Book description
On November 8, 1943, U. S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a
cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and
twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to
transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A
violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash
landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of
medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory. What
followed was a dangerous nine-week game of hide-and-seek with the enemy,
a situation President Roosevelt monitored daily. Albanian partisans
aided the stranded Americans in the search for a British Intelligence
Mission, and the group began a long and hazardous journey to the
Adriatic coast. During the following weeks, they crossed Albania's
second highest mountain in a blizzard, were strafed by German planes,
managed to flee a town moments before it was bombed, and watched
helplessly as an attempt to airlift them out was foiled by Nazi forces.
Albanian Escape is the suspense-filled story of the only group of Army
flight nurses to have spent any length of time in occupied territory
during World War II. The nurses and flight crew endured frigid weather,
survived on little food, and literally wore out their shoes trekking
across the rugged countryside. Thrust into a perilous situation and
determined to survive, these women found courage and strength in each
other and in the kindness of Albanians and guerrillas who hid them from
the Germans.
