Ralph was offered a career as an agent with military intelligence following Japan’s surrender and the end of the war. He chose civilian life (thank goodness), and returned to work at the State Bank. Later, he put his talents of persuasion to use as a life insurance salesman, a career he excelled at. He began by engaging with the German-speaking community of rural South Australia, religious refugees in the 1840s who were now unfairly viewed with hostility. In 1950 he and Ronte adopted a daughter, Beverly. They subsequently had two sons: Steven, born in 1950, and myself, born in 1958.
Ralph’s two early fellow captives, Gerrard Pollock and Henry Walter Steilberg, both survived the war – the latter not by much. Pollock remained on an Arbeitskommando until 1945, while Steilberg became relentless in his own escape attempts. Between April 1943 and September 1944, he escaped seven times. Infuriated, his captors imprisoned him in the notorious Terezín prison in occupied Czechoslovakia. On 21 April 1945, Steilberg made his final escape from a forced march out of the prison, reaching American lines four days later.1 His story is described in Paul Rea’s Voices from the Fortress.
From Ralph’s escape, of the six prisoners separated at Zavodnje, only three can be accounted for. Kit Carson rejoined the escape party, and Albert Avis was recaptured and sent to Stalag XVIIIC, from where he was liberated in 1945.2 In the same month Reginald Allan, who may be Reginald Allen, was reported as freed from Stalag VIIIB. The remaining three – one Imperial and two French prisoners – are also most likely to have been recaptured and sent to other camps, though many of the escapees continued to believe all save Kit had been killed.
Roy Courlander, Ralph’s predecessor as camp translator, survived the war. As the tide turned against Germany, he had headed to Belgium, where he defected back to the Allies, claiming his earlier defection to the Nazis had always been intended to gather intelligence. The British did not believe him. At his trial both Ralph and Griffin Rendell testified in his defence3 – not out of any love for him, but because the prosecution’s case rested on the evidence of a former 3GW inmate who had failed to understand the satirical intent behind Courlander’s ramblings about Ella Shields and the Hitler Youth, and because Roy had actually been fairly popular. What his fellows didn’t know was Roy was almost certainly a dedicated fascist, volunteering to fight the Soviets even before the British Free Corps was founded.4 In any case, Roy Courlander was arrogant enough to believe that, whatever the outcome of the war, he could end it better off than when he started. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He later migrated to Sydney, Australia, where he became a middle-management member of the local underworld. Early in 1966, driving a red E-Type Jaguar, he paid an unannounced visit to our house. His convertible was the envy of our quiet suburban street. Roy had come to try a shakedown. Ralph was now one of the leading insurance managers in Australia, with the discretion for the investment of large pension funds. Roy asked Ralph to invest in his proprietor’s ‘legitimate’ business interests, threatening blackmail if Ralph did not agree. Unaware of Ralph’s escape, Roy threatened to denounce him as a Nazi collaborator (based on Roy’s memory of Ralph’s compliant persona at Šentilj). Needless to say, Roy got short shrift and a flea in his ear. He died broke and alone in a dingy Sydney flat in 1979 aged sixty-four.
William Fagan, Ralph’s predecessor as Vertrauensmann, had a happy ending. While in Edinburgh waiting to return to New Zealand, he fell in love. Soon after, he returned home with his wife Mamie and two stepdaughters, and later had two sons, and then grandchildren. Bill died in 1977, aged sixty-six.
The fate of many in this story remains unknown. Others, like Lisa Zavodnik, nearly paid with their lives for aiding the escape – it was only thanks to the intervention of a German officer whom her husband had befriended that the Zavodnik family were spared deportation to a concentration camp. It is unknown if Lisa’s cousin Anton survived the war. The camp guards’ fate is also a mystery. Either they were released, or there is a mass grave in Pohorje where the poor fellows rest. As for Johann Gross of Vienna, it is to be hoped he lived a long and comfortable life on the gains he made with Ralph.
Of the Stalag XVIIID Partisans who died, commemorations were scant. We were unable to learn more about Mehmed Junis or Abdul E. Krim, though the pair are commemorated in Celje as part of the Celje Company, and the writer Matej Bor wrote a poem titled ‘Junis, Krim’ in their honour. Colin Cargill was never truly recognized for his bravery or his efforts. His gravestone is in the Commonwealth War Cemetery, Belgrade. Australia still mistakenly lists him as killed in Italy, not Slovenia.
John Denvir, the only survivor, returned to his family in New Zealand and started a taxi company. His received a raft of commendations from three armies, including a British Distinguished Conduct Medal and, thanks to Soviet liaisons with the Partisans, a Soviet Medal of Valour. He returned often to Slovenia for Ljubo Šercer Brigade reunions and was given an honorary commission as a Yugoslav major. James Caffin wrote a biography of John’s life, titled simply: Partisan.
Miraculously, almost all the Partisans involved in the escape survived. For those who could navigate the strange new world, they became the new elite of Slovenia. But many could not: after Čolo had his business seized, he moved first to a refugee camp in Austria before settling with his wife Anica in Melbourne, Australia, where they established a thriving market garden. The machine-gunner Alojz was given command of an Arbeitskommando of German POWs, helping rebuild Slovenia. But, as a former member of the Wehrmacht himself, he fell under suspicion in the post-war paranoia. He left the army and worked in an unassuming job in a timber mill. Švejk returned to Dolenjska and lived well as a Communist Party (now known as the League of Communists to distance them from the Soviets) man. Franjo entered the legal profession and rose to become Chief Justice of the Maribor Supreme Court. But, as with Ralph, the war had taken its toll, and he often resorted to heavy drinking.5 Josefine, who had scouted the way at Rogla, ended the war lying low on a relative’s farm in southern Austria that was also an Arbeitskommando. There she fell in love with a Kiwi POW, Bruce Murray. They married, and Josefine emigrated to New Zealand with Bruce. Their story is described by her son-in-law Doug Gold in his book, The Note Through the Wire.
Franklin Lindsay, the instigator of the rescue, ended the war a lieutenant-colonel, heading the US mission in Belgrade before going on to work for the CIA, where he would rue the failure of American policymakers to learn anything from Slovenia and Yugoslavia. It was a refusal to accept that those who joined Communist groups could be patriots first, and Communists second, Lindsay argued, that led America into Vietnam,6 and to employ tactics that often resembled those used by Germany and Italy in Slovenia. He wrote a book concerning the (declassified) elements of his wartime career, Beacons in the Night. His later career is documented in Spy Capitalism: ITEK and the CIA by Jonathan E. Lewis. Franklin Lindsay died in 2011 at the age of ninety-five.
Captain Jack Hugh Saggers and most of the remaining Allied mission staff evacuated Slovenia in April 1945. He survived the war and returned home. His MI9 work has remained mostly secret. Officially, he was SOE.
Losco received nothing. He has never been recognized for his efforts, nor properly commemorated. MI6 and MI9 (the latter disbanded in 1945) remain notoriously tight-lipped about their operations, even from the Second World War. He has a place – oddly – in the Commonwealth War Graves Memorial in Athens, even though the Belgrade memorial is closer to where he died. This lack of recognition is partly because Lindsay and his comrades in Slovenia knew Losco only as ‘Matthews’.
The leading escapees were quietly decorated. Probably owing to Ralph’s testimony, Leslie Laws received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM).7 Ralph was commended too, once his story had been believed: he was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM).8 The Australian citation was for ‘Devotion to duty’. Later, he discovered the British citation was quite different. ‘For gallant and distinguished conduct in the field’, the same citation as a DCM. He could only guess that his Australian superiors changed the award to maintain secrecy. Even after the war, Leslie and Ralph were sworn to silence; they had medals but could not speak even to their families of why they wore them. Such silence was particularly ironic because those in Slovenia were able to speak freely of the escape.
Ralph continued to be a wholehearted believer in God, King (now Queen), and Country; his experiences reinforced a deep hatred for fascism and all its collaborators. He, like Lindsay, was uncomfortable with the Vietnam War and believed that many who followed Communist movements, and many Communists themselves, were patriots. Ralph felt that fascism remained the great enemy of humanity.
Ralph became engaged with local veterans’ associations, primarily the Returned Services League of Australia (RSL).9 However, few – save the Partisans and his fellow POWs – could truly appreciate what he’d been through: the shame of being captured, the starvation of the cages in Greece and the dread train that followed, the horror of seeing thousands of Soviets butchered, spending much of his captivity in relative luxury; then seeing the destruction wrought on Slovenia. He could cope in the smaller RSL branches, because he could steer the organization. In large city branches things were different. In Sydney in particular, where he lived for much of the 1960s and 1970s, Ralph found the RSL intolerable. In 1962 the league had begun a huge anti-Communist campaign.10 The RSL were looking in the wrong direction. Many Ustaše, the Croatian fascists who were Hitler’s conduit for the Holocaust in the Balkans, fled to Australia. Here they launched a terrorist campaign. Through the 1960s and 1970s they threatened, murdered, and bombed their way through Australian communities. Those who spoke against them, including Ralph, received death threats. Shaken but angry, he offered them nothing but contempt in response. Australian intelligence services and policymakers, meanwhile, ignored the threat. Only when the Ustaše bombed a Sydney high street, injuring sixteen people, was action taken. Even then, one MP suggested it was a Communist false-flag attack.11
Another Nazi collaborator who fled to Australia was Lyenko Urbančič. He endeared himself to the RSL during their anti-Communist campaign, launching his own political career in the meantime.*12 Despite his senior position, as he was not a uniformed collaborator, the British did not send Urbančič back to Slovenia. Fleeing from Austria to Australia, he became a leading member of the conservative New South Wales Liberal Party, rebranding himself as a victim of Communism and a ‘true, classical conservative’.13 Urbančič steered New South Wales politics far to the far right before eventually being outed in 1979 as an SS propagandist. He was not expelled from the party following this revelation. Disgusted, Ralph conspired with other former POWs to have Urbančič prosecuted for his work with the Nazis.14 These efforts were unsuccessful, and Lyenko Urbančič died in Sydney in 2006.
Shunned by many in the RSL, it was with other former POWs that Ralph found solace, frequently writing to his fellow escapees, including Kit, Leslie, Andy, Len, Griff, and a few Partisans, though sadly he had not managed to remember Franjo’s address.
In 1972, when I was fourteen, Ralph had three months’ long-service leave. By now Yugoslavia was open for tourism. ‘I must go and visit the people who looked after me during the war,’ he told Ronte. ‘Would you like to come?’
Ralph and Ronte flew first to Athens, where they retraced the steps of Lusterforce and even got that romantic stay beside Tolo beach. They travelled down the coast that Ralph had rowed past at night thirty-one years before. They threw thank-you parties at each village that had offered Ralph food and shelter. They travelled on to Croatia; here he was astonished to find a minor conference happening at his hotel in Dubrovnik. All the attendees were German Army officers. The sight of their uniforms, and hearing them speak, brought on a significant attack of the shakes that took a day to control. They took the bus to Slovenia, in first Semič, then Ljubliana, then Maribor, and Ralph was reunited with his old friends, most joyously Franjo. He was pleasantly surprised to see Švejk, now introduced as Franc Gruden: the Commissar had been in such poor shape in 1944 that Ralph had doubted he’d survived the war. In Slovenia the escape was public knowledge, and at last Ralph was able to reminisce freely.
He and Ronte visited again in 1977. Afterwards, they went on to London, where a reunion was had with Leslie, Len, and Andy. Sadly, Ralph never reconnected with his fellow prisoners from earlier in his captivity, above all Gerry Pollock, Walter Steilberg and Jim Forrest: the memories of Corinth, Thessaloniki, and the train were too much to bear. So loath was Ralph to recall or show any weakness that he kept his partial deafness, the result of the assault by a German guard, hidden from me his entire life.
In the early 1980s, the escape was partially declassified, but the involvement of intelligence services was still a secret. At my urging, Ralph wrote a short memoir, A Hundred Miles as the Crow Flies, but only through a slip-up or frustration did he ever reveal that the story he told from then on was not wholly true.15 He did, though, leave several errors – breadcrumbs of sorts. He wrote they met the Newfoundlander Major Jones (who was more famous in Slovenia), and not Franklin Lindsay, during the escape. Jones wasn’t even in the country at the time, so it appeared an honest mistake, an effect of the passing of time on his memory. But Ralph and Lindsay met and corresponded at the time that the memoir was written, so naming Jones was perhaps a deliberate attempt to hide Lindsay’s involvement.
This secrecy and altering of the story created its own problem: in order to conceal the parts played by SOE and MI9, Ralph and Leslie ended up telling their families different stories, accounts that reflected their differing situations. Leslie had mellowed after the war, leading a quiet life of music, painting, and lawn bowls, and in his version, he had simply asked the Partisans to return for the working crew, and they’d agreed.16 It was a straightforward explanation from a straightforward man. Ralph, on the other hand, had only grown more ornery and theatrical, and talked up the drunken salesman story, of how over drinks he had convinced Partisan commanders to return for the others, over the objections of his fellow escapees. That this was closer to the truth was corroborated by Leslie’s best friend Andrew Hamilton.17 Captain Heslop heard the story from both Ralph and Les at the time, and only recommended Ralph for a decoration.18
In 1985, Australian and Slovenian filmmakers produced a documentary on the escape, called March to Freedom/Pot k Svobodi. Ralph and Leslie both travelled to Slovenia for filming, Leslie primarily to see the Zavodniks again. Sadly, Lisa had died, but Les was tearfully reunited with Stanko and Mitsi.
The documentary would have been the perfect chance to set the story straight, had both men not sworn to carry the truth to their graves. Taking their vow of secrecy so seriously made little sense, but both believed it their duty. That truth was only discovered via a handful of declassified MI9 documents, and painstaking research across Australian, British, American, Slovenian, and New Zealander sources. The full report on the escape, it appears, was never declassified, and remains ‘Top Secret’.
Hopes were raised when British archival file WO 208/3363 ‘Yugoslavia’ came to light, containing MI9 escape reports from Yugoslav territory, but infuriatingly it contained only incomplete accounts of the Australian and New Zealander members of the escape, which had already been released by the Australian and New Zealand archives. The remaining details are contained within the file Dvr, Leslie Laws, CSDIC/CMF/SKP/3867, which is either in a different folder, has never been declassified, or has been lost.
Only in Slovenia was the escape remembered, let alone commemorated. There it was dubbed Vranov let (The Crow’s Flight) and occupied a unique place in history. It was something all Partisans – both those who approved of the world they built, like Franjo and Švejk, and those who did not, like Alojz and Čolo – could be proud of. From 1944, when the Partisans began recording rescues, Slovenian Partisans rescued over 800 POWs and airmen.19 Add in 1943, and the total number would be closer to 1,000. Even as relations between the Partisans and their allies deteriorated, the rescues had continued. Partisans risked their lives to save these men until the end, making theirs the most successful escape line in Europe.
Yet, in the many histories of escape, evasion, and espionage, these efforts rate hardly a mention. Perhaps this is because, aside from its daring and capable field agents, Allied intelligence in that part of Europe seemed characterized by ignorance, incompetence, and gross negligence. SOE had promised enough supplies to field entire armies yet couldn’t manage a replacement radio. The deficiencies may not have been entirely their fault; perhaps blame also lay with RAF Command.
Perhaps Partisan efforts have been ignored because the war in Slovenia was considered too complicated and messy to navigate; it doesn’t fit a tidy narrative of angelic Allied liberators. Perhaps it is that, by contrast with the impression of the war’s end for the Western Allies elsewhere – largely celebration and relief, from the liberation of France to smiling Dutch girls in fields of flowers and the end of Nazism – the parallel events in Slovenia and Yugoslavia seem inherently barbarous, only affirming the enduring characterization of the Balkans as a place of savagery, and of the Partisans likewise, with Communism blamed for making them so. The terrifying reality, though, is that these murderous reprisals were mimicked across the continent. As Keith Lowe writes in his study of the aftermath of the war, Savage Continent,
Numbers aside . . . the violence that occurred in Yugoslavia at the end of the war was no crueller than that which occurred in other countries . . . Despite the stereotypes, therefore, the cruelty that took place in this unfortunate part of the Balkans should not be considered unique – rather it was symbolic of a dehumanisation that had taken place across the continent.20
And what of the Slovenian Partisans themselves? How to reconcile bravery with atrocity, men and women who fought for freedom and liberty but helped create a dictatorship? Their country’s wartime losses were devastating: 6.5 per cent of all Slovenians were killed. Nearly 30,000 died as members of the Partisans, an astonishing number for a nation so small.21 Everyone who survived experienced loss. But the effect the Slovenian Partisans had on the war was far out of proportion to their numbers. In the summer of 1942, when the critical battles were fought, they tied up over 80,000 troops. They played a great role in the defeat of Italy. Partisan resistance helped to halt, and then destroy, Hitler’s plans to wipe out the Slavs. From 1943 to 1945, Partisans occupied the attention of entire German divisions that would otherwise have been on the front lines. Had Partisan organization, and Allied supplies, been greater, they could have crippled much of Germany’s transport links. Without the resistance, Slovenia might not exist today.
Ralph lived to see a livestream of me honoured as his proxy at Ožbalt and Lovcrenc na Pohorju in 2014. At ninety-seven he was too frail to travel to the seventieth anniversary of his escape. He was the only POW still alive, but we met Partisans who remembered him with great affection. The Partisans gave my father his freedom. To his dying day, he was grateful.