Partisan

By James Caffin

The gripping story of a New Zealand solider who escaped the clutches of a prisoner-of-war camp to join the Yugoslav freedom fighters during the Second World War
After a daring escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in occupied Yugoslavia, John Denvir reached the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, where he joined a partisan band as a machine-gunner. Believed shot and killed by New Zealand forces and his family in New Zealand, from January 1942 until the end of 1943, Denvir led brave and heroic attacks on German and Italian soldiers from behind enemy lines. He was wounded four times, received the Soviet Medal for Valour and was eventually appointed brigade commander. When 'Corporal Frank' was demobilised he returned to New Zealand and became a taxi driver in the small South Island town of Temuka.

Originally published in 1945 and out of print for many years, this is his remarkable true story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781775491675

Book preview

CHAPTER I

WHAT MANNER OF MAN?

SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN DENVIR, DCM, Soviet Medal for Valour, New Zealand corporal who fought in the ranks of the Yugoslav Partisan forces for two years, believes that if you write the story of one man in this war you are writing it over the bodies of twenty others less fortunate. That is why he was reluctant to tell the whole story of what he did in Yugoslavia. But he realises that by telling it he can, in some small measure, pay tribute to the Allied soldiers who shared his captivity, the Partisans who fought beside him and died, and the people of Greece and Yugoslavia who risked death or torture to help him.

Partisan is the story of Denvir’s escape from a German prison camp, and his two years of fighting with Marshal Tito’s men. It is written as he wanted it to be written. There is no attempt to embellish his adventures or to set down conversations that might have taken place. What his Partisan comrades did is more important than what they said, for many are dead, and all of them were known only by names they assumed to save their people from enemy reprisals.

There is little political argument in this book. Denvir and his comrades were too busy fighting to concern themselves with the motives behind the tardy Allied recognition of the Partisan movement, or the propaganda that for so long gave credit for its achievements to the forces led by General Mihailovitch. They were more concerned with what was done inside Yugoslavia in the name of ‘resistance’—the murder of men and women, the burning of villages, and the help given to the enemy to hunt down the Partisans. They could not forget, even after the arrival of Allied aid, that many of the quislings who fought against their own people used British arms and equipment. Denvir himself puts it bluntly—as a British soldier he was in danger of being shot with a bullet made in Britain, and fired from a British-made Sten gun carried by a Yugoslav in the pay of the Italians or Germans.

The evidence of Denvir’s personal experience also is quite adequate to upset the belief of many that the Partisan movement was purely Communist. Denvir fought with the Partisans almost from the beginning; his comrades were doctors, professors, priests, business men, architects, lawyers, small shopkeepers, middle-class peasants, and Yugoslav Army officers. He heard scarcely any party discussion amongst them, and saw no evidence that any particular political creed played a predominant part in what he found was a national movement for freedom among the population that had become an army. His own battalion included Poles, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Austrians, Bulgarians, Italians, and a Czech. They had a political commissar whose chief concern was the welfare and morale of the men. Their politics were their own, and they were not required to declare allegiance to any party.

Because Partisan has been written as Denvir wishes it to be written, it is not always obvious that many of the actions in which he fought were successful only because of his bravery and leadership. He has given the credit to his comrades, and has minimised his own part in the fighting. But there is abundant evidence that ‘Corporal Frank’, as he came to be called, was a brave man and a fine leader. The British liaison officer in Slovenia, Major WM Jones, has said that he was recognised as a hero of the highest order, and enjoyed the full confidence and esteem of the Partisan Command. The Partisans themselves have confirmed this, and the Russians have recognised his gallantry by the award of their Medal for Valour.

Thousands of people have read scrappy newspaper accounts of Denvir’s service in Yugoslavia, and have seen various photographs of him. Many of them have asked: ‘What’s he like, this chap Denvir?’ Then they have been curious to know how it was possible for one New Zealand soldier to gain the confidence of men of another country and lead them into battle. The first question can be answered easily, but the second involves not only some explanation of Denvir’s background, but also a description of the country in which he fought, and the men with whom he fought.

Lean, tall, but not abnormally so, Denvir in civilian clothes might pass unnoticed in a crowd except for his dark red hair and the determined set of his jaw. But in khaki battledress and wearing the black beret of a New Zealand armoured brigade he commands attention because he looks so much the soldier—as that name is given among soldiers, who know what it means. He has a lean, angular face with high cheekbones, and a square, stubborn chin, while his skin is pale and lightly sprinkled with freckles, which show up darkly in moments of emotion. The nose juts out a trifle arrogantly, but the impression is contradicted immediately by the kindly brown eyes and the firm, humorous mouth. In repose it is the face of a ruthless fighter; yet it is sensitive and thoughtful, and when he smiles it is easy to understand why old peasants in Yugoslavian villages would talk freely to ‘Corporal Frank’, and bring out from secret hiding places precious packets of tobacco or bottles of wine as parting gifts.

There seem to be three reasons for Denvir’s successful leadership of Partisan fighters from six European countries—the peculiar genius of the Scot for getting inside the skin of other peoples, an unusual military background, and the training that he and the rest of the New Zealanders received in Egypt before they went to Greece in 1941. First of all, Denvir is a New Zealander only by adoption. He was born in Glasgow, and is still essentially a Scot in spite of more than twenty years in New Zealand. That is why he was accepted as a Partisan and not as a British soldier all the time he was in Yugoslavia. He lived exactly the same life as the Partisans, with all its dangers and hardships, and he measured up to their standards of bravery, discipline, and comradeship. He was never conscious of being a foreigner, and even when the British liaison officers arrived, he was still regarded as a Partisan officer.

Denvir’s comrades would not have followed him into action or approved of his promotion if he had been a fighting fool. Once or twice he did something reckless to prove that a British soldier was the equal of any Partisan, but his official record in two years of most bitter fighting was that of a man of outstanding courage, tenacity, and ability. He was a fine leader because he was a trained soldier, but his qualities of leadership, first recognised in Greece by Major-General HK Kippenberger, must have been inspired by tradition as much as by training. For Denvir has a military background unlike that of most New Zealand soldiers in this war. Both his father and a grandfather were once regular soldiers, serving in Scottish regiments; he might have followed in their footsteps if he had remained in Scotland. Was it something in the blood or tradition that turned his thoughts at once, when he was taken prisoner, to plans for escape, and made him keep mental maps of enemy gun positions near his prison camp? Stubbornness of character or training do not account entirely for the decision to join the Partisans, the determination to stay in the fighting when severe wounds pressed for attention, and the refusal to leave Yugoslavia for hospital treatment in Italy until ordered to do so.

Denvir’s determination to remain in the field was in accordance with Partisan discipline. Partisan hospitals were mostly log huts hidden in the mountains, and their medical equipment and supplies were often pitifully inadequate. Therefore, any wounded Partisan who could still march was expected to carry on unless his wound was too serious for rough and ready treatment in the field. Denvir was wounded at least six times in Yugoslavia—he has little to say about his wounds—but he left his unit only three times to go to hospital. The first time he was hit in the right leg by a sub-machine-gun bullet, the second time he was wounded twice in the left arm, and the third time his right arm was shattered at the elbow by a bullet.

All Denvir’s wounds healed quickly—doctors told him later that this was because of the blood group to which he belonged—but he could not have fought through three Yugoslavian winters if he had not been toughened by his desert training. When he left New Zealand he was fit—he had worked hard and played hard. But in Egypt he and his comrades learned that ordinary fitness was not enough. They had months of route marches, trench digging, and desert manoeuvres, and when they sailed for Greece they were lean, hard, and fighting fit, their bodies tempered like steel.

Months of prison camp life weakened Denvir, but did not undo the toughening process he had undergone. He was thankful for this when he took to the mountains in December, 1941. Yugoslavia was in the grip of the Central European winter, and the Partisans had to fight cold and hunger as well as the enemy. When Denvir was not crouched over a fire in a pine log hut deep in the forest, he was trudging through the snow weighed down by a machine-gun and many rounds of ammunition. Food was scarce—beans, potatoes, maize bread, a little meat, and occasionally captured Italian rations. Spring brought more dangers and hardships—increased activity by enemy mountain troops who were at home in the forests and clung wolfishly to the trail of the Partisans—and forced marches of seven, eight, and even nine hours by day or night over rough mountain tracks. Somehow Denvir kept pace with his comrades, although many of them had lived all their lives in the mountains. He had to keep up with them—it was death for the laggard when the mountain troops were on their trail.

The life of a Partisan was hard anywhere in Yugoslavia, but it was probably hardest and most dangerous in Slovenia where Denvir did all his fighting. This northern province, home of the third people in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovens, was closest to the enemy. To the north was Austria, and east and west were Hungary and Italy. Everything the Italians and Germans needed for their forces in the Balkans had to pass through Slovenia, and it was easy for them to mount an offensive against the Partisans. Tanks, aircraft, artillery, and thousands of men were comparatively close at hand, and could be moved rapidly at the least sign of resistance. In the beginning the Slovenian Partisans, who held only small islands in a sea of enemy territory, were threatened on all sides, and had no way of retreat except to the mountains. Even after two years of fighting, when they held far more territory, their province was too dangerous for British liaison officers to land there by parachute. These officers jumped over other parts of the country and made their way north on foot.

Resistance in Slovenia began only a few days after the defeat of the Yugoslavian armies. The first Partisan organisation, the Slovenian Front, was formed on April 20, 1941. In May the Italians—more vicious in their cruelty than the Germans, as Denvir found—annexed the greater part of the province, and in October, 1942, the Germans proclaimed that all the inhabitants of the northern portion were henceforth subjects of the Reich. But annexation, proclamation, enemy garrisons, and the most brutal repressive measures, failed to break the spirit of the people, who fought openly or secretly for their freedom against enormous odds.

When Denvir joined the Slovenian Partisans he found that they used the mountains, the narrow, winding roads, and the pine and birch forests as their allies. They felled trees to block the roads to enemy tanks and transport, and faded away into the mountains after their attacks. Their food came from dozens of little villages, all practically self-supporting, and their main strength—visible and invisible—came from the people of these villages, who were hard-working, honest, literate, and deeply religious. If villages were burned by the enemy or most of the inhabitants were deported, those who were left joined the Partisans. If the people remained unmolested, they risked death, torture, or imprisonment to provide food, guides, and information for the fast-moving Partisan brigades.

Because Slovenia was almost isolated from the rest of Yugoslavia in the early days of the Partisan movement, operations there were carried on independently. Not until 1942 did the resistance forces with which Denvir was serving become part of the National Liberation Army under the supreme command of Marshal Tito. Contrary to popular belief, Denvir did not serve under the direct command of Yugoslavia’s great leader. He met Marshal Tito once, but he is not at liberty to disclose what passed between them. It was at Marshal Tito’s command, however, that he was given the rank of lieutenant in the National Liberation and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia.

These Partisan Detachments bore the name generally applied to Marshal Tito’s movement and his men. The word Partisan is used in all the Slav languages to signify a guerilla fighter in land occupied by the enemy, and the Partisan Detachments, one of which was the battalion that Denvir commanded, were guerilla units in the proper sense of the word. Nearly all the men were veteran fighters, and brigades of them were used for such special tasks as whittling down advancing enemy columns before they encountered the regular forces, breaking up the beginnings of an enemy offensive, and establishing new areas of resistance. In desperate situations they were used as shock troops.

The history of these brigades, which were the hard core of the Partisan movement in Yugoslavia, has still to be written. There were no war correspondents to report the actions they fought, and many of their officers and men are dead, leaving behind in the villages only the legend of their bravery. But when that history is written there