by Dick Camp
Despite the internal squabbles, the war continued. After several conferences with General Mihailovich a plan was developed to attack the fortified city of Visegrad, where over eight hundred German soldiers were garrisoned. “Orders were sent out to all Chetnik guerrilla leaders,” Mansfield related. “Over 2,500 were gradually massed with their arms in the woods south of the city. There was no doubt that Mihailovich was out to put on a big show.…” The attack started at dawn on 4 October with a heavy mortar, artillery and small arms fire. “The fighting continued all morning, with our patrols gradually infiltrating until contact was made,” Mansfield related. “By the afternoon we had the town and had killed or wounded over two hundred Germans. The balance withdrew. We quickly set to work to destroy the armored railroad car left behind by the Jerries. Then everyone pitched in to prepare charges for the huge steel bowsprit bridge, which we blew into the river that afternoon.”
The guerrillas withdrew to Rogatica, a town in eastern Bosnia to rest and refit. While they were in the town, “Mihailovich heard a BBC broadcast announcing that the Partisans had taken Rogatica, never mentioning that Mihailovich’s forces were there,” Mansfield said. “At that time, around the town there was not a single German or a Tito Commie. For the first time, the BBC was glorifying Tito and his Partisans to the exclusion of Mihailovich despite the fact that the Chetniks, since the Italian surrender, were attacking the Germans everywhere. General Mihailovich was in a terrible temper.” The BBC was repeating almost word for word what the Partisans were releasing in their communiqués. For example, after Mihailovich’s forces conducted several attacks, Tito’s Yugoslav People’s Army of Liberation took credit, stating, “We captured Rogatica and a large quantity of war material. We carried out a big, successful attack against the Zagreb-Belgrade railway, and destroyed the line in 130 places along a forty-mile stretch. We also destroyed four bridges and killed about three hundred Germans guarding the line.”
“From that point on,” Mansfield recalled, “all reports over the BBC consisted only of statements by Tito as to what he said and did.”
Because of the great buildup Tito was receiving in the British media, Mansfield and Seitz decided to undertake a tour of the various Chetnik forces throughout Serbia so he could report to the U.S. government on the effectiveness of Chetnik attacks on German troops. As Mansfield wrote:
Traveling light, minus radio or any heavy gear, we moved northward from one guerrilla band to the next. Sticking always to guerrilla ‘safe canals’ for passage … our trip took us through scores of towns and villages under Chetnik control where hundreds of peasants, townsmen and guerrillas came out to greet us and shower us with flowers. At almost every stopping point, the people would hold a great feast in our honor … [W]e became regular gourmands, and on Thanksgiving Day, they even prepared a turkey dinner for us! With each guerrilla commander, we held long conferences to find out his past and proposed operations, the number of men in his group and how much they had in the way of arms and ammunition. We held mass inspections of guerrilla forces wherever we went and took many photos.
For a month the two men made their way across Serbia, “after walking and riding [horses] hundreds of miles, mostly over mountainous terrain,” and staying one step ahead of the Gestapo. “Throughout this tour, we were amazed at the large amount of free territory in which we could roam at will. It was almost impossible to believe we were in German-occupied country with enemy troops only a few hours away. It was almost like a victory march … except for the Germans on our trail.” At several points along their route, the Germans took hostages and burned down houses where the two had spent the night. It was common practice for the Nazi to exact a terrible price for opposing them. Hitler ordered that for every German killed, one hundred Serbs were to be killed; fifty for every German wounded. Major Hudson said it sickened him to hear the wailing lamentation for the dead … and see the villages burned. He noted, “This had a strong effect on Mihailovich. He felt his job was to defend the people, to be their shield.…” Michael Lees wrote, “Tito never worried about reprisals. In fact, he welcomed them because he got recruits from the devastated villages where the reprisals took place. Mihailovich, of course, was very concerned about the reprisals.”
Homeward Bound
By December 1943, Mansfield and Seitz had amassed a great quantity of data and intelligence which they were anxious to deliver to their headquarters. In addition, “All supplies had been cut off [by the British] and we were unable to do anything further in coordinating guerrilla supply drops,” Mansfield said. “[So] we decided instead to try to make it to the Adriatic Sea, over two hundred miles to the east and get to Bari, Italy, which had just been taken by the Allies. Colonel Seitz decided that we should not try to make the perilous journey together. The Gestapo were trailing us like hawks and we did not want to risk our eggs in one basket.” Seitz left on Christmas Eve with a small escort, intending to walk to the coast, steal a boat, and work his way to southern Italy. Mansfield decided to stay and gather more information. By this time he was fairly conversant in Serbo-Croatian and felt comfortable communicating with the people.
Mansfield spent Christmas holed up in a little mountain village with a group of local guerrillas. “The guerrilla chieftain must have sensed that I was feeling rather low, [so] they secretly made preparation for a little feast, sending peasants down to nearby German-held towns to acquire food and wine,” Mansfield recalled emotionally. “On Christmas Day, all the peasants and guerrillas dropped by to pay their respects, many bringing gifts. My pack boy chopped down a little pine tree and fashioned little tallow candles on the branches. A huge roast pig was served as a fitting climax. Such unsolicited care and generosity on the part of these people made me feel proud to be fighting alongside them.” After the celebration, Mansfield continued. “During the following weeks I inspected more troops, took part in a road ambush in which we destroyed at least six trucks, killed or wounded twenty-five Jerries, and captured some loot, including more rifles and machine guns. German reprisals were heavy!” In mid-January 1944, he finally headed for the Dalmatian coast with a small guerrilla security force.
The group marched between forty to fifty kilometers a day up and down steep mountain trails until they reached the point of exhaustion. “Often we would find our route blocked by heavy German forces holding the towns and main roads,” Mansfield recalled. “Then with the help of peasants and local guerrillas, we would find some back pass which we could slip through at night. More than once we were fired on, and on one occasion we were completely scattered until we rejoined each other the following day.” At one point he ran head on into a German patrol and had to run for his life for over ten hours before evading the pursuers. Another time he was forced to dress up as a peasant in order to cross a German-held bridge. “I had a beard by this time so that I felt quite comfortable in crossing right under the eyes of the German guards.” Mansfield passed town after town that had been burned down by Germans, Partisans, or Chetniks. “The country was poor and the people were starving,” he said.
As Mansfield reached the coast, he began to see evidence of large Partisan forces. “When we came close to them, my small force would become panicky,” he explained. “Most of the field commanders … were constantly complaining that they were being attacked by Partisans.…” The group finally reached the coast near Dubrovnik, Dalmatia. “The greatest hurdle lay ahead, we had to find a way across the Adriatic Sea … . [C]apturing a fishing boat would not be easy, the Germans kept close control over all craft. They operated plane and sea patrols up and down the coast. Furthermore, we were now in hostile territory, where the people were not as sympathetic as in Serbia. The Gestapo knew we were in the vicinity, so we had to watch ourselves carefully, find safe villages to stay the night, post an extensive guard, and change our location each night.”
After failing to find a boat after several days, Mansfield’s morale was at a low point until “[w]e received a report there was a British officer about thr
ee days to the north,” he said. “I went to meet him … [and] who should I meet but Colonel Bill Bailey, my old friend, whom I had not seen in several months. It was a joyous meeting!” Bailey had been attempting to get out but had been stymied just as Mansfield had. The two conspired to contact their headquarters and request a pickup. “That night we waited feverishly for the 8 p.m. schedule … [W]ithin ten minutes after we had started pounding the key … Cairo came up! The operator was so excited that he put us off for a half hour while contacting headquarters [since both men had been out of contact with headquarters for several weeks]. On the following day, Cairo advised us to be at the rendezvous [an unguarded cove with the nearest German garrison three kilometers away] two nights later between the hours of 2000–0100 and flash two code letters out to sea five times every ten minutes. A surface craft would take us off.”
On the appointed date, the two men “started out at dusk over the mountains for the point on the coast, which was six hours away by foot,” Mansfield described.
It was a bitter night, with rain and sleet sweeping at us. The terrain was almost impassable. We descended slowly, feeling our way in the darkness, to the two-mile plain extending out to the water. After cutting ourselves and stumbling down rocky ledges, we wallowed through fields of mud. Our hearts pounded as we waited in a ditch near the main road. When it cleared of traffic, two at a time we sauntered down the road for a hundred yards to a point where a trail led to our destination. Next we were pushing through brambles, scratching ourselves badly in the pitch darkness. Finally we reached our destination.
Rescue was not to be. “One look at the water and I knew we would never get out that night. It was a thundering sea, crashing up thirty-foot breakers against the rocks. For three freezing hours we sat on the rocks, flashing my little German torch out to sea—nothing happened.”
At 0200 they had had enough. “Our native guide came to the rescue and walked us about a mile and hid us in the attic of his house, where we hid for two days, right in the middle of the Germans. We could see them from time to time in the distance through the shutters. The old man and his two daughters brought us food—everyone held their breath when someone came near the house. On the third night we made our way, with great difficulty, back up the mountain. Everyone was discouraged!” They made contact with headquarters and arranged another rendezvous at the same location—“We knew that if this time did not work out we would have to move somewhere else.” On the following day the weather cleared and they made their way to the rendezvous. “Standing on the rocks, we took turns flashing out the [code] letters. We were there only twenty minutes when someone heard the low hum of a motor somewhere out in the water, but we could not see it. Worried as we were over the possibility that it was a German patrol boat, we kept flashing.”
The boat approached the shoreline.
Finally we spotted it at once. Now we were too excited to contain ourselves. … [I]t was a large ML2 British-type PT boat. Before it pulled to a stop, a dingy was slung over, and we could see its muffled oars splashing as it made its way into shore. We all gave a soft cheer! … and quickly leaped down the rocks to a point where it could take us off and flashed our light. As it pulled alongside, we made out two British sailors and two passengers, a British naval officer and an American army captain. They leaped up on the rocks with pistols drawn. We quickly identified ourselves and were taken aboard for the trip to the PT boat. Within fifteen minutes all of us, Colonel Bailey, six Yugoslav guerrillas and I were aboard Allied territory at last!
The Mansfield-Seitz report reached Donovan, who was impressed with its thoroughness and pro-Chetnik stance and wanted to continue placing teams with Mihailovich. However, Prime Minister Winston Churchill convinced President Roosevelt that it would not be in the best interests of Allied solidarity if the United States did not follow Britain’s lead in supporting Tito. As a result, Mihailovich was starved for supplies and was eventually overwhelmed by the Partisans. Mansfield angrily declared, “The British had sold him [Mihailovich] down the river!” After the war the leader of the Chetniks was tried by a military court and executed. Mansfield, after a short leave in the United States, was assigned to the Far East. From December 1944 to June 1945 he went behind Japanese lines with a small avenger group to organize Chinese guerrillas and to conduct ambushes and raids. From June 1945 until the end of the war, he led teams which parachuted into prison camps in China to evacuate American POWs. He capped his OSS career by assisting in the rescue of Gen. Jonathan Wainwright and three of the surviving Doolittle fliers. For his work in Yugoslavia, Mansfield was awarded the Bronze Star and the Yugoslavia White Eagle with Swords.
CHAPTER 4
Union II
Marine Platoon Sergeant Jack Risler pushed his equipment bag out of the small rear hatch of the B-17 Flying Fortress, and followed it into the turbulent slipstream. His body was pummeled by the blast of air and he knew instinctively that the bomber was going too fast—more than 150 knots—and he experienced a bad opening shock but the adrenaline rush of the jump lessened the pain. His metal static line stretched tight, yanked the canopy from his British-made parachute, and he felt the satisfying shock as it fully deployed. The chute slowed his descent, but at a jump altitude of only four hundred feet the ground rushed up at him with dizzying speed.
Risler estimated that he spent less than thirty seconds in the air before hitting the ground. He leaped to his feet, smacked the quick-release cylinder in the middle of his chest and rotated it a quarter of turn. As he struggled to shed the harness, a scruffily dressed Resistance fighter grabbed him in a viselike bear hug and, before the flabbergasted Marine could react, planted a sloppy kiss on both his cheeks. “Hell of a reception on a combat mission,” Risler allowed, “but, all in all, better than a German bayonet.”
“Malice in Wonderland”
Jack Risler had enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 1940. After graduating from the Recruit Depot at San Diego, he was assigned to the guard force at Bremerton Navy Yard, Washington. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Risler volunteered for parachute training since “guard duty was boring” and was assigned immediately to the West Coast jump school at Santee (later Camp Gillespie), California. Following six weeks of training, Risler was assigned to the U.S. Naval Air Station Parachute Riggers School at Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the Marine Corps had leased the jump towers from the 1939 World’s Fair. After graduating in early 1943, Risler was transferred to New River, North Carolina, as a parachute instructor, where he came under the watchful eye of the school’s senior instructor. The instructor asked him, “Would you like to do something exciting?” and then he was given the opportunity to volunteer for “hazardous duty behind enemy lines.”
Within days of volunteering for hazardous duty, Risler was on his way to Washington, D.C., to receive training from the OSS. He reported to “Area F,” the Congressional Country Club located only thirteen miles northwest of Washington in Bethesda, Maryland. The club had been leased by the OSS for the duration of the war for $4,000 a month and the promise of repair for any damages. In OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, John Whiteclay Chambers II noted that, “The former watering hole for Washington’s power elite, the club had fallen onto hard times as a result of the depression and the war, and its board of directors was happy to lease it to the OSS.” The estate quickly turned into a school for unconventional training: fairways became obstacle courses and small-arms ranges, sand traps turned into demolition beds, the club house provided office and work spaces. The site was supposed to be top secret, but when one newly assigned agent paid for his cab ride, the driver said, “Oh, you’re one of those guerrillas.” Every cab driver in Washington knew what was going on.
The training was tough and dangerous. Machine guns on the fifteenth tee fired live ammunition over the heads of trainees. Two trainees were killed on the range and another died during a mock attack on a bridge. Risler started the day at sunrise with hours of physical conditioning and didn’t
end until mock missions were completed well after dark. The classroom instruction was honed by practical application. Night after night, hundreds of trainees stalked the fairways in an attempt to ambush their instructors, who acted as enemy soldiers. At times the training was a little too realistic—the caddie shack fell victim to an overzealous demolitionist. “Sometimes we’d ambush the milk truck,” one trainee recalled. This happened so often, in fact, that a signal system was developed to let the milkman know when the coast was clear. On occasion, missions were conducted off the property. A French group became adept at raiding the local farms to steal pigs, rabbits, chickens, and eggs, which they would then feast on in the woods. When the well-known syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, a Congressional neighbor, penned a series of unflattering pieces about Colonel Donovan, the trainees ambushed his farm as well.
It was at Area “F” that Risler met William E. Fairbairn, the legendary close-combat expert, who had spent three decades in Shanghai mastering the martial arts. The OSS “borrowed” him from the British to train the men in hand-to-hand combat. During one training session, Fairbairn told him to, “Come at me.”
