The Secret Rescue

by Cate Lineberry

  Duffy and Bell tried to reach Cairo again the next day but couldn’t get through. The weather had suddenly cleared, and despite their best efforts, they weren’t able to make contact until that evening. Once again they could hear Cairo, which came “blaring in,” but their signal was not received.

  While Bell scribbled down messages, Duffy started to decode the first one: “The following arrangements will hold for [pickup] of Yanks. [Pickup] between 1100 GMT and 1300 GMT Wed Dec 28th. If weather prevents will try again some time next two successive days[.] Have party completely ready at SE corner of field. Permit no person within mile of Airfield except your party and one strong partisan guard group to stay with your party. Confirm OK. QRZ at 2130 GMT tonight.”

  QRZ was a Q code, which indicated that Cairo would call again at the designated hour. By the time the two men received the transmission and decoded it, however, the time had passed for the possible pickup and for confirming receipt of the message. If planes had come that day, surely they would have heard them. The attempt had likely been delayed when the British didn’t hear from them.

  Duffy and Bell tried again later in the evening to reach Cairo but still could not get through. Duffy also tried to get a man in Dhoksat to go to Gjirokastër and bring back a report on the German activity. At two a.m., he was finally able to convince one local to go in exchange for a sovereign. He and Bell tried again to reach headquarters at eight a.m., their designated time, but were once again unsuccessful. Knowing that the planes were coming, Duffy decided he had no choice but to try the evacuation.

  The enlisted men, who were growing tired of being in the same cramped room together, were adding wood to the fire that morning when a partisan delivered a note. One of the medics read it and yelled to the group, “The airplanes are coming today! We’re supposed to be in Dhoksat at seven thirty!” before he took off running. Those who still had their musette bags grabbed them, and the men immediately ran down the trail, cutting the fifteen-minute walk in half. When they arrived in Dhoksat, the British, Stefa, and the rest of their party were waiting. Thrasher asked the men what had taken them so long, and they responded by asking him why he hadn’t sent the message earlier. He had. In fact, he had sent a partisan to deliver it the night before.

  The group listened with excitement as Duffy explained that if he thought it was safe for the airplanes to land, they were to make a signal on the field. They would create a large X with yellow-orange parachute panels from supply drops that the British in Krushovë had given the party. The panels were about twenty feet long and several feet across at their widest point. Hayes and Owen, who had kept theirs in their musette bags, were among those who volunteered to help.

  Duffy instructed the group to meet him later, and he went ahead to the airfield. When he arrived, he surveyed Gjirokastër with his binoculars and to his frustration he “saw the place alive with Germans, tanks, armed cars, trucks and troops. They had occupied the Castle.”

  The Americans along with Stefa and Bell arrived at the last hill between the village and the airfield later that morning—their fifty-second day in Albania. They were still about a quarter mile away from where the planes would land, but Duffy had picked this spot to prevent any chance of the Germans seeing them.

  The several-mile journey from Dhoksat to the valley had been grueling for the exhausted group. Malnutrition and the GIs continued to weaken them and slow them down. Though the cobbler had repaired some shoes, others were in bad shape. Many in the party still had blisters and sore muscles, and Shumway was still limping from the crash landing. Keeping all of them going that chilly morning was the idea of getting on a plane and getting back to freedom.

  When Duffy joined them on the hill, he told them that one of the messages he and Bell had received referenced multiple planes. The two men had decoded it several times to make sure they hadn’t made a mistake. They didn’t know what kind or how many aircraft were coming but if he thought it was safe for the planes to land despite the German forces now in Gjirokastër, the nurses would be the first to board.

  Around noon, the messenger he’d sent to scout Gjirokastër in the early morning returned with details that confirmed what Duffy had seen earlier. Duffy then noticed “three trucks and one [armored] car” driving down from the town. He watched as they parked near the main road that ran in front of the airfield. With this new development, any chance the air evacuation once had seemed to have suddenly disappeared. Duffy decided it was too dangerous for the rescue planes to attempt a landing and refused to put out the signal. He and the heartbroken group waited on the hillside to see if the planes came.

  About a half hour later, they heard the roar of planes coming from the north. Thirty-one Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters, a British Wellington bomber, and two C-47s had left Italy that morning. Ten P-38s had been assigned to escort the Wellington and would patrol the road near the field when they arrived in Gjirokastër, while another twelve P-38s had been tasked with providing cover for the Wellington and the C-47s when they landed. One of those planes had been forced to turn back when the pilot was unable to raise the flaps as they approached the Albanian coast and crash-landed on its return. Nine additional P-38s would fly to the airfield near Berat to strafe the field and prevent any enemy aircraft from taking off. It was the same airfield the Americans had crossed with Gina weeks earlier.

  Those on the hillside in Gjirokastër watched as twenty-one P-38s filled the sky, circling the area in a precise pattern. The Wellington flew fifty feet over the airfield followed by two C-47s. It was the most beautiful sight many of the Americans had ever seen, and they were overwhelmed with emotion as they watched the powerful planes. “If I live to be 100 years old I shall never forget nor be able to express my feelings when I saw that swarm of planes sent out by the 15th Air Force just to rescue us,” Jens said. “We were told ‘planes with escort were coming’ but in my wildest dreams I couldn’t believe there would be more than a transport with 6 P38’s. It was almost sickening to think we couldn’t fill our end of the bargain by signaling them to land after they had gone all out for us…. We could only lie on that hill… and watch [the planes] fly low over the field as if they were just begging for the signal to land.”

  The experience was as difficult for Duffy, who felt the weight of his responsibility for the group. He wrote, “One or two of the nurses did break down after seeing this too perfect air display, just imagine the feeling, seeing the transports make three passes at the field, so near and yet so far—it almost seemed you could touch the planes, they were so low. The nurses had unquestionably suffered a very hard time—this was indeed too much. The planes flew around for over 15 min., but I would not bring them in, never in my whole life have I been faced with such a decision.”

  None of them had expected so many planes, including Duffy. After several minutes of watching the display of airpower, he suddenly shouted to the men who were to help him give the signal that if he had known so many planes were coming, he would have had them ready on the airfield. At that moment, he changed his mind; with so much firepower to back them up, they would attempt to signal the planes after all. He yelled that there wasn’t enough time to create the signal, but the pilots might notice the bright yellow-orange parachute panels if they started running down the hill. Duffy took off, and the others followed. Hayes was so focused on running as fast as he could that he was no longer watching the planes, but he could hear them.

  By the time he and the others reached the edge of the field, however, it was suddenly quiet. The planes were gone. “If they had tried, the Germans could have rounded us up then as easy as picking sweet corn in August,” Abbott wrote.

  The men walked back up the hill feeling more dejected than ever and found some in their group sobbing. Though all the Americans were disappointed, some eventually took comfort in the massive effort that had been made to save them. Watson wrote, “There were so few of us yet those fliers risked their lives to attempt to rescue us. After that we just had to get back to our
army.”

  As two of the P-38s had left the airfield, they had passed three German canopied trucks parked on a road north of the airfield and strafed them with machine-gun fire. The trucks burst into flames as someone on the side of the road using small arms fired upon the P-38s. The planes strafed the area where the shots had come from before continuing on their path back to Italy. As the formation of planes made its way toward the Adriatic, machine guns fired at them but none were hit.

  Duffy wanted the group to leave the area immediately in case the Germans decided to get a closer look at the airfield, but he needed two men to stay behind to report back if they did. Hayes and Abbott volunteered. Before the others headed back to the villages, Baggs offered his coat to Abbott, who had likely left his behind. The two friends picked a spot just behind the crest of the hill and lay down so they wouldn’t be seen. About ten minutes later, the young men watched as the German equivalent of a jeep came over the bridge from Gjirokastër and stopped at the base of the hill roughly three hundred feet away from where the Americans were perched. Two enlisted men sat in the front seat while two officers rode in the back. Gripped by fear, Hayes and Abbott remained as quiet as possible, refusing even to scratch the lice that crawled across their bodies, as one of the officers got out and took a quick look around the area. Satisfied there was nothing to see, the German climbed back in and the vehicle sputtered away, as Hayes and Abbott relaxed with relief.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon watching the field for any signs of trouble, but only a shepherd came to graze his flock. As the hours passed and the men thought about the failed air evacuation, Abbott reached into the coat pocket Baggs had lent him and found walnuts. He checked the other pocket and found even more. The hungry men ate them, figuring they were fair game, but the discovery made them wonder if some in the group were getting more food than they were. Late that afternoon, before darkness made the journey even more difficult, the men headed back to the village to report what they’d seen.

  When Duffy returned to Dhoksat, he set up a partisan guard for the village and sent a message to Cairo. “Very regrettable [aircraft] arrived to-day. Do not [repeat] not send aircraft unless you receive all clear. Germans are now in [Gjirokastër] hence the absence of party on airfield today. Self saw four MK IV tanks also troops. As it appears to be just a looting expedition by Germans expect them to leave any time. Propose staying here until all clear. Am now with Tilman who tried to send word of Germans as did self. [Ground] signal will be five [repeat] five men on runway holding strips of yellow parachute[.] If no signal do not land. Operation flight today perfect.”

  Lloyd Smith spent his twenty-fifth birthday, which fell on Christmas Day, in the caves at Seaview, where he learned the Americans were retracing their steps now that German activity was blocking their route to the coast. The following day he received a message from OSS Bari telling him to take the next boat back to Italy. Plans for the air evacuation were now in place, though Smith didn’t know it at the time.

  While he waited for a boat, life at the base continued to present challenges. On December 29, OSS officer McAdoo described the situation in a letter to Fultz, head of the OSS Albania desk in Bari: “This job here is no cinch. It’s tough as hell and a terrible strain, even when we aren’t sick. As of today, we have one man [Italian] dead of pneumonia (Christmas Day); two [Italians] to be evacuated, who we thought might die two days ago; and I myself have been feeling like hell… I have had (1) dysentery—cured; (2) two bad colds—one still with me; (3) terrific rheumatic pains in both hips, which makes mountain travel a real agony… (4) conjunctivitis of left eye—seemingly cured…. The last time I did the mountain (1200 meters), one day over, next day back—much rain, some snow and ice, a wind so strong that when it comes you have to hit the ground or be blown away—it was terrific.”

  Not mentioned in his note was another tragic event. A few days after Christmas, SOE officer Maj. Jerry Field, who had established Seaview in early November, was seriously injured by explosives near the creek below the caves. One officer reported that an explosive detonated in his face, and Field had bounced off rocks as he fell from the blast, leaving him unconscious with broken bones, wounds to his stomach, and an eyeball that had to be “put back in with a spoon.” Another officer said Field was using explosives to fish and was diving into the creek when the blast occurred. By the time of the accident, Field had become fed up with dealing with the partisans and the BK, and the SOE had already planned on replacing him. Leake, the head of SOE’s Albania desk, wrote of Field: “It seems that he has so low an opinion of the character and intentions of both parties that he refuses to have any dealings with either.”

  Field was replaced with twenty-eight-year-old Quayle, an actor and recent SOE recruit. Quayle had joined SOE after being in the British Army for three and a half years and was desperate to see some action. After his training, he learned he would be sent to Albania. “I felt nothing but joy and relief to be going at last,” he wrote. “I had all the optimism and confidence of youth; others might be captured or killed, but not me—I was immortal.”

  Quayle’s last few attempts to reach Seaview by boat had failed. He had been waiting in Brindisi to try again when news of Field’s accident reached him, and he learned he would take Field’s position. “Exactly what the job was there was no time to explain,” he wrote. “I would have to find that out when I got there. ‘Do the best you can,’ I was told. ‘Send out all the Intelligence you can, and make yourself a bloody nuisance to the Germans. But whatever you do, keep open the base at Sea View [sic]. It is vital.’ ” Quayle and twenty-seven-year-old Nick Kukich, a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant from Ohio who was trained as a wireless operator, boarded the Sea Maid, a sixty-foot diesel-engine fishing boat, which crossed the Adriatic and delivered the men close enough to Seaview that they could row ashore. “Ahead was a narrow beach, hemmed in by precipitous cliffs and lit by an enormous fire against whose leaping flames the reception party stood silhouetted.” When Quayle arrived, he saw Field with his head wrapped in bloody bandages and lying under blankets. As Field was transported by stretcher to the boat, he said to Quayle, “I wish you joy of the damned place.”

  In the middle of this chaos, another message had arrived from Bari, which instructed Smith to continue with the original plan. With recent reports indicating that the Germans had left most of the nearby villages, he was able to resume his search. “This is [standard operating procedure] with the Germans,” Smith wrote. “They move into a village, kill a few Partisans and after a few days move out again.”

  The villagers were surprised to see Duffy and the Americans when they returned from the field, but they let them continue their stay, since Duffy had received a message that the aircraft would stand by in case the situation changed. By New Year’s Eve, however, Duffy decided to move the party to Saraqinishtë, a village to the east that would put them closer to Sheper, Tilman’s base camp, and farther away from the Germans in Gjirokastër. Not only were the villagers in Dhoksat and Qeserat running out of food, they were also fearful of a German attack. “We were not exactly thrown out of the village, but Albanians can be very passive! Very passive! Indeed,” Duffy wrote.

  That afternoon, the party headed to Saraqinishtë and arrived a few hours later. They were parceled out to homes, and spent a quiet evening saying goodbye to 1943. Few, if any, were in the mood for celebrating, and most went to bed early that night wondering if Duffy would signal Cairo to schedule another evacuation.

  Hayes and Abbott woke on New Year’s Day to find their female host entering the room wearing a black dress with colorful embroidery. She had brought some food and muttered something to them in Albanian that included the word kishë. She continued pointing out the window until the men finally realized she wanted them to go with her to the Greek Orthodox church. They ate quickly and followed her to the nearby stone building built on the edge of a sharp drop-off.

  They entered a small, dark room lit with a few lamps and candles, and th
eir host motioned for the two young men to take their places in the stand-up pews that lined the walls. Two other nurses, Tacina and Rutkowski, came in shortly after with their host, and the service was soon conducted by a priest with a full beard dressed in a black cassock and a stiff, cylindrical black hat. When it was time for Hayes and Abbott to receive Communion, their host walked them to the altar, where they were served a small piece of bread from a basket. As they were about to walk away, the priest held up his hand to stop them and spoke to another man standing nearby. The man ducked behind a screen and came back carrying two small loaves of bread and gave one to each of them. The men thanked him and pocketed the bread in their field jackets.

  On the morning of January 2, a messenger arrived at the house telling the two medics to meet in the center of the village. When they arrived, Duffy told the party he’d had no choice but to cancel the air evacuation. Snow and heavy clouds had moved into the area, he couldn’t guarantee the Germans’ position, and now two of the nurses were feeling ill. With all three factors against them, he had wired SOE Cairo to tell them that the party would proceed to the coast.

  With the group still far from their destination, he also told Cairo to have Smith meet them in Kallarat around January 7. Both parties would have to travel for several days; Smith would head east, while the party moved northwest. In the meantime, Duffy would send Thrasher and Stefa ahead of the group to make arrangements with the local village councils for food and shelter.

  That day was one of the coldest they’d experienced in Albania. As the bone-chilling wind whipped around them, Duffy announced that Cairo had informed him that the Germans had left the area that had previously blocked their journey to the coast. He and the group would leave immediately for Dhoksat, where they would spend the night before continuing on. It was good news, but few in the party reacted to it. Most had become skeptical of any plans and couldn’t help but wonder what would happen next to stop them from escaping.