Lost Airmen : The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines

Late in 1944, thirteen U.S. B-24 bomber crews bailed from their cabins over the Yugoslavian wilderness. Bloodied and disoriented after a harrowing strike against the Third Reich, the pilots took refugee with the Partisan underground. But the Americans were far from safety. Holed up in a village barely able to feed its citizens, encircled by Nazis, and left abandoned after a team of British secret agents failed to secure their escape, the airmen were left with little choice. It was either flee or be killed. In The Lost Airmen , Charles Stanely Jr. unveils the shocking true story of his father, Charles Stanely-and the eighteen brave soldiers he journeyed with for the first time. Drawing on over twenty years of research, dozens of interviews, and previously unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs written by the airmen, Stanley recounts the deadly journey across the blizzard-swept Dinaric Alps during the worst winter of the Twentieth Century-and the heroic men who fought impossible odds to keep their brothers in arms alive. Winter 1944, Yugoslavia. American airmen parachuted from crippled bombers. Some landed in safety. Others were slaughtered by German fire. Extreme weather closed the skies; the Germans blocked the path to the sea. British agents eventually extracted sixty-six airmen. Eighteen remained-- and were sent over the mountains at the prodding of guns by the Partisan forces who were desperate to rid themselves of the Americans. Stanley, the son of one of the eighteen Lost Airmen who walked across the Yugoslav wilderness to safety in January 1945, tells their story. -- adapted from jacket