ABSTRACT
SOE’s ‘Fungus Mission’ had been established at Partisan headquarters in Croatia during the summer of 1943. In October it was located in the town of Otocac, in the Lika district. A statement of SOE personnel at Fungus lists Anthony Hunter and at least four ‘commandos and others’, including a radio operator, Corporal Jephson.1 But the Allied presence at the mission was sometimes temporarily enlarged by SOE officers en route to other locations, and by escaped POWs and shot-down airmen awaiting evacuation. The headquarters (known as GSH, or Glavni Stab Hrvatska – General Staff Croatia) was commanded by General Ivan Gosnjak, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and was the largest Partisan base in Yugoslavia, controlling four army corps numbered 4, 6, 10 and 11; its authority extended north from Croatia into south-eastern districts of Istria, on the border with Italy. The other leading Partisan personalities there included Andrija Hebrang, who effectively headed an embryonic Partisan government of Croatia known as ZAVNOH (Zemaljsko Anti-fasisticko Vijece Narodnog Oslobodjernja Hrvatska), and two political commissars, Rade Zigic and Dr Vladimir Bakaric.2 Three specialist battalions conducted attacks on enemy lines of communication under the direction of Ilya Grmovnik, ‘an experienced railway saboteur with an international reputation’.3
