A Small War in the Balkans

Written by one of the last survivors of the campaign, this book is a fascinating inside account of one of the Second World War's most exciting yet controversial episodes: the difficult, dangerous but eventually victorious attempt by Britain to decisively influence the course of the war in the Balkans. The Yugoslav war was a savage and many-sided conflict in which Germans, Italians, Communist Partisans, Serbian Royalists; Croatian Fascists and eventually Stalin's Russians all played their part. Britain's intervention was fraught with political as well as military problems from first to last. Controversy continues over London's decision to switch support from Milhailovic's monarchist Cetnik guerillas to Tito's more militarily effective Communist Partisans. Some famous names were among the liasion missions parachuted in to join the Partisans in their mountain lairs, including politician and travel writer Fitzroy Maclean; the Prime Minister's son Randolph Churchill; novelist Evelyn Waugh and historian WIlliam Deakin. McConville's book concentrates on the lesser-known post -1943 period when torpedo and gunboats operating among the islands of the Dalmatian coast replaced the risky airdrops, and British soldiers and sailors fought alongside the Partisans, both male and female. The author was stationed on the island of Vis as a young subaltern, and offers a valuable eye-witness history and a vivid memoir of a vital moment in a war whose echoes persisted into the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.