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

inside, girls at desks, typing and writing, three posters on the wall, portraits of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The officer told the peasant to sit down and wait, and then disappeared through a door. The peasant sat on a bench with two wounded soldiers, an old woman, and a grim-faced boy in his teens.
    For a half hour, the peasant sat there and waited. He had come three hundred miles to find the legend that was Tito. He had known that Tito was a very great man, that Tito was drawing together and making an organization out of anyone and everyone in Yugoslavia who would kill Germans. But he had not expected anything as large and as important as this. Perhaps Tito would not see him at all.
    Then the officer returned and said, “Come along, uncle.”
    They went through the door. They entered a small room, where a man sat at a table. As they came in, the man glanced up and smiled. And the officer said,
    â€œMarshal Tito.”
    The marshal held out his hand, and the peasant took it. So this was Tito. The peasant liked his looks, a strong face, a big jaw, a full mouth, deep-set grey eyes.
    â€œSit down, uncle,” the marshal said.
    And the officer drew up a chair for the peasant. They sat across the table from each other. Tito leaned forward and said,
    â€œSo you are from Slovenia, uncle.”
    The peasant nodded.
    â€œWalked all the way.”
    â€œThat’s right,” the peasant agreed.
    â€œAnd how are things in Slovenia?”
    â€œBad—that’s why I am here. I have a band. We went into the mountains when the Nazis began to kill everyone. Yes, in the village near mine, everyone. Every man, woman and child. Then we decided that we would go into the woods before they killed us, myself and my son and my wife. There were other folks in the woods—we made a band of about forty souls. We had six guns, until we raided an Italian supply column. Then we had over a hundred guns. More came into the woods and joined the band. When there were sixty of us, we raided a German post, and then we got two machine guns and four tommy guns. Now we number seventy-two. We lost thirty-three in our operations, but we have accounted for over a hundred of the German and Italian swine.”
    Tito nodded as he heard the peasant’s story. It was a familiar tale; the same thing had happened again and again in every corner of Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, a gathering rage, men driven into the mountains and the woods, forming bands, striking back.
    â€œBut why did you walk three hundred miles, uncle?”
    The peasant considered his words carefully before he replied. “Understand,” he began, “we are not Communists. I am not a Communist—no one in my band is. But after our second engagement, we had fourteen wounded men and women, six of them very badly wounded. We had heard of another band in a valley twenty miles away, and it was said they had a doctor with them. This was a band led by Communists. We are good Catholics, and we wanted no part of this band, and once when they tried to approach us, we fired on them. But now it was a case of going to them, or letting our wounded die. We carried our wounded to them. It is true—they were Communists, but the doctor tended our wounded. Only two men died.”
    Tito nodded. The peasant went on, as if this was something he still did not fully understand.
    â€œAnd they had a priest with them—who confessed the dying. You understand?—a good father with these Communists. I talked to him for hours. He told me about you—about how you are uniting all the partisans, about the great battles you have fought. He told me you were ready to admit any and all who will fight the Nazis and Fascists. He told me of your battle cry, ‘Death to the Fascists, liberty for the people.’ He told me of the four freedoms of the American, Roosevelt, freedom from fear and hunger and the right to say what I want and pray as I