Free The Incredible Tito: Man of the Hour by Howard Fast

UNCLE PETER
    I N April, 1942, a year after the Nazi Panzers had raced through Yugoslavia, shattering the Yugoslavian army in ten days, a peasant approached the little town of Foca, in Bosnia. The peasant, a tall, thin man, skin burned brown from sun and weather, resembled a compact, small and mobile arsenal.
    In his hands, he carried an Italian tommy gun. He wore a German automatic on one hip, a Hungarian revolver on the other. Three cartridge belts hung from his shoulders. A thin Italian bayonet, slung over his back, completed the international armament.
    The peasant had come a long way. His own land was Slovenia, a part of Yugoslavia three hundred miles to the north. He had never seen the town of Foca before—or indeed any part of Bosnia. But it gave him a sense of comfort to know that he was still in Yugoslavia, that the numerous ridges of craggy mountains he had crossed on his way south were all in Yugoslavia. He was a man born and bred in mountains; and he knew that were it not for those same mountains he would not be alive here in Yugoslavia, a year after the German invasion.
    As he approached the outskirts of Foca, a man rose from a clump of shrubbery and pointed a rifle at the peasant’s stomach.
    â€œHalt!”
    The peasant stopped, observed the man narrowly for a moment, and then lifted both arms, still holding the tommy gun. The man who had stopped him wore a grey uniform that had once adorned a German. Now the insignia were gone. A five-pointed red star was sewn onto the cap.
    â€œWhere are you going, uncle?” the man with the red star asked.
    â€œTo Foca, if it’s any business of yours.”
    â€œAnd where are you from, uncle?”
    â€œSlovenia.”
    The sentry nodded. “And how did you get here?”
    â€œI walked,” the peasant said sourly.
    â€œThat was a long walk for a man your age, uncle,” the sentry grinned. “And what brings you to Foca?”
    â€œI came to see a man.”
    â€œWhat man?”
    â€œFor all of my age,” the peasant observed, “I would knock some politeness into your thick head—if not for that gun you’re holding at my stomach. I came to see Tito.”
    Now the sentry studied the peasant long and carefully, and then nodded. “Come along,” he said.
    He followed the peasant into town. At the edge, there was a long slit trench, protected with sandbags. There was a machine gun there, a four man crew on the alert beside it. A little way beyond, there was a hut, from which an officer stepped as the two approached.
    â€œThis one wants to see the marshal,” the sentry said, after he had saluted.
    The officer nodded. “Your name, uncle?”
    â€œPeter Narovich,” the peasant said wearily. “I’ve walked three hundred miles to see Tito, not to answer every empty-head’s questions.”
    â€œI’m afraid you’ll answer a good many more questions. Come along with me. But you’ll have to leave your guns here, uncle.”
    â€œMy guns? I don’t part with my guns. I killed enough damned fascists to get them.”
    â€œThey’ll be held for you,” the officer said patiently. “As soon as you’re through, uncle.”
    It took ten minutes more of argument before the peasant would give up his guns. Then he followed the officer down the main street of the town—to a large house from which a red flag with a star hung. Two guards, armed with tommy guns, stood on either side the door. Indeed, the peasant couldn’t help noticing that the town was an armed camp, four tanks and a dozen field guns in the central square, covered over with camouflage, barbed wire, machine gun nests, trucks parked close to the eaves of the houses and under trees, and everywhere armed men—men in German uniforms, in Italian uniforms, in Yugoslav uniforms, but all with the insignia removed and the red star substituted.
    They went into the large house. More men in uniform