Tito, Mihailović, and the Allies, 1941-1945

A small but important correction is required to page 115 "The British establish Liason Mission with the Partizans" as follows:
Alexander Simic (Stevens MM), listed as the 3rd member of the Fungus Commission was an Englishman and an enlisted member of the British Army as an SOE operative under 13 Corp Western Desert command. My father was not Canadian, but British, born in London in 1916 , his mother English and his father Serbian. the group was dropped on the night of April 19/20 , 1943according to official JNA / partisan Archives. He was the wireless operator for the group and was interogated at length by Vladimir Bakic at the Croatian Partisan HQ at Krbavsko Polje to which he and his two colleagues Pavle Pavlovic and Petar Erdelja were taken, before being allowed to send a request to SOE Cairo for the BBC to broadcast a coded confirmation the mission. The initial acceptance of the mission was greatly helped on the one hand by the fact that the Croatian Commander Ivan Rukovina had fought with Petar Erdelja in Spain with the International Brigade, but equally hindered by the fact that owing to command disputes within SOE in Cairo he had not been given his commission before the mission left. a fact that was not well received by the Partizan Command and led to the subsequent arrival of Major WD Jones as a Commissioned Officer of the British Army. Maj. Jones was transferred with him to the Slovenian Partisan HQ in late summer 1943 to blow the railway bridges at Zidanimost. This original mission,code named Fungus was I believe followed by a later mission of the same name to the Croatian partisans headed by Maj. Owen Reed. Before transferring to Slovenia he attended the first JAVNO - freedom conference in Jajce in the summer of 1943 and was present at the surrender of the Italian Forces under General Cerruti near Nove Mesto.He was commissioned (December 1943) in the field,Her remained in Slovenia until July 1944 when airlifted out to Bari to serve as an observer with "Rover Paddy" for Tactical Air Support in the Bologna / Forli area. He returned to Jugoslavia as the Liason officer & Artillary Observor for the combined Ops Raid on PAG Island in March 1945 and then to Triest as OC 13th Corp Liason Group and was present at the enforced surrender of German Army units outside of Triest to the local JNA Commander (Bentic) instead of the New Zealand Corp of the 8th Army under the Blue Line accords..
For the record my Father was awarded the Military Medal -
as reported in the London Gazette on August 26, 1943.