Last Words: A Memoir of World War II and the Yugoslav Tragedy

Todorovich was a lieutenant in the Yugoslav army at the time of the German invasion in 1941. Betrayed by his commanding officer after the surrender, he spent 18 months in a POW camp, escaped via France and Spain to England and later parachuted into the Serbian mountains to join the Chetnik resistance. Primarily a wartime-action memoir, the book is related in pedestrian fashion with two-dimensional glimpses of King Peter II, American liaison officers and guerrillas. Todorovich's chief motive here seems to be to defend the honor of Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovich, whose impoverished troops fought both the German occupiers and Tito's Communist partisans. The manuscript, uncompleted at the author's death in 1984, is supplemented by final chapters by the editors. It is interesting to note that Mihailovich, considered a great patriot by Todorovich, was executed in 1946 by the Communist regime as a traitor and Nazi collaborator. (Mar.)