[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 162 (Thursday, December 9, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Page S8711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TRIBUTE TO CAPTAIN GEORGE M. VUJNOVICH

 Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I wish to honor an outstanding 
Serbian-American, Captain (Ret.) George M. Vujnovich, who was recently 
awarded the Bronze Star Medal, for his heroic actions during World War 
II.
  The Bronze Star is awarded to military service personnel for bravery, 
acts of merit or meritorious service. When awarded for bravery, it is 
the fourth-highest combat award of the U.S. Armed Forces. Captain 
Vujnovich's determination to rescue and save the trapped airmen and 
subsequent participation in the planning and execution of Operation 
Halyard--resulted in one of the most successful air force rescue 
missions in history; and an operation so secret that the records were 
only declassified in 1997.
  I was made aware of the Halyard Mission as a boy in 1946. I was in 
attendance at a social event in my parents' home to honor Captain Nick 
Lalich as one of the leaders who was part of the military team that 
parachuted into Serbia to execute and carry out Captain Vujnovich's 
plan to rescue and evacuate the airmen.
  Captain Vujnovich served with the Office of Strategic Services; the 
predecessor of the modern Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and the 
wartime organization charged with coordinating activities behind enemy 
lines for the branches of the U.S. military. Operation Halyard evolved 
in wake of the Allied bombing campaign to destroy Nazi Germany's vast 
network of petroleum resources in occupied Eastern Europe. The most 
vital target of bombing was the facilities located in Ploesti, Romania, 
which supplied 35 percent of Germany's wartime petroleum. Beginning in 
April 1944, bombers of the Fifteenth Allied Air Force began a 
relentless campaign to blast the heavily guarded facilities in Ploesti 
in an attempt to halt petroleum production altogether. By August, 
Ploesti was virtually destroyed--but at the cost of 350 bombers lost, 
with their crews either killed, captured, or missing in action.
  The assault on Ploesti forced hundreds of Allied airmen to bail out 
over Nazi-occupied eastern Serbia, an area patrolled by the Allied-
friendly Chetnik guerrilla army. When the Chetnik commander, General 
Draza Mihailovich, realized that Allied airmen were parachuting into 
his territory, he ordered his troops, as well as the local peasantry, 
to aid the aviators by taking them to Chetnik headquarters in Pranjani, 
Serbia for evacuation.
  General Mihailovich's attempts to alert American authorities to the 
situation regrettably initially failed to produce action. Fortunately, 
fate would have it that when Mirjana Vujnovich, a Serb employee of the 
Yugoslav embassy in Washington, DC, heard of the trapped airmen, and 
immediately wrote to her husband, Captain Vujnovich, stationed in Bari, 
Italy. As an American, descending from Serb parents, Vujnovich knew the 
region intimately and also knew how to escape from Nazi-occupied 
territory: he had been a medical student in Belgrade when Yugoslavia 
fell to the Axis powers in 1941, and he and his wife spent months 
sneaking through minefields and begging for visas before they finally 
escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.
  I was excited that someone with a name like mine was such a hero and 
was the genesis of my interest in Yugoslavia. In fact it left such an 
impression on me that my first paper in undergrad school was titled 
``How the U.S. sold out Yugoslavia at Yalta and Tehran''.
  Captain Vujnovich made it his personal crusade to get the airmen 
home. From the outset though, Operation Halyard encountered opposition 
from Allied leaders--from the U.S. State Department, from communist 
sympathizers in the British Special Operations Executive, SOE, even 
from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. It was an 
operation that seemed condemned from the start, but Captain Vujnovich 
persevered rather than let the mission die. His persistence paid off. 
Even thought the operation endured from August 9, 1944, through 
December 27, 1944, within only the first 2 days, Operation Halyard 
successfully retrieved 241 American and Allied airmen. By the time the 
Operation was officially ended, Vujnovich's team had airlifted 512 
downed Allied airmen to safety without the loss of a single life or 
aircraft--a truly impressive accomplishment.
  Captain George Vujnovich's recognition as a hero and valued asset to 
this country and the U.S. Air Force is long over due. Frankly, had the 
records of the operation not remained sealed until 1997, I feel certain 
Captain Vujnovich would have received this honor years ago. 
Nevertheless, the decades do not and cannot diminish the valor and 
patriotism of this extraordinary man. I ask all my colleagues to join 
me now to honor this Serbian-American hero, to thank him for his 
dedicated service to our country and to congratulate him for winning 
the Bronze Star. Captain Vujnovich, I salute you.

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