VUKELIĆ: BY RESCUING ALLIED PILOTS, SERBS CONTRIBUTED TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

DOBOJ, SEPTEMBER 21 /SRNA/ - By rescuing Allied pilots on Mount Ozren during the Second World War, the Serbian people contributed to the fight for freedom, and they believe in the restoration of Serbian-American friendship, said Nikola Vukelić, State Secretary in the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Social and Veterans’ Affairs of Serbia, in Boljanić near Doboj during the commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the Halyard operation.

Addressing those gathered, Vukelić conveyed greetings from the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, and the Government of Serbia, with special regards to the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, whom, as he noted, the people of Srpska have elected time and again. “We stand firmly with you, and no self-proclaimed individual or occupational Gauleiter, as President Vulić called him, can decide who will lead the people in Srpska,” Vukelić said. Speaking about the Halyard operation, Vukelić stated that the greatest hero of the mission to rescue Allied pilots was the Serbian peasant, the ordinary people who form the foundation of the state and Serbian identity. He pointed out that the Allied pilots were fortunate to have fallen on Serbian territory, because had they landed in Ustaše or Muslim-controlled areas, they would have been killed or sent to camps. “The Serbian people did everything to save the Allies and thereby contributed to the fight for freedom, and they saw the pilots off with love and faith that freedom would come and that Nazism would be defeated,” Vukelić said. He reminded that American forces bombed the Serbian people in Republika Srpska in 1995 and in Serbia in 1999. “Those of us who were on the right side of history and fought on the same side in the First and Second World Wars endured such injustice. What is positive is that the Serbian people are now looking toward America with optimism after the presidential elections and Donald Trump’s victory. This gives new hope, and the people in Republika Srpska have welcomed it with enthusiasm,” Vukelić said. He emphasized that the Serbs believe in the restoration of Serbian-American friendship. In the Halyard – Air Bridge operation, carried out by the forces of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland under the command of General Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, more than 500 pilots were rescued, including sixty Allied aviators in Boljanić. The Air Bridge operation was the largest rescue mission of American soldiers behind enemy lines in 1944 and 1945. In mid-October 1944, under pressure from Partisan forces, the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland moved with its units from Serbia to eastern Bosnia. On Mount Ozren, in the vicinity of the village of Boljanić near Doboj, an airfield was prepared and made operational from October 22 to November 1, 1944. The commemoration of this historical event, of Republika Srpska’s significance, is organized by the Government of Republika Srpska’s Committee for Fostering the Tradition of Liberation Wars.