Frontline Medic & SOE Agent

At the outbreak of the Second World War, a young Scottish professional athlete competing in the Highland Games circuit enlisted in the Army. As he was able to drive a truck, Bill Gillanders was assigned to a blood transfusion unit in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was taught how to give a transfusion and, in time, sent on a solo journey to deliver blood and plasma to a Casualty Clearing Station in Dieppe, France. War became horrifyingly real for Bill as German Panzer divisions unleashed Hitler’s Blitzkrieg and swept through northern France. His fraught journey home ended in a dramatic escape under fire and his return to Britain aboard a Royal Navy destroyer. Bill’s war had, however, only just begun. When the tide turned against the Axis in North Africa, Bill was unexpectedly recruited by the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, for a clandestine mission in the Balkans. Having undergone a period of intensive training, with the rank of Sergeant he was then parachuted into Yugoslavia as part of a team led by Major Dr Lindsay Rogers, a New Zealand surgeon he had served alongside in the desert. In this rough and brutal environment, as part of Mission Dafoe Lindsay’s SOE team infiltrated enemy-occupied territory to support Tito’s Partisans. In makeshift hospitals in the mountains, with minimal supplies, his small unit treat the wounded, while political tensions simmered beneath the surface. Bill recounts many dramatic and now historically fascinating incidents he witnessed, such as a massive air assault by the Germans to destroy Tito. With their hospital bombed mid-surgery, undeterred they pushed into besieged Drvar to try to help wounded partisans and British SOE operatives. For his actions in these events, Bill was awarded the Military Medal. As Bill reveals in this book, he also led a group of around 100 downed American airmen on a 100-mile winter trek through German-controlled territory to a hidden airfield for evacuation to Italy. This is not just a soldier’s account of his war, or a riveting adventure story – it is both.