360 • MILLAR, GEORGE
Squadron, leaving liaison with the Cetniks entirely in the hands of a
small AmericanOffice of Strategic Servicesteam, which was itself
withdrawn in October 1944.
Of the SOE personnel sent to help the anti-Communist Cetniks,
relatively few were around to catch the flight to Italy because of the
extraordinarily high attrition rate. The first mission to arrive,dis-
claim, led by Major Kavan Elliott and dropped ‘‘blind’’ from Malta
in February 1942, was surrounded by the pro-Axis CroatianUstase
immediately upon arrival and handed over to the Germans. Captain
Morgan’s mission, also dropped blind in April 1943, suffered a simi-
lar fate, being captured by Bulgarian troops as soon as it had landed;
none of its members were ever heard of again. A monocled New
Zealander, Lieutenant Micky Hargreaves, and his Polish companion
Captain ‘‘Nash’’ also came to grief; the Pole was killed instantly by
a hand grenade, but Hargreaves was to survive the Gestapo’s brutal-
ity after his capture and was liberated from Oflag 4C by the Ameri-
cans in April 1945. Captain Hawksworth, who landed in May 1943,
and his entire mission of five British personnel was wiped out by Bul-
garians. Terence Atherton, the leader ofhydra, was murdered for his
gold bullion in April 1942. Paul Pavlic was killed in a German am-
bush, and Major Neil Selby was captured and then shot attempting to
escape. Bill Stuart, theSecret Intelligence Servicerepresentative on
typical, died in the air raid that woundedWilliam Deakinand Tito.
In addition, several wireless operators died, including Sergeant
Blackmore, Lieutenant Smith, and Leading Aircraftman Thompson
fromfugue. Captain Vercoe, who was seriously injured in a bad
parachute landing in September 1943, was captured the following
March and was still on crutches when repatriated in January 1945.
Three other prisoners survived the war: Captain Watts of the Royal
Tank Corps and his two sergeants, Cornwall and Robinson, who were
caught by Bulgarian troops as they landed; they received harsh treat-
ment from the Gestapo but emerged alive. Thus, in comparison to the
missions sent to Tito’s partisans, very few SOE liaison officers lived
to commend Mihailovic.MILLAR, GEORGE.An oldDaily Expresshand, George Millar was
a member of the Paris office working alongside Geoffrey Cox and
Sefton Delmerin the days before the French collapse. A Scot, edu-