Chetnik

While the term Chetnik, which originally referred to royalist fighters during the Second World War but came to apply to Serb paramilitaries during the Balkan wars of the Nineties, Berikoff said he heard it being used to describe all Serbs.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting: 2008

Many bore on their person all the iconography of World War II "Chetnik" nationalists: bandoliers across their chests and huge combat knives on their belts; fur hats with symbols of skull and crossbones; black flags, also with skull and crossbones; and the full beard, which, as Ivo Banac says, "in the peasant culture of Serbia is a sign of mourning; somebody dies, one does not shave.

America and the Bosnia Genocide Danner, Mark 1997

Ranger had collected valuable intelligence on German divisions in Chetnik territory and fielded peace offers from Nazi representatives in Yugoslavia.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

Churchill was furious when he learned Donovan planned to slip his men back into the Chetnik camp.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

Not only was Mihailović collaborating with the enemy, Donovan also knew that Tito was convinced the Chetnik chief had fed the Nazis information to try to have him assassinated three months earlier.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

Donovan already had a small team, code-named “Halyard,” near Belgrade, where Mihailović had delivered more than 250 Allied airmen shot down over Chetnik territory and he planned to keep his officers there to receive more pilots, he told Tito.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

But lo and behold, he now discovered that Donovan has a team with the Chetnik warlord, which meant “complete chaos will ensue,” Churchill complained.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

While he was untangling his messy Italian operation in June, he paid a visit to Jumbo Wilson, the supreme commander for the Mediterranean theater, and cajoled the amiable British general into agreeing that, despite the objections of Churchill and his Foreign Office, there was really no harm in the OSS sending an intelligence team to Mihailović, particularly if it helped hunt for Allied pilots shot down over Chetnik territory.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

“In no sense of the word” would the Ranger or Halyard missions provide the Chetnik leader arms or political support, he assured the marshal.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011

But he believed that OSS agents should remain with Mihailović to spy and to work with the Chetnik warlord evacuating Allied pilots whose planes were shot down over his territory.

Wild Bill Donovan Douglas Waller 2011