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Mission Davidson
Mission Davidson was a World War II Special Operations Executive (SOE) military expedition to Yugoslav Partisans led by Basil Davidson, a peacetime journalist, Sergeant William Ennis and a wireless operator Sergeant Stanley Brandreth. Codenamed "Savannah", the mission landed by parachute at Petrovo Polje in central Bosnia on 16 August 1943. They were welcomed by the local British Liaison Officer, Major William Deakin who took Davidson to meet Marshall Tito. Once he explained that his ambition was to get into Hungary, Tito suggested Davidson joins General Kosta Nađ and his troops on their way towards Belgrade.
Davidson was a journalist and in the autumn of 1939 he worked as the Paris correspondent for The Economist. He returned to London and was shortly approached by the SOE for a post in the Balkans. He left for Hungary, via Yugoslavia in January 1940. On the long train journey he was accompanied by a fellow SOE colleague and sacks of explosives for which they bribed the Hungarian customs not to inspect. They arrived safely to Budapest and delivered the sacks to the British legation building. Davidson soon set up an above-board news agency to deliver British news to the local press and radio, and a clandestine operation "to promote resistance" to the subsumption of Hungary into the German war machine. He organised the printing and distribution of leaflets written by George Paloczi-Horvath suggesting the existence of a large anti-Nazi organisation. By the autumn of 1940, the flow of news from London ceased, and Davidson started making-up his own, greatly exaggerating British military might and German and Italian frailties and losses. Although in safety of Budapest, he found the news of London being ferociously bombed and Britain's survival at stake difficult to take.
Things went from bad to worse, and when the British ambassador (most likely Owen O'Malley) found the sacks of plastic explosives and magnetised metal casings in the embassy basement, he ordered it be thrown away. Davidson realised that they will no longer be able to disrupt German oil and raw material shipping on the Danube. By March 1941, through Antal Ullein-Reviczky, his contact at the Hungarian Foreign Office, he realised that the escalation of war was imminent and that he had to flee. On 3 April he boarded the train to Belgrade in Yugoslavia.
On 6 April, Davidson was in Belgrade's Hotel Majestic when the German saturation bombing started. Operation Punishment was in full force and much of the city was left in ruins. The SOE members joined a convoy of over one hundred evacuees led by the British ambassador Sir Ronald Campbell heading slowly towards the Adriatic coast. They reached Herceg Novi and managed to evacuate the most exposed members, including George Paloczi-Horvath using a Sunderland flying boat. Ambassador Campbell remained with the rest of the group and tried to label the remaining SOE members as Press Attaches hoping that they would be treated as diplomats, although they had no such passport or other evidence. A British submarine was able to reach Herceg Novi but the Italian troops had already taken the town and the group was in their custody. They were loaded onto trucks and driven to Albania for internment. Finally, they were exchanged for Duke of Aosta, the Italian commander in Ethiopia who had been captured by the British Army in East Africa. Davidson eventually reached Gibraltar. Together with the locally posted officers, he was surprised at the news of German invasion of Russia on 22 June and the timing and reasoning behind it.
Davidson returned to London and spent the next twelve months at the SOE HQ in Baker Street before being posted to the Middle East.
Davidson travelled between Cairo, Jerusalem and Istanbul as the fortunes of the war in Africa were changing. In July 1942, he de-briefed Stanislav Rapotec, who recently arrived to Istanbul from a covert mission to Yugoslavia. In October he was promoted to Major and appointed the Acting Head of SOE Yugoslav Desk in Cairo assisted by Lieutenant James Klugmann and Major William Deakin. They ultimately reported to Brigadier C M Keble who was in charge of all operational sections of SOE Cairo.
The remnants of the Royal Yugoslav Army (RYA) rebranded as the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (Chetniks) and led by Colonel Draža Mihailović, although frequently accused of complicity with the enemy and reluctance to fight, continued to receive British assistance and military missions.
Against all the evidence of chetnik complicity with the enemy, high policy insisted on sending more British missions to chetnik groups; and no fewer than nine such missions were despatched from April 1943 onward through the summer. All of these tried to make the chetniks fight; none of them succeeded. Each suffered sore frustration and was lucky to survive.
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Mission Davidson
Mission Davidson was a World War II Special Operations Executive (SOE) military expedition to Yugoslav Partisans led by Basil Davidson, a peacetime journalist, Sergeant William Ennis and a wireless operator Sergeant Stanley Brandreth. Codenamed "Savannah", the mission landed by parachute at Petrovo Polje in central Bosnia on 16 August 1943. They were welcomed by the local British Liaison Officer, Major William Deakin who took Davidson to meet Marshall Tito. Once he explained that his ambition was to get into Hungary, Tito suggested Davidson joins General Kosta Nađ and his troops on their way towards Belgrade.
Davidson was a journalist and in the autumn of 1939 he worked as the Paris correspondent for The Economist. He returned to London and was shortly approached by the SOE for a post in the Balkans. He left for Hungary, via Yugoslavia in January 1940. On the long train journey he was accompanied by a fellow SOE colleague and sacks of explosives for which they bribed the Hungarian customs not to inspect. They arrived safely to Budapest and delivered the sacks to the British legation building. Davidson soon set up an above-board news agency to deliver British news to the local press and radio, and a clandestine operation "to promote resistance" to the subsumption of Hungary into the German war machine. He organised the printing and distribution of leaflets written by George Paloczi-Horvath suggesting the existence of a large anti-Nazi organisation. By the autumn of 1940, the flow of news from London ceased, and Davidson started making-up his own, greatly exaggerating British military might and German and Italian frailties and losses. Although in safety of Budapest, he found the news of London being ferociously bombed and Britain's survival at stake difficult to take.
Things went from bad to worse, and when the British ambassador (most likely Owen O'Malley) found the sacks of plastic explosives and magnetised metal casings in the embassy basement, he ordered it be thrown away. Davidson realised that they will no longer be able to disrupt German oil and raw material shipping on the Danube. By March 1941, through Antal Ullein-Reviczky, his contact at the Hungarian Foreign Office, he realised that the escalation of war was imminent and that he had to flee. On 3 April he boarded the train to Belgrade in Yugoslavia.
On 6 April, Davidson was in Belgrade's Hotel Majestic when the German saturation bombing started. Operation Punishment was in full force and much of the city was left in ruins. The SOE members joined a convoy of over one hundred evacuees led by the British ambassador Sir Ronald Campbell heading slowly towards the Adriatic coast. They reached Herceg Novi and managed to evacuate the most exposed members, including George Paloczi-Horvath using a Sunderland flying boat. Ambassador Campbell remained with the rest of the group and tried to label the remaining SOE members as Press Attaches hoping that they would be treated as diplomats, although they had no such passport or other evidence. A British submarine was able to reach Herceg Novi but the Italian troops had already taken the town and the group was in their custody. They were loaded onto trucks and driven to Albania for internment. Finally, they were exchanged for Duke of Aosta, the Italian commander in Ethiopia who had been captured by the British Army in East Africa. Davidson eventually reached Gibraltar. Together with the locally posted officers, he was surprised at the news of German invasion of Russia on 22 June and the timing and reasoning behind it.
Davidson returned to London and spent the next twelve months at the SOE HQ in Baker Street before being posted to the Middle East.
Davidson travelled between Cairo, Jerusalem and Istanbul as the fortunes of the war in Africa were changing. In July 1942, he de-briefed Stanislav Rapotec, who recently arrived to Istanbul from a covert mission to Yugoslavia. In October he was promoted to Major and appointed the Acting Head of SOE Yugoslav Desk in Cairo assisted by Lieutenant James Klugmann and Major William Deakin. They ultimately reported to Brigadier C M Keble who was in charge of all operational sections of SOE Cairo.
The remnants of the Royal Yugoslav Army (RYA) rebranded as the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (Chetniks) and led by Colonel Draža Mihailović, although frequently accused of complicity with the enemy and reluctance to fight, continued to receive British assistance and military missions.
Against all the evidence of chetnik complicity with the enemy, high policy insisted on sending more British missions to chetnik groups; and no fewer than nine such missions were despatched from April 1943 onward through the summer. All of these tried to make the chetniks fight; none of them succeeded. Each suffered sore frustration and was lucky to survive.