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

“He could remember the cold terror that gripped his whole body as he held his breath and hoped a German patrol would pass by the young American and the girl he loved, the desperation of just wanting to get out of danger, to just get over the border, to get back home.”

George Vujnovich studied in Yugoslavia in the late 1930s and early 1940s and later went on to direct Operation Halyard. In this passage, Vujnovich is thinking about the downed airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia and remembering his own harrowing experience of trying to escape Yugoslavia while evading the Nazis and getting Mirjana to safety.

“The advice was completely wrong, but the officer believed it and was trying to be helpful.”

When Tony Orsini was briefed on his upcoming mission, he was told to seek out Tito’s Partisans and avoid Mihailovich’s Chetniks. This advice was the result of lies perpetrated by Communist agents in the upper echelons of Allied intelligence. Both during the war and afterward, Orsini and the other downed airmen encountered hundreds of well-meaning individuals who simply believed what their own government told them and thereby repeated anti-Mihailovich lies.

“The same scenes were repeated all over northern Yugoslavia throughout much of 1944.”

Serbian villagers rushed to meet downed US airmen, greeting them as heroes, and protecting them from the Nazis. By this point in the narrative, Freeman has described the similar experiences of Clare Musgrove, Tony Orsini, and Robert Wilson. He now chronicles those of Mike McKool, Thomas Oliver, and Richard Felman, all of whom note the generosity and bravery of the locals.

“The American could not tell what the Chetnik was thanking God for, but he was thanking the Lord for delivering him into the hands of the very people he had been told to avoid.”

After being rescued by Serbian villagers, Richard Felman was approached by an older villager who led him to a church where the two men prayed together in different languages. Like the other airmen, Felman realized the attitude of the Chetniks was completely different than what his briefings had led him to believe.

“‘It will not help,’ the Chetnik officer explained. ‘The Germans will kill who they wish. You cannot stop them.’”

Upon learning that the Nazis had taken 20 Serbian villagers hostage in an attempt to force the Chetniks to give up the American airmen, McKool suggested that he and his fellow crewmen should surrender. After three years of Nazi occupation, the Chetniks knew that the Germans probably would murder everyone involved no matter what, so it was pointless to surrender.

“Shooting a few German soldiers who wandered into Mihailovich’s territory might prompt a bloody raid on an entire village, and sneaking into a rail yard to blow up a Nazi supply train might lead to dozens of innocent Serbs being hung from the light poles as a warning against further uprising.”

After arriving at Pranjane, Felman accompanied his new Chetnik friends on several sabotage missions. Here, Freeman explains why the Chetniks had to make their sabotage appear accidental: General Mihailovich had fought in World War I, when Yugoslavia lost one-fourth of its Serbian male population. He had no wish to repeat that experience nor to bring unnecessary suffering upon Serbian villagers. This prudent approach probably saved thousands of Serbian lives, but it also exposed Mihailovich to Allied charges that he was a Nazi collaborator.

“As they approached, he could smell the burning wood before he saw the remains of the village. The Nazis had burned it to the ground and killed everyone.”

Unlike McKool, Felman witnessed the aftermath of the Nazi atrocity. The threat of reprisals against villagers could prevent Mihailovich from launching reckless attacks on German forces, but it could not persuade him to surrender the Americans.

“Vujnovich knew that any such rescue would be even more difficult now, with those two sides fighting each other as bitterly as either fought the Germans.”

US forces had conducted small-scale rescues since gaining a foothold in Italy in 1943, but a large-scale rescue would be dangerous due to the ongoing Yugoslav civil war and the various complications it entailed, both logistical and political.

“George and Mirjana couldn’t believe that Magda Goebbels had just saved them.”

When the passengers exited the plane, Mrs. Goebbels snapped at a Nazi official who asked to see Mirjana’s passport and even demanded that the Nazi official help her with the sick woman. Vujnovich had an American passport, and he was married to Mirjana, but there was no guarantee that the Nazis would honor the paperwork, so it is possible that Mrs. Goebbels’s intervention prevented Mirjana’s arrest.

“Time magazine readers voted him Man of the Year.”

Early in World War II, after the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, the American press touted General Mihailovich as a freedom fighter, and his reputation soared. This fact illustrates the effect of Communist-driven propaganda in sowing distrust between the Allies and the Chetnik leader.

“With each such incident, Mihailovich’s resolve grew and the picture became clearer to him: The Communists were no better than the Nazis.”

In 1943, Mihailovich reported that Tito’s forces were using villagers as human shields and then abandoning them to the Germans. Mihailovich’s realization of the Communists’ cruelty fueled his determination to fight for Yugoslavia’s future while at the same time resisting the German invaders.

“Not until 1997 would the world understand that the switch of allegiance was orchestrated largely by a Soviet operative who convinced the British that Mihailovich could not be trusted.”

In 1997, declassified documents proved that Soviet spy James Klugmann had fed Allied leaders false information designed to undermine Mihailovich and support Tito. Eventually, the espionage was revealed, but it took more than a half-century to confirm that Klugmann was a Soviet agent.

“That the OSS was full of Communist sympathizers, outright Communists, and even some people who were secretly spying and working behind the scenes to further the Communist cause came as no surprise to anyone familiar with the unusual makeup of the OSS.”

Communist infiltration was not limited to British intelligence. Freeman notes that the OSS was a “mix of down-to-earth ‘regular Joes’ like Musulin and […] intellectual types who tended to the leftist, Socialist political spectrum” (151). Unlike the FBI, where Director J. Edgar Hoover was relentless in his pursuit of Communists both real and imagined, the OSS proved hospitable to Communists whose skills could help defeat that enemy.

“The idea of Vujnovich, known to be a die-hard anti-Communist, parachuting into Yugoslavia made them uneasy.”

Vujnovich planned to direct Operation Halyard from the ground, but his superiors balked at the idea. Roosevelt, in fact, sent the following telegram through the State Department: “Former naval person objects to George Vujnovich going into Mihailovich’s headquarters. Therefore, he will not be sent” (173). The “former naval person” was Winston Churchill.

“The three Americans were astounded that the Brits had so completely fouled up their efforts to get into Pranjane, but they still had a hard time believing that their tea-sipping allies were actually trying to sabotage Operation Halyard.”

With the help of British pilots and crewmen, the three-man OSS team—Musulin, Jibilian, and Mike Rajacich—tried five times to reach Pranjane. Each attempt resulted in failure due to unforeseen circumstances; if the British pilots were sabotaging Operation Halyard, they were simply following orders. In light of Churchill’s known objections to the mission, the American OSS agents had good reason to suspect sabotage.

“Mihailovich may have been exaggerating to make clear his dedication to protecting the airmen, but no one could be sure.”

Mihailovich ordered his Chetnik officers to defend the American airmen with their lives if necessary. He also threatened to execute any man who reported to him that something had happened to even one of the airmen.

“Like every other American who met Mihailovich personally, however, Jibilian was taken by the way a man of such simplicity could at the same time give such an impression of grandeur.”

General Mihailovich often appears in the book as more of a behind-the-scenes presence than a direct actor in the events narrated. All descriptions of Mihailovich from American airmen and agents, however, echo this observation from Jibilian.

“Then Musulin noticed a most providential herd of cows sauntering onto the airstrip.”

Luck, as much as skill and planning, was a factor in the success of Operation Halyard. The cows that appeared, effectively hiding the airstrip from the German aircraft overhead, are one example of how easily the mission could have failed due to the many dangers involved.

“And then he saw the first airman at the door bend down and unlace his army boots.”

The airmen giving their boots and other supplies to the villagers shows the trust that developed between the soldiers and the locals, whom they had been warned not to trust. This speaks to the unlikely bonds that can form during wartime and that the official narrative of who is a friend versus an enemy should always be questioned.

“Mihailovich was officially ostracized for his supposed weakness and collaboration with the Germans, and even faint praise for his assistance with the downed airmen would have ruffled feathers in the State Department and the British government.”

Mihailovich’s “supposed weakness” stemmed from his reluctance to engage the Germans in costly battles at a time when the Allies would have been happy to see thousands of Serbians die in their place. This sentiment explains that false official narratives, once established and defended, become impervious to truth.

“They persevered because they had faith that citizens of a free nation could stop an injustice being perpetrated halfway around the world.”

This sentence refers to the airmen’s service in World War II. Their victory over Nazism validated their democratic beliefs, but they left the war feeling bitter and disillusioned over the fates of Mihailovich and Yugoslavia.

“The gales of the world left young American men stranded behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia, and now the gales of the world left them wondering how the man who had watched over them could be executed in a Communist country while the free world did nothing.”

This is the final sentence of Chapter 17. The phrase “gales of the world” serves as the chapter title because it is among the last words spoken by General Mihailovich before his execution on July 17, 1946: “I strove for much, I undertook much, but the gales of the world have carried away both me and my work” (265).

“She never got over her disappointment at how the Allied victory led to Communism instead of a representative democracy in her native country.”

After the war, Mirjana settled into a relatively serene life of artistic and intellectual pursuits. This quotation, however, reminds readers that the Allied betrayal of Mihailovich had catastrophic human consequences. While much of the victorious Western world enjoyed the postwar boom and relative peace of the latter 20th century, the people of Eastern Europe suffered decades of brutal Communist dictatorship.