'Fighting al-Qaeda in Kosovo'

This weekend, a busload of my fellow American-Serbs left Aliquippa to attend a rally in Washington, D.C., demonstrating our support for Serbia and denouncing the declared independence of Kosovo.

If the Serbian Christians are to get the attention and sympathy of Washington, the American people and the world, the Serbs must make the connection between the Albanian-led Kosovo Liberation Army and al Qaeda.

To encourage the aggressive behavior of the KLA, the country of Albania, al Qaeda and other Muslim countries have smuggled and continue to smuggle arms, fighters and propaganda into Kosovo. (This has been documented by all sides).

Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the al Qaeda 9-11 terrorist attacks. Bin Laden and al Qaeda have also been the mastermind behind the KLA in Kosovo (and the Muslims in Bosnia).

Like the United States fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Serbs fought the KLA/al Qaeda in Kosovo. There is not much difference between American soldiers going house to house searching for insurgents in Iraq and Serbian soldiers going house to house searching for insurgents in Kosovo, Serbia.

The rebel KLA leaders did not and do not want peace. The KLA/al Qaeda guerrilla leaders have been and continue to be the aggressors. When al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, America responded. The world must now let the Serbs respond.

Unfortunately for Serbia, it was fighting al Qaeda before 9-11. It’s a proven fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton have always supported the Muslims. Bill Clinton came down on the side of KLA/al Qaeda by bombing Serbia.

The daunting task before the Serbs is now to convince the world of their right to defend and govern their sovereign territory against KLA/al Qaeda.

Nikola (Nick) Drobac Aliquippa, PA 15001

Published on line: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 7:16 AM EST
http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/02/26/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc47c30ef2088dd779453780.txt

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The Kosovo connection

The Times, Beaver Newspapers Inc., Pennsylvania, dba Beaver County Times
By Bob Bauder, Times Staff
Sunday, 9 March 2008, page A10

Last month, an ethnic Albanian majority in the Serbian providence of Kosovo declared independence, triggering riots in Serbia and an outcry from Serbian Americans opposed to the effort.

The Bush administration immediately recognized Kosovo as an independent state; prompting more criticism from supporters of the Serbian govenment. Despite an Albanian majority in the province, Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of their civilization.

American Serbs cite Operation Halyard (see below) as one reason why America should oppose Kosovo independence. Serbia was an ally during World War LI, they say, and helped save the lives of hundreds of American airmen. America should support Serbia now.

“Kosovo is everything to the Serbs,” said Milana “Mim” Bizic of Moon Township, a vocal member of the local Serbian American community. “All the legends, the myths, the culture came from Kosovo. Serbs have always been allies, and they are at a deep loss as to why America has taken the opposite side when they’ have always proven their loyalty and love for America.

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HE WAS SAVED BY THE SERBS

WWII airman recalls series of narrow escapes from behind enemy lines

The Times, Beaver Newspapers Inc., Pennsylvania, dba Beaver County Times
By Bob Bauder, Times Staff
Sunday, 9 March 2008, pages A1, A10, and A11

Carl Walpusk has a soft spot in his heart for Serbia.

In 1944, Walpusk, of Moon Township, parachuted out of a sputtering B-24 bomber into Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia and the hands of a rag-tag band of Serbian guerilla fighters known as Chetniks.

For 33 days, the Chetniks escorted Walpusk and nine other members of his crew from one Serbian village to another — risking their lives and those of collaborating villagers — to keep the airmen safe from the German army.

Walpusk says he owes his life to the Serbs.

“The people there were poor,” he said. “They were mighty poor — chickens roosting in rafters over their kitchen table, dirt floors — but they’d give you anything they had.”

Led by Gen. Draza Mihailovich, the Chetniks and Serbian civilians did the same for hundreds of other downed American fliers during World War II. They later helped evacuate them from August to December 1944 in a series of secret airlifts known as Operation Halyard.

Orchestrated by the former U.S. Office of Strategic Services, Operation Halyard was the largest rescue of American soldiers from behind enemy lines during the war, according to Gregory A. Freeman, author of “The Forgotten 500, The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II.”

The mission was organized in Bari, Italy, by OSS control agent George Vujnovich, a 1933 graduate of Ambridge High School.

In all, 512 American and Allied soldiers were flown out of Yugoslavia during Operation Halyard.

Survivors of the mission — including Walpusk — have long maintained that Mihailovich and the Serbs never got the credit they deserved.

They blame that on politics aimed at placating Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s communist dictator, after the war. Tito and Mihailovich, who supported the abdicated Serbian monarchy, were sworn enemies. In 1946, Tito’s administration executed Mihailovich by firing squad.

“There was no reason not to support Mihailovich, and Tito was a known communist,” said Walpusk, 83. “It just goes to show you what politics can do, and that’s all it involved was politics. That and people getting the wrong information.”

‘You sat there and sweated’

Walpusk had one thing on his mind when he volunteered for flight duty aboard a B-24 bomber: getting home. The more missions he flew, the quicker he would be back home, and the 15th Air Corps base in Italy offered him the best opportunity of getting there.

In 1944, the 15th was making daily bombing runs over the Balkans.

One of its main targets, the most dangerous, was Romania’s Ploesti oil fields, which fueled a large portion of the German army.

To get there, the bombers had to cross the Adriatic Sea and a mountainous expanse of Yugoslavia. Then they had to contend with enemy fighters and artillery. Ploesti had plenty of both.

Walpusk, a machine gunner, could handle Messerschmitts. He was too busy to worry when the enemy planes attacked. But the artillery gave him chills.

Known to airmen as flak, the bursting shells jolted airplanes like bumper cars and sent sharp chunks of fiery steel slicing through fuselages. Pilots had no choice. They had to fly through it.

“Nothing you could do,” Walpusk said. “You sat there and sweated.”

Never a Dull Moment

Flak was so heavy around Ploesti that it was typical to return from a mission with several hundred holes in a bomber.

“That damn flak was so heavy that you thought you could get out and walk on the damn stuff,” Walpusk said.

It sent the bombers limping back to Italy. Many of them never made it. The crews ditched in the mountains of Yugoslavia. That’s what happened to Walpusk, but it was enemy fighters, rather than the flak, that disabled his plane, “Never a Dull Moment.”

They attacked after a bombing raid on July 14, 1944, disabling the rudder and hydraulics on Walpusk’s plane. It was dead in the sky. The pilot rang a bell that meant “get your butt out,” and Walpusk scrambled for a rear hatch. It was his first parachute jump.

“You don’t think. You just go,” he said. “You don’t have any time.”

Serbian Allies

Ten crew members made it out safely. The 11th was killed aboard the plane.

Walpusk, who lost his boots when his parachute opened, landed on a hill covered with low brush and boulders, spraining his ankle. He looked around and saw three guys with rifles.

Walpusk was behind enemy lines in a strange land. He couldn’t speak the language and had no idea how he might escape. He thought briefly about pulling his .45-caliber pistol, but then considered those rifles.

“One of them waived a white flag. Then I felt a little better,” he said.

For days, the shoeless Walpusk hiked the Serbian countryside with the Chetniks, picking up members of his crew along the way. They communicated with the Serbs through grunts and gestures until they met a crewman who could speak the language.

They slept in farmhouses and small villages. Walpusk said people who barely had enough to feed their families went without food to feed the Americans. They let the airmen sleep in their beds while they slept on dirt floors and in barns.

“I often wonder if the people here would be like that if the situation were reversed,” Walpusk said.

The group never stayed in one place more than a day. They had to keep moving to avoid Germans, and the villagers could not afford to feed them for much more than a day.

After walking for about three weeks — in some cases missing German patrols by a scant 30 yards — the group found its way to the village of Pranjane.

‘Lord, let us make this one’

Vujnovich was the head of OSS operations in Bari, Italy, when he heard about American airmen trapped in Yugoslavia. The Ambridge native, who had barely escaped the Nazis in Serbia before the war broke out, said there was no question in his mind about bringing them out.

“You had to do it,” he said.

Vujnovich, 92, who now lives in New York City, said the plan was to send in several OSS agents to coordinate the daring operation and secure a landing area, then send in planes to fly the soldiers out.

Arthur Jibilian of Fremont, Ohio, was one of those agents.

“We were sent in specifically to bring out allegedly 50 airmen,” he said. “It turned out to be more than 250.”

Before Jibilian left Yugoslavia six months later, he had a hand in evacuating 512 fliers.

Walpusk said he was in Pranjane about two days before the rescue operation. He was on the ground 33 days, but met others who had been in Yugoslavia for more than 100. Some of them were sick, wounded and starving.

On Aug. 9 and 10, the OSS evacuated 272 men, flying them back to Italy.

Walpusk said it was one of the happiest moments of his life and one of the scariest.

“You took off and you could barely make it up,” he said of the flight out of Pranjane. “Then you went down a long valley to pick up speed, and it was so narrow it looked like you would hit the trees. I said, ‘Lord. let us make this one.’ “

His prayers were answered.

Over the next six months Jibilian and other OSS agents continued collecting downed American and Allied fliers and flying them to safety. The last flight was around Dec. 26, 1944.

“We didn’t lose a plane. We didn’t lose a guy,” Vujnovich said 64 years later.

Salute Mihailovich

Walpusk said he will remain forever grateful to Mihailovich and the Serbian people for saving his life.

After the war ended, he re-enlisted in the Army and spent the next 30 years serving on active duty and full time in the National Guard. He retired as a colonel in 1984.

During those decades, Walpusk and others involved with Operation Halyard, including Vujnovich and Jibilian, lobbied fiercely for America to publicly commend Mihailovich.

They volunteered to testify during his trial in Yugoslavia before he was executed.

They petitioned the federal government to have a statue of Mihailovich erected in Washington, D.C.

All of their pleas were ignored.

Walpusk blames it on politics.

“They didn’t want to piss off Tito,” he said.

Bob Bauder can be reached online at bbauder@timesonline.com.

Also published on the internet: Saturday, March 8, 2008 11:38 PM EST
http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/03/09/news/doc47d3605e57b98890176838.txt

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An assist from Goebbels' wife

By Bob Bauder, Times Staff
The Times, Beaver Newspapers Inc., Pennsylvania, dba Beaver County Times
Sunday, 9 March 2008, page A11

Ambridge native George Vujnovich, who became an American spy during World War II and headed Operation Halyard, owes his marriage to the wife of a high-ranking Nazi.

After graduating from Ambridge High School in 1933, Vujnovich, son of Serbian immigrants, went to Serbia to study medicine. While there, he met his late wife, Mirjana Lazic.

“I saw her eyes, and I was smitten,” Vujnovich, 92, of New York City, said last week. “She was a wonderful person. I don’t know how I was so lucky.”

The two were married shortly after the Germans invaded Serbia in 1941 and spent months bouncing from one European country to another, trying to escape. After the invasion, the Nazi Gestapo hunted down and arrested Yugoslavians with ties to Americans or the British as possible spies.

Mirjana Vujnovich was wanted on both counts. She was married to an American civilian and worked at the British consulate in Belgrade.

The couple arranged to take a flight out of Budapest, Hungary, and make their way into neutral Turkey. But they had to make one stop in Belgrade, Serbia, which was occupied by Germans.

During the flight, they were forced to sit in different seats.

Mirjana Vujnovich sat next to a well-dressed woman. The woman was Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest confidants.

Mirjana Vujnovich became airsick during the flight and Magda Goebbels felt sorry for the younger woman.

After the plane touched down in Belgrade, Goebbels helped steady Vujnovich as she exited. A German officer waited at the door, checking passports of all passengers. Mirjana Vujnovich was on a list of wanted people, her husband said.

Goebbels, however, insisted that the officer help her assist the younger woman off the plane. The officer forgot about checking her passport.

“She yelled at him, and she said, ‘Don’t you know this is the wife of that man who is standing next to you. She’s sick,’” Vujnovich recalled. “He helped her off, and we got out of there.”

Goebbels and his wife committed suicide in 1945. Before they died, Joseph Goebbels permitted his wife to kill their six children with cyanide.

Mirjana Vujnovich died in 2003. She and her husband were married 62 years.

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