A Day in Yugoslavia

Late last month the four Allied newsmen in Yugoslavia, including TIME'S Stoyan Pribichemch, were captured in a German paratroop raid on Marshal Tito's headquarters. Pribichemch alone escaped. Last week he cabled this account of his adventure:

At 6:30 on the morning of May 25 a Partisan guard woke the American photographer, Fowler, the British photographer, Slade, the British correspondent, Talbot, and me by shouting through the windows of our two houses: "Avioni--airplanes!" Talbot and I, sharing the same room, jumped into our clothes, ran out, took a look at the skies and made for the slit trench on a bare mound some 100 yards away. No sooner had the four of us reached the shelter than bombs from 15 planes began exploding around us. Sizzling bomb fragments whizzed into the trench beside my right shoulder. About 30 more large, low-flying planes arrived and, just as Fowler was filming the dive of a Stuka, brownish parachutes flapped open no more than 200 feet above us and gliders began to steer toward the ground just in front of us. We looked at each other and knew that there was no escape.

At 7 a bulky German in a black steel helmet loomed above our trench, pointed his submachine gun at us and yelled "Haenda hoch, heraus--Hands up, get out." Pouring out blasphemies, an officer with bulging eyes and thick lips searched us for guns, took away our papers and hit Talbot for not raising his injured right arm high enough. With a curse he threw my ten-dollar bills to the ground; I picked them up and put them back in my pocket. Then he pulled two photographs out of his speckled parachute dress and asked: "Do you know who this is?"

"That is Tito," I answered in German.

"Where is Tito?" he barked. I pointed at the limestone crag beyond the town. "Tito was there last night but he is not there this morning."

"You know that you are lying," roared the officer.

"Go there and find out whether I am lying," I said. In fact, Tito was in his grotto when the German paratroops descended on Drvar. His men pulled him up a rope to the summit of the steep cliff while the shooting was going on in the valley. He then walked over to a nearby hill, and from there directed the battle. That day and night his entire staff and all the files and papers were evacuated in the same manner, and when on the following day the Germans finally broke into the cave they found it empty.

The Firing Squad. The popeyed German officer ordered the soldier who had captured us to escort us toward the center of the town. With raised hands we marched along the main street. The sun shone and bullets whistled between the bombed buildings; the Partisans were gathering on the surrounding hills. We were led into the tree-shaded backyard of the two-story Partisan administration building where some 20 old men, women and children had already been herded. Two German officers were standing in the far corner.

"Shoot?" asked a soldier with a bandaged head, sweeping his submachine gun toward the four of us and the civilians. "Yes," answered an officer. "Separate these four." The soldier ordered the four of us to line up against the back wall of the house. "But we are American and British officers," I protested in German. "Ja, ja, ja," bellowed the soldier, and pushed me toward the wall.

I shouted in German to the officer: "Are you an army officer or aren't you? Our armies do not shoot captured German officers. Is it a practice of the German Army to shoot captured American and British officers?"

"Sorry," replied the officer, "I have orders to execute everybody here," and he ordered the American photographer, Fowler, to stand up first, hands up, back to the wall, face to the executioner As Fowler, pale but calm, took up his position, the other German officer came across the backyard and asked me about our ranks. I told him. He turned to the first officer and began to argue in a half whisper. After a few seconds he ordered us to drop our hands and to go down into the cellar of the administration building.

We sat on the floor of the cellar smoking for half an hour. Then the soldier with the bandaged head appeared, all grins, and announced in pidgin language: "Englaender und Amerikaner good, aber Partisanen kaputt"--indicating that only the Yugoslavs would be executed. At about 9 a.m. we were marched off to a cemetery where the Germans had established their headquarters. The whole town was in German hands by now, but the firing was heavier at the foot of the hills around the town. We stood for a while, watching the bandaging of the first German wounded. Suddenly I saw a Chetnik standing in a group of German officers. He was a young man in a peasant costume, a rifle slung across his shoulder and on his cap the insignia of the Royal Yugoslav Army. "The bastard," muttered Talbot.

Another Way of Dying. After an hour we found that in place of execution we were merely to be offered another way of dying. A man led the four of us to the advanced positions and from there we were ordered to carry a wounded German on a stretcher across a field under Partisan fire, back to the cemetery headquarters. Partisan bullets sang by and kicked up dust around us. We ducked and crawled and at one point had to drop the stretcher and lie flat. But a German paratrooper behind us, carefully taking cover, prodded us on with his submachine gun. We reached the cemetery unscathed. Here, at about n, I was separated from Talbot, Fowler and Slade. I did not see them again and have not heard what became of them.

A swart, grumpy sergeant with a crew haircut gave me his knapsack, warned me that I would answer with my life for it, and ordered me to follow him and his men. Fifteen paratroopers started out with two heavy machine guns across the young wheatfields toward the wooded, Partisan-held ridge a mile off to the west. To the right and to the left of me similar small groups were advancing in the same direction, some carrying heavy trench mortars.

The hail of Partisan bullets gradually grew thicker and we ran across the clear spaces, taking cover from bush to bush, from ditch to ditch, from fence to fence; all the time a German with a submachine gun behind me made sure that I didn't fall out of line. Finally we stopped at an abandoned peasant house on a tree-covered elevation at the very foot of the mountain. Here the Germans set up their two machine guns, made themselves comfort able and ordered me to sit beside one of the guns. "Do you always drag war prisoners into the firing line? I asked the sergeant.

A man with a face like a death mask and a black patch over his right eye answered instead: You are a war correspondent so we thought you might like to see the war from our firing line. Later I learned that he was a Gestapo man.

The Germans around me were emptying their pockets of tins of chocolates and cigarets looted from the quarters of the U.S. mission to Tito. Every once in a while they took swigs from their schnapps bottles. They gave me nothing to eat. About noon some 30 more transport planes appeared over the valley and again parachutes and gliders floated down, bringing the total number of airborne invaders to 600. My captors were elated, jeered at the Partisans as "half -naked" bandits and gypsies, sneered at the Russians, ridiculed the Americans. "Well," said one, "now you are going to see Germany for a change." "Maybe, I replied.

At about 2 p.m. the firing rose in a steady crescendo from all sides. Partisan bullets and grenades tore viciously through the bushes and tree branches around me. The two German machine guns rattled incessantly against the hillside where nothing could be seen but the twitch of a twig here and there. A dozen dive bombers droned overhead, but their bombing soon had to be stopped for fear of hitting the Germans.

A captured peasant and his eight-year-old son had been kept at the German machine-gun position with me. Now the two had to carry ammunition from a hollow back of the house to the machine gunners in front. Within a few minutes the peasant had his right ankle shot through by a Partisan bullet. The Germans bandaged him up and made him carry on. The terrified boy, trembling like a leaf, wrung his hands, whimpered and implored the Germans in Serbo-Croatian, "I want to go home, I want to go home." The Germans ignored him and soon a Partisan machine-gun burst shattered both his knees. The Germans did not bother trying to bandage him.

Toward 6 p.m. a German crouching behind the house pointed to the right and shouted: "Look there!" Far to the right, at the end of the valley, on a gentle hill with a bombed church outlined against the glowing horizon, a single file of men appeared, marching toward the German rear. "These are ours retreating," yelled a soldier. The sergeant looked through the field glasses and screamed: "These are the bandits advancing. They are flanking us."

An hour later the situation of my captors had become desperate. We were a mile ahead of the German headquarters and the line of retreat was now under Partisan fire from the front, the left and the right. All along the foot of the mountain the German front line was reeling back. At 8:30 p.m. the sergeant and the one-eyed Gestapo man ordered retreat. Surprised and forced to think for themselves, the crack S.S. troops who had been calling the Partisans half-naked gypsies a few hours ago were now clearly panicky.

Dusk was falling and tracer bullets raced over the Drvar Valley like fireflies. The sergeant yelled at me: "War correspondent, carry the wounded forward." I was to lead the line and to taste the Partisan fire first. Two men helped me shoulder a half-conscious, bleeding young German shot through the lungs. I stepped into the clear space of the backyard orchard. Instantly a bullet from a Partisan sharpshooter whined past my nose and plopped into a plum tree. I made for a hedge, beyond which curled a shallow ditch leading between two wheatfields back toward the cemetery and the German headquarters. The Partisan sharpshooter fired frantically at me and the Germans stood behind and watched. I have no recollection of how I crossed those 30 yards except that I made the ditch and dropped on all fours with the wounded German riding my back.

Then I heard the Germans running one by one across the clear space and jumping over the hedge into the ditch behind me. Now, I said to myself, is the time to try to escape. My chance was to pretend to be retreating, but actually to drop behind and let the Partisans catch up with me. I shuffled slowly on my knees and elbows. Another German ran past me along the ditch toward the cemetery. The wounded man on top of me groaned, got off me with an agonizing effort and stumbled away into the gathering darkness. A few more Germans overtook me while Partisan bullets grazed the edges of the ditch. I pushed myself forward on my stomach and I saw a couple of Germans trying to run over a clear space and turning somersaults as the machine-gun burst hit them.

The sergeant's voice rang out ahead of me: "American, American, come faster." "I am coming," I shouted, crawled a little bit and rested again. I knew that the Germans in front could not shoot back at me without hitting their comrades in the ditch, so I kept an eye only on the silhouettes behind that might stab or shoot me in running past. My hands and knees were bleeding. After a few more sham efforts at scuttling ahead I stopped again and looked back. There was not a single living German behind me.

"Comrades, Here I Am." Then I lay flat on my back. The firing dwindled and suddenly the night air quivered with the Partisan war cry--"Ubiy davi rastrgray ih na komadel--Kill, throttle, tear them to pieces!" Scores of battle-crazed Partisans came bounding across the wheatfield, brandishing their fearful hand grenades. Then at the top of my voice I shouted in Serbo-Croatian: "Comrades, don't shoot. Here I am, Pribichevich."

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