52 pages • 1 hour read
Gregory A. FreemanThe Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 18-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “Secrets and Lies”
Freeman describes Mihailovich as “one of the first casualties of the Cold War” (267). The angry US airmen have little choice but to go on with their civilian lives, telling the story of Mihailovich and the Chetniks to anyone who would listen. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, successfully lobbies President Truman to recognize Mihailovich’s service to the United States. On April 9, 1948, Truman posthumously awards Mihailovich the Legion of Merit, the highest possible award to a non-US citizen. The award recognizes Mihailovich “as the chief commander of Yugoslavia” (269). In one final act of betrayal, however, the US State Department convinces Truman to keep the award secret for fear of political repercussions in Europe. Not for nearly 20 years would anyone outside the State Department or the US army learn that Mihailovich had received the Legion of Merit.
In a letter dated September 8, 1979, California Governor Ronald Reagan, soon to be president of the United States, denounces the betrayal of Mihailovich and the appeasement of Communism. Freeman concludes by reminding readers that only in 1997 did the British government declassify documents proving that Soviet agent James Klugmann operated at the highest levels of British intelligence to deceive Allied leaders into abandoning Mihailovich.
Epilogue Summary
The airmen and OSS agents involved in Operation Halyard struggle to go on with their peacetime lives, as most are disillusioned by the official narrative about their experience. Freeman briefly describes the postwar lives of the book’s key figures. By the time The Forgotten 500 goes to print, George Vujnovich, Arthur Jibilian, Clare Musgrove, Tony Orsini, Robert Wilson, and Nick Petrovich were still alive. Mirjana Vujnovich dies in 2003, Nick Lalich in 2001, Richard Felman in 1999, and George Musulin in 1987. Musulin loses touch with the group over time, but those who saw the former OSS agent in later years remember him as “disillusioned and bitter about the war experience” (275). Meanwhile, the OSS disbands in 1945, replaced two years later by the CIA. Tito rules Yugoslavia as a Communist dictator until his death in 1980.
Despite the airmen’s postwar difficulties, Freeman concludes the book on an uplifting note: On May 9, 2005, in a private-yet-formal ceremony, Vujnovich, Jibilian, Musgrove, Wilson, and other surviving veterans present 78-year-old Gordana Mihailovich with her father’s long-neglected Legion of Merit award.
Chapter 18-Epilogue Analysis
In the book’s brief final chapter and epilogue, Freeman again highlights the injustice to Mihailovich, the bitterness of the surviving airmen and agents, and the dishonorable behavior of officials at the US State Department. Describing Mihailovich as a victim of both World War II and the Cold War is one of the book’s most important purposes, for it connects those two events in a way that amplifies the tragedy of 20th-century Yugoslavia. While the Allies celebrated their victory over Nazi Germany, the people of Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe found that they had exchanged one brutal tyrant for another. America’s wartime alliance of necessity with the Soviet Union helped obscure for a time the true nature of that terrible regime, and the Chetniks paid the price. Freeman does not mention the names of other US allies-turned-enemies, such as Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden, for instance, but the book’s final chapters do contain an undercurrent of skepticism toward the makers of US foreign policy for their ongoing opportunism.
The book’s personal stories help drive Freeman’s narrative, and they leave a mixed impression in the final chapters. On one hand, the survivors of Operation Halyard live to share their experiences with Freeman and even present Mihailovich’s Legion of Merit award to his daughter, Gordana. On the other hand, Mirjana Vujnovich “never got over her disappointment” at the fate of her homeland (275). The same was true of Musulin, who, prior to his death in 1987, retreats from the world in hopes of forgetting his wartime experience. The complex emotions of the surviving airmen and others involved in the rescue mission show the impossibility of creating a single narrative of such a historic event; Freeman presents as many viewpoints as possible in The Forgotten 500 so readers can draw conclusions about the war and Allies’ role in it for themselves.
