The Americans were helping where they could but got their direction from good man Churchill. The British were technically the lead force fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. This was by far the most intriguing section of the book. The third section goes into details about not only the Chetnik/Partisan conflict, but of the politics of allied British and American forces working "together" in the area fighting the Germans. For those who may decide to read this book, I won't spoil his interesting and serendipitous journey into the OSS, but I will tell you that someone who has that many close calls and chance meetings must be living right. One of the more interesting stories in this section is about the OSS officer who was the son of Yugoslavian immigrants he was responsible for organizing the rescue mission. This section also outlines the back-story of the OSS, the predecessors to the CIA, and the people responsible for Operation Halyard. They did everything they could to protect them, often at the risk of their own lives. The second part tells the stories of the airmen post-bailout in the mountains of the what is now Serbia. The Chetniks saw the American soldiers as liberators and welcomed them with open arms. These brave men along with hundreds of others were tasked with bombing a major oil field in Romania and couldn't quite make it home. It was interesting to learn what motivated and drove them to become pilots, tail gunners or the most dangerous of them all, the ball turret gunner. The beginning section gives the personal stories of several of the airmen who chose to fly a slow, behemoth of a plane across enemy territory. The book is roughly divided into four main parts. The Forgotten 500 is a fascinating view into the logistical nightmare of a daring rescue mission to bring home hundreds of airmen in Nazi occupied mountainous terrain of politically unstable Yugoslavia. By the middle of the war, the two sides took to fighting each other just as much as the Germans. The Pro-Royal Serbs under the guidance of General Milhailovich (the Chetnik's), and the Pro-Communist ( Partisans) under General Tito already looked past the German occupation to the new post-war government. The resistance movement which rallied together to fight this invasion fractured into two parties quickly afterwards. Shortly after the beginning of World War II, the royal family of Yugoslavia was forced to flee the country when the Nazi's took over in 1941.
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