. As darkness fell it seemed certain there would be no train until the following morning. Both hotels being jammed, I spent the night on a mattress in the hallway of a friendly sergeant's house; he had cordially and quite innocently offered to make room for me in the large bed which he occupied with his wife. Next morning Mr. L. and I again went to the station. A train was just coming in. Firmly I shouldered my way through the crowd, and when the guard stopped me to demand my permit to leave I pulled out my Chetnik pass, giving him a glare as fiercely Chetnik as I could produce. He instantly stepped back and saluted. We were in the tram m passenger seats, and soon away. The atmosphere now was entirely different-full of a furtive, strained suspicion. We were now going into Dalmatia, which had recently thrown in its lot with Croatia. The Dalmatians are a particularly charming race. I had been saddened to see them bedeviled, less than a year before, by the unnatural anti-Serb political and religious agitation worked up by the Croat politicians. Opposite me, his head bandaged, sat a wounded sailor of the Yugoslav Fleet, obviously a Dalmatian, as are most of the maritime men of Yugoslavia. His bearded face was the very mold of a puzzled, a hopeless despair. He spoke not one word on the whole six-hour trip, and I wondered what conflict of loyalties was now tearing his heart. Fortunately many of these Dalmatian sailors chose honor before specious promises of profit and escaped to service in the Allied cause. The car had open benches without compartments. A fat little nondescript man kept turning up beside me and muttering. At first I thought him just a nuisance. But soon his mysterious manner became more insistent, and his words, sliding out of the side of his mouth in the reputed style of ex-convicts, were English. I pretended to prick up my ears and replied with equal caution. Sure enough, the fellow, hoping to draw me, was trying to let me know that he "too" was an agent and a British one. Nothing is so hateful to me as this counterespionage game. Usually I won't play but merely study faces for report and identification later. In view of Germany's subterranean methods it is not surprising how many of these little would-be spies or meddlers there were creeping round Europe. A fellow silly enough to give himself away so easily was too stupid to worry about. I flattered his self-importance with signals of camaraderie and kept him busy hopping out at every stop for something to eat or drink. We arrived at Herzegnovi in the afternoon. For the first time my Chetnik pass was challenged with aggressive unfriendliness by two gendarmes. This was technically Montenegro and under Serb jurisdiction, for although Dalmatian (the Boka people too considered themselves distinct) it had not gone into Autonomous Croatia. But there had been the usual undermining and hate-rousing by the Croat politicians: Croatia must have all the harbors. Serbia was to be practically cut off from the Adriatic. The little picturesque town was in the jitters. It had been slightly bombed, and most shops were boarded up. Rumors were thick: "The Montenegrin campaign in Albania has collapsed." . . . "The Montenegrins are making splendid headway, they are pushing back the Italians victoriously and have reached Lesh [Alessio]." . . . "The Italians are already in Montenegro and are proceeding up the coast road to the Boka." I thought the first two items probably correct, and so they proved to be, only in reverse order. If the first and third were true, my plans would have to be reconsidered and drastically changed; I must wait for something more definite. I had lunched the day before in Trebinye with a noted Croat diplomat who happened to own a large hotel a few miles out of Herzegnovi. He told me his family had gathered there and begged me to go and see them and if possible cheer them up. He himself had heard that his only son was wounded, and he was trying to find him. I set out with my bag on foot and was accosted by an ancient, battered seafaring man speaking perfect American slang. Cheerfully we chatted, he carrying my bag in sailor fashion on his shoulder, while he detailed to me in salty language his experiences of years in America. The lovely gardens we passed were just breaking into their first spring riot of subtropical flowers. The sky was Mediterranean blue; the Adriatic, murmurously calm, broke languidly beside our road. Would submarines soon be sticking up their ugly snouts in that dreamy bay and gray ships of hatred spurting fire and death into the graceful marble villas? Arrived at the hotel, I found a state of shuddering gloom and dread. The lower windows had all been boarded up, and in a somber twilight the family had been gathered for days, moaning about what terrible things might be happening to their male relations. If this was typical of her upper class, then-God help Croatia! That evening I went out into the garden to get a breath of good fresh air. A man ran in hurriedly and peered at me. "Are you Ruth Mitchell?" "Yes:' "I am P. You will remember me from the British Legation." He was one of the Serb staff. "The harbor commandant has received a telegram. It says that the Army has asked for an armistice. Generals have flown to Germany to negotiate surrender. You must flee at once. The British and other nationals are gathering at Rizan [farther on, deep in the Boka], where seaplanes and submarines are expected to come and get them out. Will you go now? Tomorrow may be too late." I said I would think it over. I did think it over all that night. On one side beckoned England and America, my family, safety, comfort. Greatest temptation of all, if the planes made for Egypt, I might be able to see my son again, my only son, a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force. My last letter from him had reached me the previous February, three months before, and he was then in Africa. And on the other side, what? To fight in the mountains with the tough fellows I liked so much and to suffer such hardships as Americans can hardly even envisage: cold rocks for a bed, with hard black bread, cheese, and an onion for food. Hiding most days, on the run most nights; the broiling suns of a Balkan summer, the deep engulfing snows of winter; howling wind and soaking rain. And at the end perhaps wounds or hanging (how the Germans love to hang!) or, with luck, quick death-obscure death, so obscure that my relatives would never even be able to trace the place of it. I thought of these things. But, of course, my choice had been made long ago, when I became a Chetnik. The only question now was, which way was it my business to go? Where could I do the most damage ? If the Yugoslav Army's resistance had ceased, the Italians must really be advancing up from the south, and either the Italians or Germans down from the north. (It turned out that Italians and Germans were both coming up from the south and both down from the north.) I was therefore quite certainly between two advancing enemy lines. The law of the Chetniks is that if one is caught behind the lines he stays there in hiding and gets the information that is most useful for his type of warfare. Having got it, he passes through the lines of the enemy to report. It was certain that the military and administrative headquarters of all this part of the coast would be its largest city Dubrovnik (Ragusa). It was there I must go and do my job. There I would "go into hiding." I had the best possible hiding place: behind my American passport. This passport was out of date, having expired in 1936 I had arranged to have it renewed at the Belgrade Consulate on Monday, April 7. But the great bombardment had come on Sunday, April 6. The passport was therefore not really valid. Nevertheless it had the nice fat American eagle stamped in bright gold on the cover. His wings looked comfortingly solid and broad, and I was pretty sure the Italians, at least, would be properly afraid of him. Never was the American eagle looked at with more affection and hope than it was that night before I fell asleep. Next morning I shoved my uniform into my bag, put on a dress and head scarf, and walked early into Herzegnovi. Large cars with foreign diplomatic flags and filled to the roof with luggage kept whizzing by me, bound obviously for Rizan and escape. Nothing was going in the other direction, toward Dubrovnik. P. was at the appointed place to hear my decision. "What's the news?" I asked anxiously. "Bad-it couldn't be worse. Croatia has gone over complete, the blankety-blank traitors! The Independent State of Croatia," he said with bitter, elaborate irony, "is declaring war on England! . . . And you? . . ." He gave me a long, searching look, which I returned. "All right," he said, "if you must, you must. I'll help you, of course. Where to?" He was startled. "Dubrovnik? Impossible; nothing is going that way." At that moment two gendarmes ran up and in very ugly voices demanded my passport. They began to shout menacingly, and an angry crowd collected. Just as they were about to haul me off to the police station, which might have meant quick finis, a battered little two-seater drew up from the direction of Zelenika, the naval base. Two Yugoslav naval reserve officers jumped out, pushed their way through to me, and demanded an explanation. I said pathetically that I only wanted to join American friends in Dubrovnik and didn't know what all this was about. The two officers took me between them and quickly pushed me into the car, ignoring the fierce arguments of the gendarmes. P., terribly alarmed, spoke to them on the other side of the car. "Can you get her into Dubrovnik?" "Yes," said the elder quietly, "we know she is English. We will do it. We will get her in, and"-he hesitated, looking at me speculatively -"if necessary we will get her out again. We are returning at dawn tomorrow." "Get her out," whispered P. urgently. "Force her to come back, make her come back-if it's not too late." We drove off, stopped at the hotel for my bag, and then proceeded toward Dubrovnik at the most hair-raising speed it has ever been my lot to survive. We hardly spoke; we were much too intent on what might be round the next curve of that corkscrew road. Once we slowed down. We were approaching a crossing of important military roads. The elder officer (about forty) said quietly: "If the Germans are already there we will turn back at once. We will positively not be taken." I said: "You are both Croats. I will never forget this." He turned to me a face of the most bitter and hopeless despair-a face that might now be called the face of all that was decent in Croatia. "Not all of us," he said almost with entreaty, "not all of us are fools or-knaves. Remember, remember-it was the politicians," and he muttered a fearful curse. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel