ABSTRACT
Until the early summer of 1944 Owen Reed’s mission was the only Allied representation in Croatia. For this reason, and because of Croatia’s central geographical position in Yugoslavia, the mission became a key staging post for the infiltration, transit and evacuation of Allied personnel. The total number assisted by Reed, his staff and the Croatian Partisans would be impossible to assess with any accuracy, but from his diary and the SOE signal logs it can be estimated conservatively that several hundred were involved. They were mostly SOE and ISLD agents, escaped POWs and shotdown airmen. This chapter briefly describes how a party of 60 escaped POWs, a senior SOE officer, a New Zealand doctor, the son of the British Prime Minister and the top Allied agent in Hungary all had occasion to pass through Judge Mission between October 1943 and June 1944.
