Monday, May. 29, 1944
Inside the Fortress
German Europe's long darkness had begun to lift. Last week, from Partisan Yugoslavia, TIME Correspondent Stoyan Pribichevich sent an account of everyday life behind the German rampart.*
The People Barter. Here & there, people can buy things in shops for money.
But by & large, Marshal Tito's land has no use for coin or currency, store or tavern. The people barter. "My dollars," wrote Pribichevich, "are just dirty pieces of paper."
Where food is sufficient, the biggest lack is clothing. For silk, rayon or nylon from damaged Allied parachutes, the people will trade almost anything they have. When the peasants hear the roar of Allied transport planes, they hurry into queues before the local barter post, offer corn, potatoes, eggs, poultry, goats, sheep and calves for strips of parachute fabric collected by the Partisan Army.
The garments fashioned from such material have revolutionized the traditional costume of many a district. Where peasant women from time immemorial have clung to black & white, they now dress in yellow, green, red or blue. It is not uncommon to see a girl dressed in a British Army shirt, a yellow parachute skirt.
Sometimes the parachutes are needed for bandages. Then the queues turn away in frustration.
Some Live on Nettles. The staple food in most districts is dried corn served as a gruel (skrob), with sour milk and potatoes on the side. In part of Montenegro and Bosnia famine is chronic; thousands of people live on nettles. But they live, and they fight. Men and beasts alike are always hungry for salt. A peasant will offer 9 lb. of corn for 2 lb. of salt, or a goat and kid for 11 lb. of salt. This spring, as every spring, wheat and vegetables have been sowed, but the peasants remember the German way of marching in at harvest time.
The Bold Ones Shout. In war, as in peace, the peasants work their patches of land as best they can. No one calls it collective farming, but everyone helps his neighbor and contributes to the Army. The Partisan movement's strong Communist element, Communist Tito's connections with Moscow have not noticeably altered the ways of Yugoslav peasants.
The people do not grumble when they are vexed by authority. They shout, and the Partisan Command listens. A peasant told the Partisan Command that he was sorry, but he could not give up his horse for transport until the plowing was done. Patiently the Partisan Command waited. Correspondent Pribichevich's landlady came home one day in a rage. She had been held for questioning because she had tried to salvage some wood from a bombed building.
"I have two sons in the Army," she stormed, "and is this what they are fighting for? The Army needs this, the Army needs that, but we the people must also live!"
"Did you say that to the commander?"
"I certainly gave him a big piece of my mind." Slyly she added: "I also asked him what the American correspondent might think of having his landlady arrested."
* Also in Titoland for the combined U.S. and British press was Renter's John Talbot. In addition, the Army's Yank published its first dispatches from Sergeant Correspondent Walter Bernstein, who had been in Yugoslavia for several weeks, shared his colleagues' enthusiasm for the Partisans.
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