2024 - The Crows Flight Trail Slovenia - R Stanton
The Crows Flight Trail Slovenia (recce) - Report
A small group of ELMS members flew out to Slovenia at the end of August 2024 to carry out a recce of the escape route of 106 POWs from the work camp at Ozbalt near Maribor.
The POWs were mainly British, with some from Australia, New Zealand and France. Eighty years ago, on the 30th of August, a small group, led by Les Laws [UK] and Ralph Childs [Australia] absconded from their work-camp to meet local Partisans. After the meeting it was agreed that Les and his group group would return to the camp next day, together with 100 Partisans, to liberate the remainder of the POWs. This was the largest mass escape from a POW Camp in WW2. [Details in Newsletter 43, 2018]
All the escapers returned to Allied lines, having trekked through dense forests, crossed a raging river, and being hosted along the way in small, sympathetic villages where they were fed and watered each night. The distance covered was 200 miles. Along the way they were ambushed by the Germans, lost one Partisan who was killed in a fire-fight, and two escapers who got lost in the darkness during an ambush [they turned up later]. Slovenia was the only country in Europe where the Partisans liberated their own country. The Germans held the big towns, but the Partisans held the countryside.
The ELMS team flew in to two different destinations: six of us arriving at Zagreb in Croatia, and two arriving at Ljubljana in Slovenia. We met up at our ‘Day One RV’, a hotel in Maribor, having booked a small minibus from Zagreb airport for the duration of the event.
In Maribor I finally met face-to-face with Ed Vedernjak, a Slovenian member who has been working with me to plan this event for a very long time, and an authority on the Crow’s flight Trail. We were joined by his daughter Maya. Ed has worked for many years to get the trail recognised and way-marked. We arranged a plan for the first day. Ed agreed to meet us outside the hotel to take us to the Maribor Camp Museum the next morning. Following that we planned to visit the site of the work camp at Ozbalt where there were to be speeches and wreath laying.
At the Museum Ed gave an excellent presentation and then we were able to walk around the museum and take in the history of the wartime area and camp. We were given information booklets and a Crow’s Flight T-shirt. From the museum we moved to the memorial at Ozbalt to lay wreaths. The temperature had become very hot, but approximately 250 people had congregated; members Kim and Sarah laid the ELMS wreath and the army mounted a guard of honour. Standards of the different Partisan units were raised around the memorial and speeches made - I gave an address from ELMS. After many conversations we then moved on, to the home of Liza Zavodnik - who used to boil the water for Les Laws to collect to make the tea for the POWs. Both Liza, her husband August and Les were crucial to the mass escape. Liza was in contact with the partisans and able to introduce Les; August worked on the railways and could advise on the train movements – they risked their lives to assist the escape. We then drove to the first village of Lovrec where the POWs spent their first night.
Our group were not in a position to walk the complete route as the distance was great and we simply did not have the time. We were unable to get maps of the route in England - or in Slovenia. Ed managed to obtain some maps for the first few days, after that we had to rely on technology – thank goodness we all had signals! We spent four days walking the routes and the other days driving them. We met up with all the Mayors in most of the villages, laid wreaths on war memorials and at the river crossing memorial to the boatmen who ferried the POWs across the fast running current. We stayed in excellent accommodation throughout, ate excellent food and found many good bunkhouse locations for trail walkers. We completed the trail at the Dakota memorial, the symbol of the fleet of aircraft which transported the POWs to Bari in Italy. The aircraft is in the open air, but in good condition and well looked after. We laid a wreath at the site.
Our team were of the opinion that the Crow’s Flight Trail is a great walk through beautiful country. It is mountainous and heavily wooded with many tracks passing through. There is so much to see and still more to visit regarding WW2 locations, such as the Partisan hospitals hidden away in deep mountainous woods. We did visit one Partisan hospital in a small village - the locals were helpful and warned us of possible problems in the wooded areas such as roaming bears which may be accompanied by cubs. The larger towns are well worth a visit too. My thanks to the team for taking on this new, and largely unknown, challenge.
