Lost Airmen is the first book to tell the true story of downed American aircrews who were given sanctuary by the Partisans led by Marshal Tito.
Late in 1944, US bomber crews often bailed out over Yugoslavia after tough missions against the Third Reich. Some airmen were killed or captured by the occupying Nazis. Others were grabbed by General Draza Mihailovic’s Chetniks, the Partisan’s bitter rivals for postwar control of the country, and held as political chits to be exchanged for aid from the Allies.
Most of the airmen, however, found refuge with the Partisans. Although Tito’s men controlled a safe zone in northwest Bosnia, it was surrounded by German troops. A team of British secret agents arrived to arrange for transport, but bad weather prevented a rescue by air. Soon the mounting number of evadees outstripped the war-ravaged populace’s ability to support them. Allies or not, the airmen had to go.
Lost Airmen describes the downed fliers’ dramatic escape from behind enemy lines. It also discloses the fates of the handful of airmen interned by the Chetniks. Witnesses to the apocalyptic destruction of the Chetnik army at the hands of the Partisans, they became the last outsiders to see General Mihailovic alive.
The author’s father, Charles Stanley Sr., was one of the airmen who survived the desperate journey across the Dinaric Alps. Soon after the war, he married the girl he left behind. She wore a wedding dress made from the parachute that saved his life.
The book, the author’s first, is the product of twenty-two years of original research, including discoveries from underexplored archival records, unpublished memoirs, and interviews with more than forty of the participants. It is available from Regnery Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever good books are sold. Below is a link to Amazon.