The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

The scene shifts from Pranjane to Washington, DC, where a “brainy beauty” named Mirjana Vujnovich hears rumors of nearly 100 American airmen gathered in the hills of Yugoslavia (81). Mirjana, who works for the Yugoslav embassy, is the wife of George Vujnovich, an OSS agent stationed in Bari, Italy, and the man who will direct Operation Halyard. Alarmed by the US government’s inactivity on the matter, Mirjana writes to her husband about the airmen. Like most US officials, Vujnovich knows nothing, but unlike most, he is determined to find out if there is truth to his wife’s report.

For the remainder of Chapter 6—as well as Chapter 7 and much of Chapter 8—Freeman tells the story of Vujnovich and Mirjana: how they meet, how they fall in love, and, following the April 1941 Nazi invasion, how they escape Yugoslavia.

A Pittsburgh native and son of a Serbian immigrant steelworker, Vujnovich earns a scholarship to study medicine in Belgrade, then capital of Yugoslavia. He meets Mirjana for the first time in November 1935, but he is too forward, and she rejects him. He sees her again four years later and finally wins over the girl with whom he already has fallen in love.