34
Thursday 31 August 1944 was the last day of summer, but the night before was a cold reminder that the first snows were not far off. Ralph and Leslie had only slept an hour or two; both were still a bit drunk. Lovrenc was abuzz. Partisan cooks prepared breakfast, while others pulled themselves together to face the day. Those with hangovers took turns splashing cold water on their faces. Ralph decided they were on to a good thing and did likewise. It was before sunrise when the 3rd Battalion prepared for departure. Kit, Andy, Bob, Griff, and Len would stay behind with a Partisan skeleton crew. Kovačič gathered his troop and mounted a dark horse to lead.1 Boldan trumped Kovačič by getting on a stunning white gelding, a Slovenian Lipica horse, a breed made famous by the Spanish Riding School of Vienna. He might as well have driven a sports car into battle.
Led by the Lipica pride of Slovenia, Ralph, Leslie, and the 3rd Battalion departed for Ožbalt. The sun rose as the column reached the treeline. It was a crisp and clear morning. To avoid detection near any open ground, the Partisans broke into groups of ten. They moved in turn from one thicket to another, each group giving the all-clear for the next to follow.
The wisdom of these tactics was soon proven. A German Fieseler Storch reconnaissance plane buzzed overhead. The Partisans had done this many times before; they knew how to move without being seen. Yet a sense of anxiety scratched at them. Was the plane scouting the way for a German attack? Were they walking headlong into an enemy offensive? Past the scattered meadows and into forest cover, the Partisans reassembled the column, and a little after sunrise they were all in position at the top of the ridge over Ožbalt.
Well before the train was due, Boldan and Kovačič dismounted, tied their horses at the top of the hill and ordered the battalion to advance with caution. Partisans crept from tree to tree, taking positions behind the dense shrubs that led to the edge of the railway.2 It was 07.30 now – would the train come? Ralph and Leslie weren’t sure. Ten per cent of the crew had vanished. The SD might be interrogating the crew and searching the barracks by now.
Come 08.00, they felt a distant rumble: the chugging of an engine and the squeal of metal on metal broke the morning quiet. The carriages stopped in front of the battalion; the doors opened. Peering through the undergrowth, Ralph breathed a sigh of relief. The crew were here: yesterday’s escape appeared to have caused no bother. The men and guards got out as usual, the foremen waved the driver all-clear, and the locomotive reversed to Maribor. Ralph nodded to Kovačič that everything was in order. Once the engine was out of earshot, Ivan put a whistle between his lips, took a deep breath, and blew.
As one, the battalion emerged. Dozens of Partisans, weapons in hand, shouting ‘Hände Hoch!’ The guards were so surprised that none of them even unslung their rifles. They knew they were in no position to disagree and were soon disarmed.
At first the prisoners were confused and scared of these armed men who had emerged from the bushes. Then Ralph stood up, identifiable by his slouch hat. ‘C’mon, you jokers, get up here!’3 Leslie’s presence helped, but Ralph had swung back fast into The Crow as Vertrauensmann. Some of the prisoners were ecstatic; others remained dour or confused. The guards were terrified, though Gustl was philosophical enough to call Ralph a ‘great rogue’.4
But while The Crow was enjoying the attention, Les gazed towards Lisa’s cottage. Should they bring the family with them? Lisa would never leave without her husband, and if they did go without him, Avgust would be killed by the Nazis for sure. Leslie felt a great weight in his stomach: the whole family were in terrible danger now. But they would all have to take their chances. Les hoped he would see them again.
Time was short and the column was soon moving uphill. It pushed its way through dense, green shrubland and into the forest. There, the canopy was so thick that any undergrowth was deprived of light and gave way to countless tree trunks, and a red floor of fallen leaves. This would be the view for much of the journey to come. Suddenly, one of the captured guards turned and fled back down towards the Drava.5 The Partisans held back from firing, scared that gunshots would alert any German forces that were nearby, and having learned by now that hitting a fleeing target through dense forest was difficult.6 Even if it took the runaway a while to reach his lines, however, urgency was prudent: the SS would be apoplectic at the escape. The Partisans preferred to move by night, a tactic that had always served them well, but that wasn’t an option now. They would have to make like the wind for the most remote and dense terrain available.
Once they were all on their way, the new escapees’ lack of preparedness bothered Ralph. At least half wore nothing but shorts and a shirt and carried no other supplies. There would be nothing for warmth on rainy days or cold forest nights, and Slovenia had both in abundance. The supplies the original conspirators had with them would not feed everyone.
By mid-morning, they had bypassed Lovrenc. They turned south-south-west, all the way marching uphill, and stopped at a farmhouse for an early lunch. Here, food had been prepared by a few Partisans who had not joined the raid. Andy, Bob, Kit, Griff, and Len were there too. Several Partisans threw buckwheat flour from a large sack into a cauldron, and added water and dollops of pig fat.7 It was žganci, Ralph’s old friend from the farm, and the fuel that would drive the rest of the escape. The žganci presented a problem, though: the Partisans wanted to eat and move on, but the new escapees had no cutlery. Borrowing a few spoons from the Partisans, The Crow organized a rotation. They would all line up, take a few mouthfuls, pass the spoon to the next man, and move to the back of the line. He hoped no one had a cold.
The spooning delay at least allowed Ralph to take stock. There were many prisoners here he did not recognize. The Partisans had raided the farm!8 But they had raided the wrong farm first, finding twenty French prisoners. A mix of forced labourers and POWs taken in 1940, these Frenchmen were now closer to civilian workers than prisoners. They had been living leisured, almost free lives – many had relationships with local women – and they were furious to be ‘rescued’ against their will. No wonder – they were going from a summer in green fields with their girlfriends to become fugitives alongside armed rebels. Leslie, as the best French-speaker, had to bring them into line.9
Leslie and Ralph were relieved to see Phil among the railway crew and got the other side of the story. Their luck had defied belief. The guards hadn’t noticed anyone was missing until roll call yesterday evening. Time was bought during roll call when one POW handed in the POW identity plate of a man who’d been transferred out twelve months earlier.10 The flustered guards counted again and again. By the time it was confirmed that seven were missing, the Kommandoführer had left for a night out with his girlfriend, and he hadn’t returned in time to stop the prisoners departing the next morning. Unauthorized to act without him, the guards had kept to the schedule.11 When the Kommandoführer finally returned, he rang his superior to inform him seven prisoners had escaped.
‘Only seven?’ the Kommandoführer’s superior replied. ‘That’s nothing! You’ve lost another seventy-seven this morning.’12
It was not quite a clean sweep, though. Bob Shuttleworth and Len Hewlett, as well as Shorty Humm and the two other cooks, had been left behind. So too was Eric Edwards. Tired of working onsite, he had accepted an offer from Bob to be an administrative assistant. Keeping track of The Combine after The Crow (and his creative accounting) was proving a difficult task. Those left behind would be transferred to other camps in Austria a few days later.13
With almost all of 1046GW and the two farm crews, the escape party now numbered 105. They surveyed the Partisans with the same awe Leslie and Ralph had: the eclectic uniforms, the knives, the bullet loops, and grenades had menace. Most of the 3rd Battalion being unshaven and hungover from the night before helped the rugged image. ‘I’m bloody glad these blokes are on our side,’ mused one of the Australians.14
The female Partisans were a baffling prospect to a number of the escapees, some of whom were deeply sexist (and likely the same men who had harassed the pub waitress). One of the Partisans was Josefine Lobnik, a dark-haired Maribor native and former Partisan courier and spy. Discovered by the enemy and forced to flee the city, she now worked in the field. Josefine scouted the way ahead. Her assistant was Dušan, a Partisan with a reputation for brutality.15
While Josefine scouted, the 3rd Battalion took stock. A Partisan doctor inspected the German guards captured and decided one was too old, slow, and sickly to accompany them any further. The guard was set loose, and returned to Maribor bearing the doctor’s note reading, ‘This man is unfit for military duty.’16
A little after midday, 200 Partisans, escapees, and prisoners headed south-west, deeper into Pohorje. Josefine reconnoitred the column’s ascent 1,000 metres up, east of the mountain Črni Vrh.17 She and Dušan descended the other side to an isolated farmstead, whose owner was known to be a staunch ally, often providing shelter and food to Partisans. The pair knocked at the front door: no reply, so they knocked again. There was movement inside. This wasn’t right. Dušan took his rifle and slammed the butt against the door. A distressed older woman opened up. Josefine explained the situation: they had 100 British prisoners on the run and needed her help. The woman seemed unmoved. Her husband was away, she explained. Was the farmer’s wife not as sympathetic to the cause?
There was no time for this, Dušan decided, forcing his way in. Josefine followed, her eyes focusing on the religious icons in the hallway. Catholic images were common in Slovenia, especially in the homes of rural folk, but tucked away in the corner of the shrine was a picture of Adolf Hitler. Dušan grabbed the woman by her hair and held a knife to her face. The occupants had been Partisan supporters, she blurted out, but they’d disappeared – murdered or sent to a concentration camp, no one knew. She and her husband were Germans relocated from Ljubljana Province, and the house had been gifted to them by the Reich. Dušan detained the new homeowner and prepared for the column to arrive.18
This was not only a pit stop for the escapees and 3rd Battalion; it was also here that the whole Ljubo Šercer Brigade reformed. Hundreds of Partisans came from all directions. There was little room in the house, so Partisan and escapee alike camped in the open. With the 1st and 2nd Battalions came seventy-one recruits.19 Some were apparently eager rebels, others terrified refugees. One of the latter, a man in his forties who’d been issued with one of the camp guards’ rifles, Ralph recognized as a businessman from Maribor. He got talking and it turned out the man had been under suspicion from the Gestapo. Tipped off that his arrest was imminent, he’d fled to Pohorje and been taken in by the Partisans. Now he was in despair: in the rush to get away he’d abandoned his wife and children in the city, to the constant anxiety that they’d be arrested in his place and deported to a concentration camp, or worse. Ralph offered what comfort he could, but his words felt hollow. This man could now only live out the rest of the war as a Partisan and hope against hope that his family survived.
Exhausted by the twenty-kilometre upward march, everyone settled where they could. Cold and out in the open, few of the escapees slept well. Ralph and the rest of the original seven, warm in many layers, managed to drift off.
The peace was broken by the blast of a lone gunshot. Unable to bear his guilt, the man from Maribor had put the barrel of his rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.20