THE
PARACHUTE
WARD
A Canadian Surgeon’s
Wartime Adventures in Yugoslavia
B RIAN J EFFREY S TREET
CONTENTS
Foreword ....................................................................................................................ix
About This Edition ..................................................................................................... xv
Author’s Note............................................................................................................ xix
Prologue .................................................................................................................xxiii
Part 1—The Men That Don’t Fit In
1 The Early Years .................................................................................................1
2 Dog Sled Doctor ................................................................................................9
3 The Strange and New.......................................................................................16
Part 2—The Shadow Armies Rise
4 “An Unjustly Lost War” ..................................................................................29
5 Parachute Pimpernels.......................................................................................37
Part 3—Sword of Aesculapius
6 Night Landing in Bosnia..................................................................................51
7 First Forays ......................................................................................................57
8 The Hospital in Mihajlovici .............................................................................68
9 Surgery in the Mountains.................................................................................76
10 “Our Doctor from Canada”..............................................................................84
11 Dafoe’s Amazing Hospital...............................................................................96
12 Airlift to Italy.................................................................................................112
13 Hero ...............................................................................................................129
Part 4—“Pokret!”
14 Into the Mountains .........................................................................................143
15 Divisional Life ...............................................................................................169
16 Moslem Country ............................................................................................188
17 Moments of Terror.........................................................................................208
18 In Liberated Tuzla..........................................................................................223
Part 5—Hell and Paradise
19 Home Again...................................................................................................239
20 Some Men Dream ..........................................................................................254
21 The Disappearance.........................................................................................273
Bibliography ............................................................................................................285
FOREWORD
M
Y INTEREST in the extraordinary life and mysterious death of
Colin Scott Dafoe grew out of a friendship with one of his two
surviving sons. We were introduced in Ottawa, where I was
writing and directing documentary films, in the autumn of 1980. Several
months later, as we were travelling along winding, rain-swept roads en route
to Maine, the subject of Dafoe’s adventures as a guerrilla surgeon in
Yugoslavia surfaced during a conversation about my friend’s family
background. As I listened, it seemed incredible that such a story had
remained untold in Canada for almost forty years.
Here was a man who had volunteered for “a dangerous mission to the
Balkans” while in Tunisia in 1943, and had subsequently parachuted into a
remote mountain village in occupied eastern Bosnia to join a ragtag army of
Communist guerrillas led by Josip Broz Tito. As the only skilled surgeon in a
wide area of conflict, Dafoe—a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps on
special assignment with a clandestine arm of British Intelligence—treated
thousands of wounded who, until his timely arrival, had suffered terribly
without adequate medical care.
Word of his achievements spread throughout the countryside, and soon his
hospital in the mountains was famous. The Partisans called him “Sir Major
Dafoe,” in the customary form of address, pronouncing his name
phonetically “Da-fo-ay” (incidentally, the family prefers “Day-fo,” accenting
IX
X T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
the first syllable). More affectionately they called him “tata,” meaning
“father” or “daddy.” He was a hero and a legend.
To this day he is fondly, if not widely, remembered in Yugoslavia as a
dedicated and courageous surgeon who richly deserved the reputation he
attained during only six months with the Partisans. “A surgeon was more
valuable to us than a division,” recalled General Kosta Nadj, who
commanded the Partisan units to which Dafoe was attached. Of his wartime
friend, Nadj added: “He was not only a good surgeon, but also a very kind
man, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, and above all, a brave soldier.”
A Yugoslav diplomat in Canada once solemnly declared that Dafoe was
“one of the immortals.” Similarly, Ismet Mujezinovic—one of Yugoslavia’s
most respected artists and a former Partisan who served with the Canadian—
insisted: “He was a great man whom I was honoured to meet and share
destiny with.”
Dafoe was given the Order of Service to the People on the eve of his
departure from Yugoslavia in 1944; and as recently as the summer of 1984,
during ceremonies marking the fortieth anniversary of his night landing in
Bosnia, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Victory and the Order of
Merit—all high honours that are rarely bestowed on foreigners. Yet, who in
Canada has heard of Colin Scott Dafoe—adventurer, guerrilla surgeon, “man
of destiny”? How did such an individual escape recognition in his own
country? I wondered as much myself when I first heard the story.
I decided that day on the road to Maine to write Dafoe’s biography. That I
was able to answer only a few of my original questions and ended up with
more mystery than I could solve was as nothing, compared to the satisfaction
gained from five and a half years of research and writing, travels to the exotic
land where the main story took place, and new friendships I made along the
way. When my story was finished, my only regret was that I would never
meet its protagonist—an individual whose force of character and
accomplishments I greatly admired.
There were times when I wondered if in my initial enthusiasm I hadn’t
underestimated the enormity of the project. M R D Foot, an eminent
authority on the subject of irregular warfare, did not allay my fears when he
quoted a wartime resistance organizer’s observation that “no one can write a
book about resistance and get it straight; the reality was always more
complex than what any author can express.” I, too, discovered that the
subject is sometimes irreducible.
FO REW O RD XI
To start with, the epic sweep of the revolutionary upheaval that occurred in
Yugoslavia during the Second World War seemed too great to telescope into
a concise view. But as the backdrop to the pivotal episode in Dafoe’s life,
some description of these events seemed necessary for readers to grasp the
situation and the magnitude of his accomplishments.
The difficulty inherent in describing the resistance ethic as such was
underscored by my attempts at unravelling my subject’s complex personality.
A man who embodied “the spirit of resistance,” he was often possessed by
what George Woodcock once called “the sheer gigantic irrationalism of the
heroic.” Throughout his life he was driven by a force that the Russian poet
Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov aptly described:
And he, rebellious, seeks a storm,
As if in storms there were tranquillity.
Dafoe seldom offered an explanation for his unusual approach to life. And
his death in 1969 is an even greater mystery.
It might be said that Dafoe was to the end a taciturn, sometimes volatile,
and frequently inscrutable man of action—a maverick and a rebel who led a
romantic adventurer’s life in the twentieth century.
Here, for the first time, is his story. It is based on a series of journals he
wrote in the summer of 1945, shortly after his return from Yugoslavia and
during his preparation to embark on a similar mission into Burma. The
journals recall most of the Yugoslav adventure in exquisite detail and omit
only a few incidents, names, and dates that were possibly forgotten, set aside
out of modesty, or regarded as a potential breach of security. I have used
Dafoe’s own words as much as possible, cutting in his voice as one would in
a documentary film, to lend greater immediacy to the narrative. Since I have
relied primarily on a single source for the bulk of my story, I cannot hope to
have met the rigorous standards of a historian. However, I concluded almost
from the outset that Dafoe had downplayed much of his involvement. This
notion was confirmed as my research material accumulated and the details of
the journals were corroborated during the course of my inquiries.
The content of the journals was supported mainly by information obtained
during interviews with individuals who knew Dafoe. I was particularly
successful in locating former Partisans in Yugoslavia, as well as a number of
Dafoe’s friends now scattered throughout the world. In describing dialogue
of which no record exists, I reconstructed such passages from the
XII T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
recollections of my sources, fully aware that such anecdotal evidence is
subject to the frailty of human memory. I should add that all my sources
proved extremely helpful and fastidious in their determination to see that
Dafoe’s name was given the honour it deserves.
Conversely, a number of official documents pertaining to Dafoe’s
mission—and, for that matter, to much of his wartime service—were
unavailable for scrutiny owing to the Official Secrets Act, or were
unaccountably missing. Adding to the atmosphere of intrigue that surrounds
Dafoe is that exhaustive attempts to trace the identities and whereabouts of
several members of the British Mission in which he served drew a blank at
every step. It was often difficult to shake the feeling that someone, in a dusty
archival office somewhere, had gone through Dafoe’s official life with a
broom and swept up after him.
Perhaps as a result of my own frustration, I was impressed by author
Nikolai Tolstoy’s similar experience, from which he speculated—not
altogether facetiously, I suspect—that sometimes “the best way of
researching a book is to write the book first, and wait for the evidence to
come in afterwards.”
Indeed, the truth about Colin Scott Dafoe—if it is ever fully revealed—
may yet prove more dramatic than any of the speculation.
A C K N OWL E D GM E N T S
I could not have completed the book without the approval and support of the
Dafoe family. I am particularly indebted to Dr Charlotte Dafoe, who
consented to the project, and to Michael Dafoe, whose account of his father’s
life sparked my curiosity. Both gave of themselves willingly and were patient
with my persistent and sometimes painful questions. I should also like to
express my gratitude to Audrey and Roswald Dafoe, Eleanor Barton, and
Charlotte Buddle.
For medical information and details concerning Dafoe’s youth and post-
war years, I benefited enormously from assistance provided by Dr John
McNichol, Dr Frank Earle, Dr Fred Day, Dr Solly Paletz, and Dr Donald
Hill.
For reasons too varied to list, I must acknowledge contributions made by
Timothy Findley, William Whitehead, Paul Harris, Andrea Cross, Christine
FO REW O RD XIII
Small, Barney O’Connor, Isobel Rogers, J C Byrne, Tony Szydlik, and Edie
van Alstine. I must also thank Inspector Ralph Brockbank of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, who provided details concerning the investigation
he led into Dafoe’s disappearance.
For historical information related to Yugoslavia as well as first-hand
accounts of Dafoe’s involvement with a wartime medical mission, I was well
served by the recollections of William Deakin, Patrick Leigh-Fermor, Ian
McGregor, and Roy Talbot. I should also express tremendous gratitude to
Momcilo Selic, who read a draft of my manuscript and corrected me on a
number of potentially embarrassing points.
In Yugoslavia I was astonished by the depth of feeling that is reserved for
Dafoe, and embarrassed somewhat by the extent to which it was bestowed
upon an innocent visitor interested in relating his story. The many veterans
who gave unsolicited testimonials to Dafoe and his work particularly
impressed me. I am equally grateful to the many others who acted on a
moment’s notice as drivers and interpreters.
I would be equally remiss if I did not express my thanks to the following
who helped me throughout my travels in Yugoslavia: General Kosta Nadj,
General Milos Zekic, General dr Izidor Papo, Colonel dr Moni Levi, Colonel
dr Djordje Dragic, Lieutenant-Colonel Jordana Baum, and Mr Salom Suica.
I must gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada
Council.
To the staff of Lester & Orpen Dennys—and, in particular, to Malcolm
Lester—I extend my heartfelt appreciation for the courtesy and enthusiasm
consistently shown to a new author, and for having had the good sense to
select such a skilful and patient editor as Frances Hanna.
Finally, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the following: to Wing
Commander F F Lambert (ret’d), for his determination and resourcefulness in
seeking information on my behalf from sources in Britain; to Bill Gillanders,
whose invaluable advice and everlasting good cheer from New Zealand
provided inspiration; to a couple in Belgrade (whose request for anonymity I
must respect), who graciously provided a room, made and answered
telephone calls, translated articles and interviews, and generally held my
hand as hosts during two long visits; and to Brian Nolan, who had faith,
encouragement, and wisdom throughout and whose contribution, particularly
in the latter stages, was crucial.
Most of all I am indebted to my family and friends, who endured my long
pursuit with equanimity and fortitude, and to Professor dr Mehmed Ramovic,
XIV T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
whose name appears in the dedication as a modest testimonial to his
enormous contribution and who served me throughout my work as faithfully
and imaginatively as he once did Colin Dafoe.
I trust the result of my endeavours will bear scrutiny, but I must accept
responsibility for any errors that are present.
Brian Jeffrey Street
Ottawa—April 1987
13
HERO
I
T WAS DUSK when Dafoe returned to the hospital. The urgent message
he had received concerned a patient with an abdominal injury. The man’s
condition had stabilized somewhat, although Dafoe anticipated
complications. He considered operating, but in the fading light it seemed too
great a risk. He decided to wait until morning.
Djuras, having realized where Dafoe had gone and guessed why, had taken
immediate action in the hope of forestalling yet another reprimand. At last,
the covers for the latrines were finished. Sometime late in the evening, a
good supply of cigarettes arrived with a courier, and Dafoe concluded that
his “inglorious efforts” at Korpus HQ had accomplished something.
Next morning, Dafoe found the patient with the abdominal complaint had
fully recovered and for the first time, he worried about actually running out
of work at the hospital. The evacuation of so many patients and an apparent
lull in the fighting meant that there was only a handful of wounded to treat.
One of the female patients waiting to be evacuated had acute appendicitis, so
Dafoe went ahead and operated that morning.
An outing was planned for the afternoon two days later. Miki wanted to
show Dafoe and his assistants the old church in Lovnica, a quaint village not
far from Sekovici. The medical unit worked doubly hard in the morning, and
then set out over the hills under warm, clear skies. On the plateau
overlooking Mihajlovici, Dafoe took several photographs of everyone with
his Leica.
130 T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
They continued along “the moors” and entered a thick pine forest,
descending now. Dafoe was already giving some thought to the climb back,
but Susy, for one, seemed hugely indifferent to the exhausting trek, dancing
about, collecting wild strawberries she gave to Dafoe in handfuls “until it
was embarrassing.”
Coming down the steep slope of a hill, they saw the church from behind,
tucked snugly into a rugged gash in the rock below. It occupied a quaint
setting next to a small stream with a waterfall. Nearby was a small
footbridge. A crowd had gathered, and Dafoe stopped again to take
photographs.
Pop Savo Savic—“the old Priesta,” as Miki called him—stood outside,
smoking as usual, to greet Dafoe and his friends. Dafoe gave him more
cigarettes and listened as Miki translated an account of a recent sacking of
the church. Lovnica, and its neighbouring village, Sekovici, had seen a great
deal of suffering and bloodshed since the outbreak of war in eastern Bosnia.
Indeed, Sekovici had stood at the centre of fighting from the outset, when an
attack on the gendarmerie in August 1941 signalled the start of the nationalist
uprising. From May 1942, a Partisan hospital had operated out of the guest
house in the Lovnica monastery with Dr Roza Papo—who later made
Dafoe’s acquaintance—in charge of the facility. It was destroyed during an
attack by Ustasi in 1943. One of the first British missions composed of
Yugoslav-Canadians, including George Diklic, had parachuted into Sekovici
in April 1943. In four years of warfare the enemy stayed in the village only
thirty-eight days, yet out of its pre-war population of 5,000 fully one-fifth
died during the war. Some 2,000 wounded passed through the hospital in
Lovnica.
Pop Savo asked Dafoe and his assistants if they would like to see what
remained of the monastery. When they assured him they would, he undertook
to guide them personally.
To this day the monastery is considered a complex of cultural and
historical significance in Yugoslavia. Situated about two kilometres north of
Sekovici, at the source of the river Lovnica, a tributary of the Drinjaca, it sits
cradled in a lush sylvan glade carved naturally out of rock. All that remains is
the church of St George, an eighteenth-century monastic residence burned (as
Dafoe saw) during the war, but rebuilt in 1952, and the ruined monks’ cells.
First mentioned in religious documents in 1578, it is a single-nave, vaulted
HE RO 131
basilica surmounted by a dome with a narthex and apse. Some of the finest
frescoes in Yugoslavia are preserved on its walls.
Pop Savo led the visitors upstairs to a room behind the small wooden altar,
stepping past papers and ruined books scattered about as he went. The room
was a library containing a great many old books, some of which would need
mending. “The Old Priesta fondled them carefully,” Dafoe recalled. He drew
Dafoe’s attention to several rare editions, including a Bible sent to the
monastery from St Petersburg.
Pop Savo produced the gowns and robes worn by the priests and offered
the edges of gold lace and embroidery to his guests to feel. Dafoe thought
how “touching and sad” it was to see the church violated and reduced to such
a state. He felt equally distressed by Pop Savo’s misfortunes, as he had
already lost several sons in the war and had come close to losing his
monastery as well.
Back in the nave, Dafoe saw a few peasants with hats in hand, kissing the
tapestries and a framed icon in front of the altar as they murmured prayers.
They had much to pray for, he thought. On the way out, Pop Savo produced a
visitor’s book and pointed to a signature inside. Ironically, it belonged to
King Peter, in whose name the Cetniks now fought.
Pop Savo told Dafoe that he and his son, Brana Savic, had collected
information and figures to prove conclusively that in the small valley where
Lovnica lay, the enemy had killed at least 550 inhabitants. Each name was
recorded. Later, father and son intended to erect a memorial of some sort in
recognition of the sacrifices made by the local villagers.1
Emerging from the church into the warm sunlight, they saw that a crowd
had assembled in the small churchyard quadrangle and was about to start a
kolo. Dafoe was intrigued by the number of people milling about and
wondered where they had come from when the surrounding countryside
normally appeared deserted. “How word gets around!” he mused.
1
The memorial was established in 1961 on a small patch of rocky hillside atop a
cemetery adjacent to the monastery. The cemetery contains more than 160 graves—
sadly, including that of the People’s Hero Brana Savic, who died in 1983 after a long
battle with cancer. When visited by the author in 1981, the residence accommodated
the National Liberation War Museum, where there was a gallery of photographs
identifying the villagers referred to by Pop Savo. In another section of the museum, a
room dedicated to the Partisan Medical Service contained photographs of Dr Ivo
Herlinger (Jordy’s father) and Dr Ivo Baboselac (the Old Colonel), among others.
132 T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
Actually, two kola started. One was led by a gypsy band while the other
danced to the sound of a harmonica. “Soon the long, snakey line was winding
in and out with the jiggling peasantry and Partisans jogging up and down, all
with flushed and happy faces,” Dafoe enthused. Frank and Chris joined one
kolo, which they seemed to learn quickly. Susy, still wearing the oversized
army boots, which were “so big that she had to watch them and concentrate
with her head bent to keep them moving,” danced joyfully with the older
men and women. “She glanced up once and caught my eye, became confused
and lost the step, and in her embarrassment gave up temporarily. Poor Susy,
she did so much want to appear grown up, probably because she had had so
little childhood.”
Soon the gathering dispersed and Dafoe reluctantly joined the small
column of peasants and Partisans climbing the steep hill behind the
monastery. He met one “gallant-looking Partisan on a magnificent horse” as
he climbed, and took his photograph. The man had a wooden leg, which he
had constructed himself. Dafoe inspected it, fascinated by the well-fashioned
arrangement that used an ingenious method to allow articulation in the knee.
“The never-ending resourcefulness of these Partisans!” he marvelled.
The workload at the hospital remained slack over the next few days, and so
Dafoe decided at last to visit the “typhus village” on the hillside overlooking
Mihajlovici. “It had always reminded me of a leper colony—although it
looked very picturesque on top of the hill while leading an isolated and
detached life.” With an armed escort, Dafoe set out.
He met the village doctor, a stout woman known to the medical unit as
“The Have-You Merchant,” owing to her frequent visits to Dafoe’s hospital
in search of supplies. She was attending an infant in its mother’s arms. The
child appeared badly shocked. A nurse called Matia, who had moved to the
village from Mihajlovici, ran up carrying a syringe filled with boiling water,
camphor oil, and caffeine. The doctor administered this odd concoction “with
good results,” Dafoe observed.
Genuinely delighted to see Dafoe in the village, the beleaguered doctor
guided him through the hospital and discussed her patients with him in her
faltering English and French. Most were convalescent cases recovering from
typhus or typhoid. But one patient stood out: “an insane Partisan soldier who
was a pathetic case.” Given the appalling nature of the war, it was surprising
that symptoms of what was classically known as “shell-shock” were seldom
encountered.
HE RO 133
The doctor insisted that Dafoe wash his hands with Lysol, which was set
outside each building they entered. Meanwhile she chatted away in her
several languages. “She was very worried about the dangers of her job and
told me that she felt fleas and lice over herself all the time, although she was
sure they weren’t there,” Dafoe said. The Have-You Merchant seemed lonely
and abandoned in the village of outcasts. She invited Dafoe to return
sometime for tea and he promised to do so.
The next morning, Dafoe wandered around the Mihajlovici hospital site
with his Leica. He took snapshots of everything he and his assistants had
seen constructed since their arrival, including the hard-won latrines. “The
patients in the wards were pleased to pose for their photos,” he recalled. “The
cook had me take him with his white hat on and the cook house from various
angles.” In front of the surgical theatre and the magazine, Dafoe took
photographs of the nurses, Susy and Jordy’s sister, Mira. Finally, he took
several shots of Frank, Chris, and Miki. The Partisans reminded Dafoe of the
natives he had met in South Africa, who would pose anytime for a snapshot.
It is difficult to shake the feeling that Dafoe had somehow sensed that
events in Mihajlovici were reaching a pivotal point—or that time might be
running out—as he went about taking photographs at this time.
So it was that on a warm summer’s day in July 1944, the legend started.
Throughout the morning the sound of distant gunfire had echoed in the
mountains around Mihajlovici. The Partisan guards scattered in the hills and
along the forest’s edge regarded the distant skirmishing with typical Slav
indifference. Even as the enemy mountain guns thundered only a few
kilometres away in that troubled village, Sekovici, they were content to
watch and wait as ordered, undisturbed by any sense of imminent danger.
Dafoe had heard the shooting earlier in the day, too, as he strode around
the village with his Leica. “Hardly worth getting upset about,” he had
commented drily. This sort of thing happened often. The Partisans, he told
himself, will take care of it.
Hours later, he stood with a blood-stained surgical gown over his khaki
uniform, hands spread apart and raised slightly, palms inward as though in
unconscious prayer, watching grimly as the stretcher-bearers carried a young
woman into the theatre.
134 T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
She was one of four seriously wounded Partisans who had arrived earlier
after an improbable three-day journey by ox-cart and stretchers over the
mountain trails through enemy territory. The others, all men, had gunshot
wounds and compound fractures aggravated by travel. But the woman had
arrived in shock—it was a miracle she survived at all—and had required
several units of plasma and some rest before she could be carried in to see
tata.
Now, standing over the inert form, he only vaguely heard the sound of
distant gunfire. Dafoe removed the foul-smelling bandages on the woman’s
leg and discovered a tremendous wound to the lower femur and knee joint. It
was badly infected and gangrenous and he realized in a moment that
amputation would be necessary—the worst decision of all. He issued
instructions to the surgical team, raised his tired eyes to the ceiling, inhaled
and whispered, “Dieu m’en garde.”
Dafoe amputated the woman’s leg at mid-thigh. Later he worried that she
might not have the strength of will to survive past nightfall.
When he found enough time to step outside the theatre, he stretched in the
warm summer sunshine. The gunfire and artillery had grown louder and
more menacing throughout the day and now he could see smoke rising from
a crescent-shaped mountaintop on the left. Someone arrived with a message
informing Dafoe that a band of Cetniks was approaching the hospital.
“At last we’ll see some of the enemy,” he said calmly.
Soon Dafoe could actually pick out a line of trees behind which the enemy
was firing. The commissar’s courier ran out, shouting to Dafoe to pack the
canisters and medical equipment for immediate evacuation. Miki, standing
with Dafoe, told him that only a handful of Partisans armed with Bren guns
were holding the enemy back, adding that a brigade from Korpus HQ was on
its way and would soon have the situation under control.
“Just disturbing units,” Miki said of the Cetniks, “out for a spot of
looting.”
Dafoe felt he could trust Miki’s judgment, but since the order to evacuate
the hospital had been given, he rounded up his assistants and the rest of the
medical unit and set to work repacking the canisters.
The sound of gunfire, at its loudest yet and definitely moving towards the
hospital, lent some urgency to the work.
When Dafoe decided to run down to the campsite to see what was
happening, he quickly realized the Cetniks were more than just “disturbing
HE RO 135
units.” Miki was standing on the plateau shouting, “Opkoli! Opkoli!”—
“Surround them!”—to someone. Dafoe slipped into his tent to collect his
Marlin and Lama, then rushed over to the tent that Frank and Chris shared to
grab several items. He was startled—even indignant—a moment later when
he saw bullets smacking the ground just outside his tent. He recalled the Old
Colonel and Marko warning him about the vulnerability of the campsite.
Hurriedly packing one haversack with the guns and ammunition, Dafoe
scrambled from the tent to a hillock nearby and crouched in safety until the
firing swung away from his direction. He made another dash to one of the
tents for the remaining guns and ammo, which he quickly crammed into
another haversack. Then he made a fast exit back to the hillock. His
movements immediately drew more fire, but he made it to safety, darting and
weaving to escape the fusillade around him.
Dafoe returned to the hospital site under cover and was shocked to see
how quickly it was being dismantled. For a moment, he stood frozen,
attempting to take it all in. One theatre stood partly stripped of its parachute
walls and ceiling. Most of the medical equipment inside had disappeared. He
hoped it was being carried away or stored in one of the underground shelters.
The ground was littered with debris and miscellaneous items. He watched,
incredulous.
Jordy’s mother appeared suddenly, still wearing men’s battledress, and
shrieked at her daughters to come away into the hills. The sound of gunfire
and bullets zinging off metal and wood underscored the peril all around
them. Dafoe could hear the Cetniks shouting and whistling, taunting the
Partisans, and in that instant the anger in him began to boil.
“Where the hell are the reinforcements?” he shouted in outrage.
Natasan made an appearance with Mrs Herlinger, who by now was
sensibly dressed in an overcoat and carried a heavy Italian haversack slung
over her back—as though “she was used to this racket,” Dafoe said. She
offered to carry one of the surgical kits that Dafoe reserved for emergencies.
Susy returned then, wearing an oversized overcoat in keeping with her
ungainly boots, and insisted, to everyone’s amazement, on carrying both the
kit and the haversack. She seized them and trundled off, vanishing into the
woods.
Jordy shouldered a surgical trunk while Ana fell in behind with the girls’
belongings as Dafoe made a last-minute survey of the dismantled wards. In
the background he could see Partisans carrying away patients on the
136 T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
stretcher-beds, while another doctor shouted hysterically to move along
quickly. It occurred to Dafoe as he saw some able-bodied men going past
that “the women were behaving much better.”
Still, the gunfire had rattled everyone. Dafoe was at a loss for words to
describe the scene around him. How could this happen? he asked himself.
How could the enemy have slipped in without the Partisans detecting them?
He felt dizzied by the speed at which events were threatening to carry away
everything he had achieved, incensed at the violation he was witnessing.
Suddenly, Miki found the Canadian at his side, arm outstretched, gripping
the Marlin and firing at the Cetniks not more than two hundred metres away.
First he was astonished. Then he realized how exposed Dafoe was.
“Lie down, Sir Major! It is very dangerous here! Lie down!” he shouted.
“There are a hell of a lot of those devils out there, Miki,” answered Dafoe,
muscles tensed, a glazed look of concentration in his eyes, firing at targets in
the trees.
“Lie down! Sir Major!” Miki pleaded.
“Bastards!” Dafoe countered. He fired several more rounds as bullets tore
up the ground around his feet.
“Sir Major Dafoe!”
Dafoe continued to fire. The Cetniks were almost at the limit of the
Marlin’s range, yet he could see and hear them clearly—jeering as they
returned volleys of gunfire. Behind him, the hospital lay in ruins. Patients
hobbled away on their own. Weeks of hard work, frustration, fighting to get
everything done just right—the images swirled in Dafoe’s mind. They had
accomplished something unprecedented in these mountains. He would not let
it go without a good fight.
Miki eventually succeeded in leading Dafoe away from the plateau, but not
before he had used all his ammunition. Just then Ana and several other
nurses hurried by with the woman whose leg Dafoe had amputated that
morning. He ran to the girls carrying the stretcher-bed and relieved Ana as
Miki took a handle on the opposite side. Dafoe found the bed surprisingly
heavy and awkward to manoeuvre as they jolted towards a stream. There he
stopped to examine the woman. She was moribund. “Whether the shock of
the firing or the movement had worsened her condition or whether it was a
natural event, I couldn’t tell,” he recalled sadly. Halfway across the stream he
examined her again and found to his dismay that she was almost dead. He
and Miki left her under some low-hanging branches and covered her face
HE RO 137
with ferns until she was well hidden. “What a strange sensation to see her
there in her leafy bower with the stream running musically beneath her,
oblivious to the troubles that had descended upon this small world.”
Dafoe and Miki waded ashore and rejoined the column moving up into the
hills. He noticed a great many well-armed men and wondered why they
“didn’t go back to make a stand for it.” He was relieved to see Jordy
following along with the surgical trunk, “taking it all with a smile as if it was
a picnic.” Frank, Chris, and Susy were not in sight.
Halfway up the hillside the column stopped. It was dusk when word
trickled up from below that all able-bodied men were to return to the
hospital. Dafoe rose automatically and was caught short by Miki with a hand
on his arm. He had orders to keep the Canadian out of any more fighting, but
Dafoe argued that he wanted to see what, if anything, remained of the
hospital. Miki relented when Dafoe became adamant. The sound of gunfire
had fallen off considerably as they moved down the hillside.
Dafoe stopped at the stream where he had hidden the woman, pulled aside
the ferns that covered her, and found her dead, “her face so white as if she
had been lulled to sleep by the song of the stream.”
It was almost pitch dark when he and Miki reached the hospital. The long-
promised brigade from Korpus HQ had finally arrived and was rapidly
scattering the undisciplined and outnumbered Cetniks. Soon the Partisans
began to return from the hills.
The full light of dawn revealed the extent of the damage done in the
previous day’s attack. Vladimir Popovic, like a priest at the scene of a
disaster, came by to rally everyone’s spirits and promised that everything
would be restored as soon as possible. He cautioned Dafoe again about the
amount of materiel he carried. As the attack had amply demonstrated, the
supplies had to be maintained in such a manner that they could be transported
at a moment’s notice.
With the equipment still packed away, it was difficult to treat the newly
wounded. Dafoe did his best using the emergency haversack. Later, he
accompanied Frank and Chris to the campsite and, with permission from the
Partisans, set it up again.
The medical unit slept through what remained of the morning, then spent
the afternoon picking cherries. They saw Jordy “passing to and fro over a
field, dressed in a skirt she had made, looking very feminine,” and waved to
her. She refused to join them, which seemed odd.
138 T HE P ARACHUT E W ARD
That night Dafoe returned to the hospital where—to his utter amazement—
everything had been put back. He was embarrassed to realize that while he
and his assistants were sleeping and picking cherries, the girls had gone to
work and carefully restored the surgical theatre and wards. They had even
decorated them.
“How could you not feel honoured to work with people like that?” he
asked. “It was real happiness. If only it could last.”
Meanwhile, Dafoe’s stand on the plateau had made its mark with the
Partisans. Miki was still a bit speechless. “He stood, as a statue, calm, just
waiting, and fired rounds with his Marlin at the enemy,” he recalled. “In our
eyes, Sir Major Dafoe became a hero after that. He did not want the enemy to
take his hospital.”
Jordy was equally moved by the incident. “It was something which
amazed everyone,” she said. “Major Dafoe was in the first line with the other
soldiers to defend the patients. This I remember.”
Those who witnessed Dafoe’s courage under fire recall that he acted
instinctively, and that it seemed natural in him. It was an extraordinary
moment, when “Sir Major Dafoe” first seized the Sword of Aesculapius and
fought back. It was a day the Partisans, at least, would never forget. For a
few, no amount of medals could equal its dramatic impact at the time.
Something infinitely more profound and lasting had happened.
It was perhaps in that moment that Colin Scott Dafoe realized why he had
come to Yugoslavia, why it meant so much to him, and what he was prepared
to give to see that it did not end just yet. It was a moment of revelation. He
had acted for a cause. The war, and in many ways his own life, would never
be the same again.
Before very many days had passed, a stronger enemy offensive meant that
the Partisans did abandon the village and hospital at Mihajlovici. For the next
few months, a long road of danger, exhaustion, inadequate food and shelter,
and great uncertainty lay ahead for Dafoe and the medical unit.
This time, “Toffee” was really on the run—into the deep woods and
rugged mountains of occupied eastern Bosnia.
Suddenly gunfire erupted on the road in the valley below.
HE RO 139
Of course, Dafoe had no idea where they were headed. Perhaps he gave
one last thought to Jordy and her family with the patients in the underground
shelter, wishing them luck. He really could not speculate as to how long it
would be before the medical unit returned to Mihajlovici—if it returned at
all.