Reilly is a retired Navy officer and retired college professor/administrator who lives in Bunkers Hill.
When my mother-in-law passed away in 2012, my husband was working as a docent at the USS Midway Museum. He convinced my father, a WWII veteran and POW camp survivor, to move to San Diego. He had no reason to stay in Philadelphia; most of his close friends had died there. So he sold his house and came to live with us.
At Midway there was a desk where veterans could talk to visitors about their experiences during World War II. My husband thought it would be good for his father to share his experiences. So for four years he did. He especially loved chatting with the kids and taking pictures with the pretty young women. They thought he was cute. Unfortunately, his feet never fully recovered from being frozen in the war. They suddenly became numb and he had trouble keeping his balance.
One day, my husband had a bad fall and hit his head, from which he never recovered. He died in 2016 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in La Jolla. Shortly after my husband's death, my husband received a letter from his father's bombardier squadron. It said that WWII historians had discovered the site and remains of what appeared to be the crash site of his father's bomber. They were trying to get in touch with any crew members who might still be alive. My husband explained that his father had recently passed away, but that my husband had learned a lot about the crash over the years and wanted to get in touch with the historians investigating the crash site. My husband's father, Lt. James Reilly, was a 19-year-old bombardier on a B-24 Liberator nicknamed “Mairzy Dotz” stationed in southern Italy during the final days of the war.
The air raids on May 10, 1944, began before dawn. The crisp spring morning was filled with the scent of flowers of all kinds, contrasted with the pungent smell of smoldering piles of rubbish near the airbase and the fuel fumes of the 12 bombers as they started their engines. The young bombardiers huddled with their pilots and co-pilots and, in the pre-dawn light, reviewed their mission: their target: an airfield in Vienna. Meanwhile, 500 miles away, also at dawn, 18-year-old Croatian Army Private Josip Marković was shivering and wrapped in a worn blanket in a barracks at an army base outside Brignje, Croatia.
He was the eldest of 12 children without a father. His mother didn't want him to join the army; she depended on him. Marković countered that he would be better able to help his family by joining the army. Marković was not an idealist, but he was proud to be Croatian. Like most Croats, he was tired of seeing his country overrun by new powers who wanted the beauty and bounty of this fertile land that stretched from the mountains to the sea. So, over his mother's objections, he enlisted in the Croatian army (a scruffy bunch of boys and men) led by a cadre of German officers. Or he could join the communists (Tito's “partisans”) in the mountains.
Markovich was about to turn over comfortably in his lumpy cot when he heard a distant whoosh, a sound out of place in this rural outpost. He ran to his barracks window and saw an Allied bomber approaching. He hurried into his uniform and headed for the door. As he left his barracks, he heard a sharp screech and saw the bomber damaged and descending rapidly. German Messerschmitt fighter planes flew above the Allied bombers, strafing them as they plummeted. Tiny, spidery black dots erupted from the underbelly of the planes, plumes of white smoke as they drifted into the clearing far below.
Markovich began to understand what was happening. The crew of the clattering plane ejected. Then he heard a thunderous rumble. Orange flames erupted from the plane, and black smoke billowed high into the sky as it plummeted into the hills to the east of the valley. The Messerschmitt circled above the crash site and sped off. Markovich knew the region well, and this was his chance to finally see the action. He hopped on his motorcycle and raced down the hill into the valley. He knew exactly where the wind would blow the parachute. Riley successfully dropped the bomber's 5,000-pound bombs on the target, but the plane was hit by heavy flak, and German Messerschmitts pursued it as the pilot tried to fly past the flak and return to base.
It was clear that the bombers could not return. They needed to bail out. None of them had ever bailed out of a plane before, and they had no time to practice it before the mission. With any luck, they would avoid capture in the hills and reach a steep mountain range where friendly Croatian rebels were stationed. By the time Marković reached a clearing in the hills, the first crew member had been shot down. It was then that he realized that in his haste he had left his rifle behind. For a moment he felt very stupid, but he decided that he had to do his best until the rest of his unit arrived. Marković approached the first crew member to land. Marković tried to look as tough as he could.
When the airmen saw him, they put their hands up and said, “Americans…don't shoot!” Luckily for Markovich, all the Americans survived the crash and were taken prisoner. They were herded into the back of a truck and transported to an interrogation site. The interrogation didn't take long; the prisoners didn't know anything more than the interrogators already knew. They were loaded back into the truck and transported to a POW camp. When Reilly returned home in 1945, the Pacific War was still raging. Once he had recovered sufficiently, he hoped to train as a fighter pilot and be deployed to the Pacific. After completing his training, he was sent to Guam to fly a P47 Thunderbolt in the fight against Japan.
Marković remained in the army until the end of the war in Europe. Shortly after Germany surrendered, Tito came to power and Croatia was absorbed into the collection of Eastern European countries that came to be known as Yugoslavia. Croatian soldiers who fought on the German side were hunted down, imprisoned, and most of them executed. Marković and his family spent the next nine years in refugee camps in Europe before successfully emigrated to Cleveland.
In the summer of 2019, while he was an extended visitor to Croatia, Marković got a call from a member of a group investigating World War II crash sites in Croatia. The historians explained that they had found what appeared to be the remains of an Allied bomber outside Brignje. Marković was told that the son of one of the pilots was visiting Croatia and wanted to meet him.
Markovic was excited that after all these years, he might finally find out what happened to the Americans he captured in 1944. In October 2019, he met with Reilly's son in Brynje and traveled by caravan to a rural lookout point where they could see where the bomber had crashed. Reilly was polite and friendly. He spoke with Markovic while a local TV crew filmed their conversation. My husband confirmed that, as far as he knew, all the crew members of the Maisy Dotes had died. Markovic invited Reilly to come back to Croatia or Cleveland again. He wanted to meet his family and talk more about the war. But COVID-19 got in the way.
Markovic died in 2021 from complications of COVID-19 in his beloved Croatia. He was a proud and brave Croatian-American to the end. As is often the case in war, looking back, Markovic and Reilly had more in common than not. They both survived. They both had positive attitudes despite hardships. They were tough and ambitious. They were very fun people. They were family-oriented. They were married for 62 years. His wife passed away in 2012. They both had a son who attended college in Ohio. They both had a grandson named Michael, who was a doctor. They both loved beer. They both quietly suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. They sometimes medicated themselves with alcohol. Even in their old age, they enjoyed telling war stories and taking photos with young, beautiful women.
Riley and Malkovich were not special people. They had something in common with many people who fought in World War II. The only thing Riley and Malkovich had in common was a day in the spring of 1944 that they could vividly remember until the end of their lives. If they had the opportunity to meet again in their old age, they would no doubt have overlooked the label of “enemy” and embraced the label of “friend.”
