Public Pulse

March 26th, 2009

Pennsylvania Fan

Dear Editor:

The name of "Lyle E. Davis" will go down in history along with the names of Ray Brock, Leigh White, David Martin and Michael Lees, writers who weren't afraid to say the truth about General Draza Mihailovich and his Serbian Chetniks. After reading your Cover Story from today in the North San Diego County's The PAPER, I found myself saying "Wow! Wow! Wow!" paragraph after exciting paragraph.

You would make a terrific General and I'd follow you anywhere because of your honesty, bravery and fearlessness in speaking the truth. You are indeed a Freedom Fighter in these most un-godly times. The heroic deed published here will become a literary legend in its own right for generations of young Americans of Serbian descent yet to come!

I am very impressed. Wow!

Sincerely yours,
/s/Milana K. Bizic
Pittsburgh, PA

From The Source . . .

Mr. Davis, thanks for you superb reporting on the daring rescue of those downed American airmen behind enemy lines in WWII. Ths Germans were only 12 miles away from the crude airstrip carved from a mountain side!

The demise of the the big papers nowadays is welcomed. It has in most cases been their political correctness( ??) that had kept this kind of story from being revealed. The press as many know, has been controlled.

Regards,
/s/Michael G. Papich

PS: One correction on the story in today's paper.

Along with Mr. Arthur Jibilian, the organizer for the rescue effort was George Vujnovich, who is also alive and at 93 living in NY state. Presently, some members of Congress are working to honor Vujnovich for his work in the OSS in the rescue of those downed airmen in WWII. I can supply details on who to contact on the status of that recognition effort. A little stimulus is always welcomed.

I'm inserting an article regarding Hitler's thinking on guerilla Mihailovich.

"Hitler called the spontaneous uprising of the Serbs against the Germans “primitive simplicity of their minds.” Leigh White, author of The Long Balkan Night (1946) spoke in New York in Freedom House, October 23, 1942:

“Hitler was right, but not in quite the sense he intended. They still retain the primitive virtues and the simple dignity which many of the more sophisticated peoples have lost; people who were not too civilized to quibble over the price of their national honor, who were not too civilized to have fought against the German and Italian aggressors even though they knew they could never win. At one time, I wondered if Yugoslavia’s national honor, if any country’s honor, could possibly be worth the price the Yugoslavs so willingly paid. Like most people, I’ve done a lot of thinking in the last year or two. And it’s taken me a year to understand what the peasants of Yugoslavia understood instinctively; that national honor has no price; that it cannot be measured in terms of any currency, even the currency of blood. The lesson of Yugoslavia is simply this: that there are many things worse than death; that many times it is preferable to die; and that it is always preferable to die than compromise the national honor.”

Regards, Michael G. Papich
Escondido, Ca.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Papich is the reader (and, it turns out, neighbor) who kindly introduced me to the book. He thought I might review it. I read it and decided we would not review it; it merited a cover story status. And thus, it happened.

Another Correction . . .

Good morning,

George Vujnovich is still alive should you want to interview him. He can be reached via Greg Freeman.

Regards,

Ken Pavichevich
Westchester, IL

Editor’s Note: We acknowledge the error in citing Arthur Jibilian as the sole survivor. I picked that information up as part of the research we did on the article and quoted an article without verifying it. I should have known better, followed up and determined if there were any other remaining members of that group of outstanding patriots. My apologies to Mr. George Vujnovich. It was he, and his wife, in fact, who was instrumental in getting Operation Halyard underway. He was brave, stubborn, and determined. Without his efforts, we may well have never saved the 513 airmen.

From the Authors

Thanks Lyle and The Paper for the nice ink on our book, "A Question of Murder." My co-author, Dr. Cyril Wecht, and I feel certain that the folks at the Innocence Project should read our chapter on the Stephanie Crowe murder and think twice about wasting time and money in trying to free Richard Raymond Tuite for the crime. There are a lot of wrongly accused people that need the help of kind-hearted groups like IP, but Tuite is not one of them. Our book gives detailed and rational explanations of why the previous suspects, Stephanie's brother and his two friends, could not have committed this crime, and all the reasons why Tuite was finally arrested and appropriately convicted. Not only is the DNA evidence against Tuite solid, but so is the behavioral analysis, his timeline, and other factors. If Escondido police officers insist on pretending that the wrong person is in jail now, they are simply deflecting attention from their own shoddy investigation. Dr. Wecht and I would be pleased to debate them in any forum.

Dawna Kaufmann
Southern California

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