TITO'S YUGOSLAVIA
Last week Allied correspondents got their first look at Marshal Tito [Josip Broz and his Partisan stronghold in Yugoslavia.* On a bleak mountain airfield, ten miles behind the front, an Allied plane one starry night had deposited TIME Correspondent Stoyan Pribichevich, Reuters' John Talbot and two photographers. Churchill's son, Major Randolph Churchill, met them, started them in a captured German Volkswagen, toward Marshal Tito's hidden headquarters. This is Correspondent Pribichevich's story:
For twelve years I had not seen my old country.
The road wound and looped across a 4,000-ft. Bosnian mountain, chipped by landslides. Deep ravines would suddenly burst upon us like vistas from a plane. Mighty fir trees stood at attention and along the road peasants climbed off their carts to hold their oxen by the horns till we passed. Patrols of Partisan soldiers in grey-green uniforms with submachine guns slung on their backs saluted and shouted "Zdravo!" (Be in good health). We overtook a file of gloomy, bedraggled German, Croat Ustashi and Chetnik prisoners with Partisan guards in front and a Partisan girl, a rifle across her shoulder, singing in the row of guards behind.
Dinner with the Marshal. As I write this dispatch, sitting on the grass with my typewriter on my knees, I can gaze at the deep perpendicular cleft cut in the huge rock where I had dinner with Marshal Tito last night.
Escorted by guards we had left our village at dusk and gone to the foot of a goat path. After an exchange of passwords, a new guard was assigned to lead us straight up the rocks beside a waterfall deep into a fissure in the towering limestone crag. Midway up we entered a vast grotto with an underground mountain lake and turned back, panting, to look down upon the majestic moonlit landscape.
The Germans have known for some time that this was Tito's headquarters. A few weeks ago 15 German Stukas dive-bombed the lofty crag in full daylight with no more effect than fleabites on a bull's skin.
In a room hewn from the bowels of the earth and lined with woodwork, Tito offered us a welcome Slivovic (strong Yugoslav plum brandy) and American cigarets.
Tito looks exactly as in his profile photographs, well known in America: he is of medium (5 ft. 8 in.) but athletic build, with a lifted head, rather blond, grey eyes and bushy eyebrows and the finely chiseled face of an American Indian. He wore boots and a simple grey-green uniform. Only the golden laurel leaves at his lapels and cuffs indicated the Supreme Commander of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. At his feet lay Tiger, a German police dog the size of a calf.
Tito offered us hors d'oeuvres with caviar (a gift from the Russian mission), risotto with mushrooms, pumpkin pie, coffee, more Slivovic and Dalmatian red wine.
Our talk was in Serbo-Croatian. Tito speaks calmly and deliberately, with a faint trace of a Slovenian accent, and lets himself be interrupted at will. He speaks perfect German and Russian as well as some French. He reads English fluently and understands the talk pretty well, but is too shy to speak English for fear of mistakes.
The Marshal and the War. Tito does not expect the Germans to withdraw without a fight. He intends to continue the fight against them until the total and utter defeat of Hitler. Right now, he could place 150,000 soldiers at the disposal of the Allies for action elsewhere if Yugoslavia were liberated. Later, perhaps, twice as many.
According to Tito, the German fighter is not what he used to be. He has morale only in the impetus of the first assault. If it fails, he loses heart. Nowadays, the Ustashi (Croatian quisling soldier) is worth two Germans in combat. He knows what to expect if defeated, and is intimately acquainted with the Yugoslav terrain.
For Chetnik martial valor, Marshal Tito has little respect. To hear him say it, the Chetniks--in spite of their historic reputation, black beards, skull & crossbones on caps--take to flight in any determined attack. However, they know the terrain and are extremely valuable to the Germans as guides.
Tito says that the Germans, while not resorting to a large scale offensive, are exerting offensive pressure on a number of different points to force the Partisans to waste their supplies and ammunition and prevent them from concentrating at the moment of the Allied invasion of Europe.
The Marshal's Country. I remembered an Allied official who had expressed doubts as to whether certain territories of Yugoslavia could be called "liberated" in the strictest sense of the word. Well, I entered Partisan territory ten miles behind the fighting line, traveled 25 miles in an automobile, saw a Partisan train, and visited the last session of the Anti-Fascist Youth Congress. Now three barefoot urchins are arranging a bouquet of cherry blossoms by a pool under a huge walnut tree. This is liberated enough for me.
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