Serbian History 101

On July 30, 2009 Arthur Jibilian, OSS radioman with the late General Draza Mihailovic and his Chetniks, other OSS members, and the brave airmen who flew into rescue the downed airmen were honored at the OSKGOSH, WISCONSIN airshow called AIRVENTURE. 

This event annually gets between 750,000-1 million visitors per day.  Thanks to everyone who made this possible, but especially the EAA#582 of Toledo, OHIO.

American SERBS have always known the story and kept it close to their hearts.  Now its time for other AMERICANS to learn the truth about the greatest rescue of their fellow Americans from behind German-occupied enemy lines in Yugoslavia's Serbia!

 
“Twenty years after the death of Draza Mihailovich he is undimmed in his glory as a defender of liberty against the Fascist terror, who defended it also against the Communist terror. He had no moment of weakness, nor of bitterness. I know no instance where he reproached those who were guilty of his betrayal.
 
Twenty years ago I knew he was innocent of all charges against him, and since then I have had many further proofs of his innocence. His abandonment was a crime, and like all crimes it brought no real profit to the criminals.
 
I loved your nation before the war, I have loved and honoured it more and more as the years have gone by and I have seen that the hero whom you gave to history has not his like in our time.”
 
 

 to the Serbs July 8, 1966

Clare Boothe Luce Photo by Carl Van Vechtan 

 
"The United States must insist on a fair and open trial for General Mihailovich, anti-Red Chetnik hero, now in the hands of the Communist regime of Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia if our future allies are to have any confidence in our pledged word as a nation.
There is no real question about the fact that General Mihailovich took up arms against the German invaders of his country in April, 1941, at a time when Soviet Russia was an ally of National Socialist Germany.
 
At that time the present dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Josip Broz, called Tito, was an expatriate, studying in Moscow as a faithful adherent of the Third International – the Comintern – which had adopted the alliance with Hitler’s Germany as an internal program of aggression for mutual benefit.
 
For two and one half years, during the darkest days of the struggle against Germany, Italy and Japan, Mihailovich, former minister of war in Yugoslavia, fought on our side.
 
No question was raised as to his loyalty or valor while there was real doubt about the outcome of the war. Only after our victory was seen as to be certain did other elements in Yugoslavia flock to the well-equipped and well-provisioned ranks of Tito, who then began to receive from the United States and Britain all that had been promised – but not delivered – to Mihailovich.
 
This request has been categorically refused by Tito, whose supporters in the Kremlin now openly demand that all Tito’s claims be ratified without argument.
 
From every point of view of American law, customs and instinct, these proposals go against the grain. They contravene our basic conception of fair play, honest dealing and of the right of every man accused to be allowed witnesses in his defense.”
 
The Honorable Clare Boothe Luce (R) Connecticut, April 20, 1946

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''As we proceeded out over the Adriatic my mind flashed back to one incident which will always have great meaning for me. Before I was leaving for my tour of Serbia, the Minister [General Mihailovich] had expressed a desire to do something to honor America saying “Here we have Slava, the day of our patron saint. What is America’s slava? ”

I thought for a moment and said, 'We have four great days, Christmas, New Year, Independence Day and Thanksgiving. Christmas we love because it is the day of Christ. New Years we enjoy because we look with hope to it, but on its Eve we celebrate, sometimes not too wisely but too well, and often the day itself finds us with aching heads. Independence day would be wonderful except for the sadness of sacrifice and mourning that sweeps the South from the cause of our Civil War. Thanksgiving is our day, our Slava, because that day we give Thanks to God for our founding Fathers and the beginning of our country and freedom.'

Mihailovich replied, 'Good, we would honor America and on the Eve of that day each mountaintop of Serbia will have a fire lighted by our peasants.'

On Thanksgiving Eve, three Americans standing in a tiny village high in the Serbian mountains, saw a huge fiery “A” come into being. Then another, and one after the other fires appeared until eleven peaks were outlined.

This I remember. A magnificent tribute to America from a truly great man.''

 OR, the front could be a montage of ALL of the above, and the back or reverse could be of the eleven Serbian hillsides, each with a burning shape of an "A" for America to celebrate America's Thanksgiving Eve!  (See Al Seitz's testimony above)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Read about this great event from Aleksandra's blog!

http://www.generalmihailovich.com/2009/07/in-memoriam-general-draza-mihailovich.html

Day Two - The Conclusion of "The Forgotten 500 Reunion - Operation Halyard Remembered - Lest we Forget" Michigan June 2009

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*** Visit Carl Savich's SERBIANNA page featuring Draza Mihailovich's Trial covered by LIFE magazine here! ***

http://serbianna.com/blogs/savich/?p=673

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Serbian Air Force at the Monument with U.S. Marines.

September 7, 2009:  Labor Day

New Gracanica Serbian Orthodox Monastery, Gray's Lake, Illinois

 

Serbian Chetniks of General Draza Mihailovich, on Vidovdan, 1944, Ravna Gora

 

Beautiful, beautiful monument to a great man! 

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The Northcoast Veteran's Museum in Ohio currently has a wonderful exhibit on OPERATION HALYARD.

Click on the bottom right hand corner to enlarge

Want to visit?  Want to join? 

North Coast Veterans Museum

c/o LeRoy Booze

5757 US Rt 6

Vikery, OH 43465

Society President: Gary Cooper

Museum Curator: Rex Postlethwait

Email: northcoastveterans@gmail.com

Museum Administrator: Vaughn Billow 

Thanks Mark and Vaughn for sharing! 

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Senator Frank J. Lausche

WHY MIHAILOVICH MATTERS

 
"As an American, I bow my head in shame whenever I think of the terribly mistaken policy which led the Allied leaders in World War II to abandon General Draza Mihailovich and throw their support instead to the communist cohorts of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. It was an unbelievable aberration of policy and of justice perpetrated by the Allies.
 
Mihailovich was the first insurgent in Europe. It was he who raised the flag of resistance to the Nazi occupier – and by his action he inspired the formation of resistance movements in all the subjugated countries.
 
He resisted the Nazis at the time when the Soviet Union and the communists were still collaborating with them – and his early resistance, by slowing down the Nazi timetable, was probably responsible for preventing the fall of Moscow.
 
The contributions of Mihailovich to the Allied cause were the subject of tributes by General Eisenhower, General De Gaulle, Field Marshal Lord Alexander, Admiral Harwood, Anthony Eden, President Truman, and, at later date of President Richard Nixon. For example, on August 16, 1942, three top ranking British officers, Admiral Harwood, General Auchinleck, and Air Marshal Tedder, sent the following joint wire to Mihailovich: “With admiration we are following your directed operations which are of inestimable value to the Allied cause.”
 
Today, no informed person takes seriously the communist charges that Mihailovich collaborated with the Germans, or the proceedings of the communist show trial in Belgrade which resulted in his execution. The communists made the nature of their injustice clear when they announced in advance of the trial, that Mihailovich would be executed after a 'fair' trial. And they also made it clear when they refused to take the evidence of the American officers who served with him or of the American airmen who were rescued by him.
 
Colonel Robert H. McDowell, chief of the last American mission to General Mihailovich, and perhaps the most experienced intelligence officer to serve with either side in Yugoslavia during World War II, took the time after the War to go through the German intelligence files on Yugoslavia. Not only did he find no evidence that Mihailovich collaborated with the Nazis, but he found numerous statements establishing that Hitler feared the Mihailovich movement far more than he feared the Tito movement.
 
The communists also feared Mihailovich more than they did any other man. And that is why, when they executed him, they disposed of his shattered body in a secret burial place, so that those who followed him and revered him would not be able to come at night to drop tears and flowers on his grave and tenderly offer a few words of prayer in gratitude to General Mihailovich for his heroism and sacrifice.
 
But despite all of the abuse and all the precautions of the communists, the truth about Mihailovich – now grown to the proportions of a legend – still persists among the Serbian people. Evidence of this is the remarkable article on Mihailovich which Mihajlo Mihajlov wrote for The New Leader, just before Tito’s courts sentenced him to seven years of hard labor in early March of this year.
 
I think that it is fitting that we in the free world who are aware of the truth should also do everything in our power to set the record straight and to bring about the ultimate vindication before the bar of history – of one of the noblest figures of World War II.
 
Draza Mihailovich, in addition to being an outstanding soldier and a great national leader, was a man who stood for everything that we in America believe in. He was a true believer in the rights enshrined in our own Declaration of Independence – the right to think and speak and pray in accordance with one’s own religious, political, economic and social beliefs, without government restraint or repression.
 
…the United States Congress should accede to the petition of the American airmen that they be authorized to erect in Washington with publicly subscribed funds, a monument which they would dedicate, in gratitude, to “General Draza Mihailovich, Savior of American Airmen.”
 
Beyond this, there is still a larger debt which the free world owes to the memory of General Draza Mihailovich. It is my hope that this debt will some day be replayed in full through the liberation of his people from communist tyranny."
 
Senator Frank J. Lausche
Washington, D.C. March 27, 1975

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Be sure to visit Carl Savich's site with his book review of EIGHT BAILED OUT by U.S. Air Force Major James M. Inks

Click here---> Eight Bailed Out

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Read the CRASH REPORT from Ted Connolly's late father, +TOM CONNOLLY, one of the 512 U.S. airmen rescued by Gen. Draza Mihailovich, whose papers and photos are seen in other WWII pages here on this site:

766TH BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON (H)

461ST BOMBARDMENT GROUP

APO 520 US ARMY

STATEMENT

19 November 1944

Ship No. 57, Lt. Farnham as pilot, was flying #3 position.  I was flying #6 position, a little below and to his right.  Going over the target I was forced up on his right wing and to his right.  Immediately upon taking this position I observed ship #57 to receive a direct hit from flak.

Penetrating in the vicinity of the rear escape hatch and emerging about four feet back of the waist windows from the top of the fuselage.  The shell apparently exploded inside of the ship from the observed size of the hole on top of the fuselage.  I estimate it to be at least three feet in diameter.

The bombs left his ship almost immediately upon receipt of the flak.  Aircraft #57 began losing altitude at once.  The ship appeared to be under control and all four engines, tail and wings intact.  He was losing altitude at about the rate of seven or eight hundred feet per minute.

The ship slid down beneath my airplane and I cautioned my bombardier to clear ship #57 below us before dropping his bombs.

The last the bombardier and my gunners saw of ship #57 he was still losing altitude and his ship was still under control.  His heading was estimated to be about 70°.  Air speed was probably about 150 miles per hour.  We did not see any parachutes at any altitude.

/s/ Joseph M. O’Neal

2nd Lt., Air Corps

CASUALTY QUESTIONAIRE OF T/SGT. THOMAS M. CONNOLLY, JR.

November 19, 1944

Our target, Floridsdorf Oil Refinery, Vienna, Austria.  We had trouble all the way

up, but not enough to warrant a turn-back.  I performed all necessary duties as Flight

Engineer before the I.P.  Then I took my position in the top turret.

It seemed as though I just got settled in my position when we turned in on the I.P. 

At this same instant, we received a hit in the right waist, which I saw explode.  A second

hit followed immediately under the bomb bay, which started a fire under the flight deck. 

At this time I dropped down from my position in the turret to extinguish the fire.  After this was taken care of, I proceeded to the waist to check the crew.

The first hit took half the right waist, including all control cables to the tail.  Sgt.Peterson was laying on his back forward of the camera hatch where he had been throwing out shaff.

Sanderson, the right waist gunner, was slumped down on the deck below his gun.

Holscher, the tail gunner, was passing out in front of his position, and the tail

gunner was still in his position in the turret.  That was the condition I found in the waist.  I found all hands out of oxygen, including myself.

I went forward and told the pilot to drop down, explaining the lack of oxygen, and then returned to the waist to help those there.

I checked Peterson and found him dead, the top of his head having been blown off. 

I am sure of this, as I put my hand under his helmet and my fingers went into his head.  I covered him with flak suits and gave aid to Sanderson who had a bad neck wound.  I fed him what oxygen I had in my walk-around bottle, and brought him to the flight deck.

I proceeded in the same manner with the rest of the wounded, and then did my best to repair the ship.

We received a third hit in #3 gas tank, which was the reason for leaving the ship in the end.  We lost the radio, all electric and oxygen systems shortly after being hit.  How we stayed up is a mystery, but the ship was being held in control by engines and a good pilot.

When #3 tank konked out, all hands bailed out, with the exception of Peterson who

was dead.  The tail gunner’s chute had been blown apart by flak, so he used Peterson’s. 

We used the bomb bay for an exit.  I pulled a delayed jump, due to lack of oxygen.  We

had been airborne for approximately forty minutes, and which time, I worked without oxygen.

We landed between one and three days apart, due to bailing out at 16,000 ft. 

Peterson rode the ship down, but was thrown out the hole in the waist when it struck.  The pilot landed nearest the ship, and was able to bury Peterson’s body a day later with the aid of natives.

After three days, all nine of us were together in a small village called Bonivick, north of Trbuk and southeast of Doboj.

Two days later, the leader of the Chetnick group we were with informed us that they were moving Peterson’s body to a cemetery.  His grave should be marked, because they asked for his name and we wrote it out for them.  They then marked his new grave on our maps, and it is a little north of Puracic.  Doboj and Puracic are on the south side.

Two days later, the leader of the Chetnick group we were with informed us that they were moving Peterson’s body to a cemetery.  His grave should be marked, because they asked for his name and we wrote it out for them.  They then marked his new grave on our maps, and it is a little north of Puracic.  Doboj and Puracic are on the south side of the railroad the Germans used on their retreat from Greece.

Eugene Thomas, the co-pilot, was with us all the way and was not left behind.  A mission picked us up Christmas Eve, 1944, and we were flown out shortly after.  Thomas was back at the old group with us, and was flying when I shipped out.

I believe you have Eugene Thomas listed as missing, due to a mix-up radio broadcast sent out to Italy reporting us found.  I believe, also, that you are checking our original records.  But, look for our temporary records on all nine of us.

I was discharged on Temporary Records myself, and would like very much to have my originals, or a copy of same, for posterity.

/s/ Thomas M. Connolly, Jr.

1st Lt. Arthur E. Farnham   Mr. Arthur E. Farnham (Father)

      12 Birds Hill Avenue

      Needham, Massachusetts

2nd Lt. Eugene B. Thomas   Mrs. Jessie M. Thomas (Mother)

1233 8th Street

Eureka, California

2nd Lt. Robert W. Eckman   Mr. George A. Echman (Father)

      910 Lawrence Avenue

      Chicago, Illinois

2nd Lt. Marvin Stoloff   Mrs. Betty Stoloff (Mother)

      609 18th Avenue

      Newark, New Jersey

S/Sgt. Henry J. Shay    Mrs. Clara E. Shay (Mother)

      3715 Park Street

      Kansas City, Missouri

S/Sgt. Franz F. Holscher   Mr. Paul F. Holscher (Father)

      421 Hill Street

      Rocky Mount, North Carolina

S/Sgt. Thomas W. Connolly   Mrs. Lorretta Connolly (Mother)

      94 O’Callanhan Street

      South Boston, Massachusetts

S/Sgt. Carol J. Sanderson   Mrs. Sally Boyer (Aunt)

      Rural Route Number One

      Ansonia, Ohio

Sgt. Percy A. Peterson   Mrs. Lena Peterson (Mother)

      Route Number One

      Osseo, Wisconsin

Sgt. Roscoe E. Teal    Mrs. Gladys A. Teal (Wife)

852 Seward Street

Seward, Nebraska

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Thank you again to Jovan Ivancevic for sharing these photos with us!

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GREAT NEWS! 

Debi Jibilian, the daughter of radioman Arthur (Jibby) Jibiian shared this great news with us on August 4, 2009:

"It is with no small amount of pleasure that I am now able to share with you that Ohio Congressman Latta has introduced a Bill (referred to Committee) that has recommended Dad receive the Congressional Medal of Honor!  

"I know he won't toot his own horn, so I'll do it for him!  Brian Mc Mahon, of the EAA, has worked tirelessly on this for the last few months, taking a germ on an idea to fruition.  We never thought he'd get this far, and are so grateful to him for all his efforts. 

"The announcement that Congressman Latta had introduced the Bill came as a total surprise to us last night on WTOL TV, Toledo 11 News at 11 p.m.!  All Brian told us was that Dad was going to be on the News.  We figured it was another blurb on his trip to Oshkosh last week to the EAA National Convention.  You can imagine how surprised we were to see it on the News!"

CONGRATULATIONS, JIBBY! 

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NORTHCOAST VETERAN'S EXHIBIT, Continued...... 

 Click lower right hand corner of all photos to enlarge.....

Click bottom right hand corner to enlarge image above...... 

......and below! 

Location - Within Gibsonburg Ohio, Sandusky County

NE Corner of Ohio State Route 300 "North Main Street" and East Stone Street 

Coordinates 

41.38705* N

83.31899* W

Airport Information - Some airports near Gibsonburg, OH

Fremont Airport, Fremont OH - 14G (8.7 Miles SE)

Metcalf Field, Toledo, OH - TDZ (14.7 Miles NE)

Wood County Airport, Bowling Green, OH - 1G0 (16.5 Miles WNW)