Departure of Chetnik Political Mission
The British SOE military mission led by Brigadier Charles Armstrong was ready for evacuation by late May 1944. Following agreement with their Bari headquarters, three Douglas Dakota cargo aircraft (C-47s) landed at Pranjani on 29 May. In addition to the SOE mission, forty rescued Allied airmen were also evacuated. Mihailović had decided to send a political mission to London using the same evacuation. The mission was led by the President of the Socialist Party of Yugoslavia, Živko Topalović. Topalović had been a member of the Labour and Socialist International party before the war. He intended to meet with British political leaders to influence them to change Winston Churchill's decision to abandon Mihailović and support Josip Broz Tito. Topalović's mission was a failure, the British did not allow him to leave southern Italy.
Read more about this topic: Operation Halyard
Famous quotes containing the words departure, political and/or mission:
“This house was but a slight departure from the hollow tree, which the bear still inhabits,—being a hollow made with trees piled up, with a coating of bark like its original.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)