{"id":155939,"date":"2024-11-04T12:18:21","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T10:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/?p=155939"},"modified":"2024-11-04T12:18:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T10:18:22","slug":"once-we-died-together-americans-in-chicago-remember-serbian-heroes-who-saved-their-pilots-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/en\/once-we-died-together-americans-in-chicago-remember-serbian-heroes-who-saved-their-pilots-video\/","title":{"rendered":"“ONCE WE DIED TOGETHER”: Americans in Chicago remember Serbian heroes who saved their pilots (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last night in Chicago, the Halyard Mission Foundation celebrated the 80th anniversary of the operation in which the Serbian people and units of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, under the command of General Dragoljub Mihailovi\u0107, saved over five hundred American and Allied aviators during 1944, which was also the largest rescue operation in World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this occasion, the leaders of this organization, together with distinguished guests from the diplomatic and business circles of the Serbian-American community, recalled the action in which Serbian peasants and soldiers, risking their lives under German occupation, during the summer of 1944, from two locations, Pranjani in Serbia and Boljani\u0107 Field in the Republic of Srpska, with the help of American aviation and the OSS (today’s CIA), managed to transfer hundreds of American and British pilots and airmen to safe ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recalling those days, the president of the Halijard Foundation, retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Kapelo, emphasized the importance of preserving the memory of this feat as the foundation of future relations between Serbia and the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When we started the Foundation, we faced two problems. Neither the Serbs nor the Americans knew about this historical feat, and in Serbia we faced an additional problem, since during the communist period this story was marginalized and deliberately forgotten, due to the participation of Chetnik forces in it. We have managed over the past 8 years, since the Foundation’s existence, to ensure that the state of Serbia includes September 21st in the calendar of official holidays, as well as that the story of the Halijard mission ends up in textbooks that Serbian children learn from. Today, many Serbs and Americans know about Halijard, but we are not satisfied and will not stop there,” said Kapelo, a former military attach\u00e9 at the US embassy in Belgrade, where he first learned about the Halijard mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ranko Risti\u0107, a member of the Halijard Foundation Board, has devoted the past few years to finding the families of American aviators whose fathers and grandfathers were saved during the Halijard Mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We managed to find a large number of descendants of aviators across America, they participated in our gatherings, and some of them were our guests in the Memorial Center in Pranjani in previous years, where they met with people and families who helped and cared for their ancestors. There were many emotional moments there, tears…The only black pilot who was evacuated during the Halijard mission, James Walker, once gave his boots to 14-year-old Radoljub Jankovi\u0107 before returning to America. This year, Walker’s son Kenneth went to Serbia and brought Radoljub a new pair of boots as a gift, and that was truly a sight I will remember for the rest of my life,” recalled Risti\u0107, whose company Zastava Arms USA was also the main sponsor of the event, and added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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