“ Be Free or Die makes you want to stand up and cheer. Cate Lineberry has done us all a great service by telling this incredibly moving, thrilling, and important story about an American hero who deserves to be remembered, and admired.” 
 
 – Candice Millard, New York Times bestselling author of Hero of the Empire ||||| View Images Harold Hayes, seen here on the left in 1945 and on the right in present day, was one of the first medics added to the 807th’s roster. 
 
 Photographs courtesy Miranda Harple/Cate Lineberry (right) and Harold Hayes Collection (left) 
 
 Harold Hayes was only 21 years old in November 1943 when the transport plane he and 29 other Americans were traveling in crash-landed in Nazi-occupied Albania. 
 
 During their months-long ordeal, the group of men and women traversed more than 600 miles of brutal terrain, dodged German troops, faced desperate hunger and debilitating illnesses, survived blizzards, and were caught in crossfire. When they finally made it across Allied lines, they were forbidden by the military from discussing the details of the events with anyone, even their family members. 
 
 Now, almost 70 years later, Hayes, the only living member of the group, talks about his experiences with Cate Lineberry, author of the new book, The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines, published this month. 
 
 What was your role in the Army Air Forces, and where were you serving in early November 1943? 
 
 I was a medic and a member of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron in Catania, Sicily. We flew from our headquarters in Sicily to southern Italy on transport planes carrying equipment and men toward the front lines, helped load sick and wounded patients onto empty planes, and escorted the patients back to Sicily or North Africa where they could receive better medical treatment. 
 
 Who was traveling with you on the C-53D transport plane that November day? 
 
 There were 30 people on the plane: a pilot, a co-pilot, a radio operator, and a crew chief, plus 13 nurses and 13 medics. Rain had prevented any of us from leaving Catania for the previous three days, so our commanding officer decided to send half of the medical personnel in our squadron to help evacuate the many patients who were waiting. Only one passenger, besides the flight crew, was not part of the 807th. He was a medic from the 802nd who was catching a ride with us to Bari [on the southeastern coast of Italy]. 
 
 Why did the pilots crash-land the plane? 
 
 There wasn't a cloud in the sky when we left the airfield, but the closer we got to Bari, the more clouds appeared. We were soon caught in a violent storm and lost all communication with the station at Bari. The pilots ascended above the clouds, but when the plane got up to about 8,000 feet, the wings started icing up, so we had to dive down through the clouds. We could see a coastline; the pilots thought we might have flown across Italy and were near Italy's western coast. They didn't realize we'd crossed the Adriatic. The pilots tried to land on what looked like an abandoned airfield, and that's when someone started shooting at us. The pilots immediately headed for the clouds. That was probably the scariest part—flying through a valley where the tops of the mountains were higher than the clouds. When we emerged from the clouds, our plane was very close to a German fighter plane and then to another. The pilots continued trying to dodge the enemy planes and eventually found a place near a lake where we crash-landed. 
 
 Who helped you after the crash? 
 
 Our first helpers were Albanian partisans, members of a resistance group fighting the Germans, who led us through the mountains. We were also helped by many Albanian villagers who let us stay with them at night and shared what little food they had with us. If they'd been caught, the Germans would likely have killed them. I'm certain that without the help of the Albanian people, we wouldn't have survived that winter. The British working in the country as well as an American officer sent in to help us eventually got us out. 
 
 What was your greatest concern while you were trapped behind enemy lines? 
 
 One of our biggest concerns was that the American military, as well as our families, didn't know where we were. They didn't even know we were in Albania; they only knew we were missing. Our other major concern was that our shoes were wearing out quickly because of the terrain, particularly those of the nurses. We hoped to get to the coast, and the only way there was to walk. 
 
 How did the group get along during those difficult months? 
 
 For the most part, we got along pretty well, but there were a few people who rubbed each other the wrong way. When you're hungry, cold, and tired, you forget about almost everything else and are only thinking about surviving. Watson, one of the nurses, said, "Anything a medic can do, I can do," and that's exactly what she did. That's how most of the nurses were. They didn't slow us down. 
 
 Why were you forbidden from discussing your experiences in Albania, even after the war was over? 
 
 When we returned to Allied lines, we were not allowed to tell anyone where we had been, who helped us, or how we escaped. The secrecy was to protect the people who had helped us and to protect the means of escape for future downed airmen. After the war, Enver Hoxha became the ruthless dictator of Albania, and we were concerned that if we named the Albanians who saved our lives, they would be killed. We later learned that one of the partisans who helped us was imprisoned shortly after the war and was eventually executed. ||||| “For many years, I didn’t say anything about what happened in Albania,” Mr. Hayes said in a 2015 telephone interview with The New York Times from his assisted-living home in Medford. “After the war was over, Hoxha was ruthless. If he discovered the names of anyone who had helped us, he had them and their families executed.” 
 
 Mr. Hayes had no special role in the group’s survival, but by outliving all his wartime comrades, he became a last conduit for their story, which was related in a 1999 memoir by one of the nurses, and more recently in several books, notably “The Secret Rescue” (2013), by Cate Lineberry, whose account relied heavily on Mr. Hayes’s recollections. 
 
 The perilous adventure began two months after Italy surrendered and Allied forces invaded Italy to begin pushing the Germans back across Europe. On Nov. 8, 1943, the nurses, medics and fliers of the Army Air Force’s 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron took off from Catania, Sicily, bound for Bari, on Italy’s east coast, where hundreds of wounded troops awaited air evacuation. 
 
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 Their twin-engine cargo plane carried no weapons, but the pilot, First Lt. Charles Thrasher, 22, anticipated no fighting. With him were a co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief. The nurses, all second lieutenants, were 22 to 32 years old. The medics, including Mr. Hayes, 21, from Indianola, Iowa, were all equivalent to staff sergeants and ranged in age from 21 to 36. 
 
 An hour into the flight, the plane became lost in a huge storm over the Adriatic Sea. Its compass and communications failed. Blown 100 miles off course, it crossed the coast of Albania and was intercepted by German fighters and attacked by antiaircraft guns. It plunged to a belly landing in a marsh 25 miles inland. Willis Shumway, 23, the crew chief, was the only casualty, with a knee injury that left him unable to walk. 
 
 The disoriented Americans had no idea where they were. Fearing a fuel explosion, they scrambled out of the plane and encountered their first bit of luck. Striding out of a woods was a band of rugged-looking men with rifles and daggers. One spoke a little English. He was Hasan Gina, an anti-German partisan leader. He told the Americans they were in Albania. 
 
 Later, they would learn that they were 150 miles east of Bari, on the wrong side of the Adriatic, surrounded by German forces that had occupied Albania for months, and were caught in a civil war between rival partisan groups. 
 
 The Americans knew almost nothing of Albania, a small, mostly Muslim country that had changed little in centuries. The mountainous terrain was dotted with impoverished villages. There were no railroads and few roads. Mules and horses were the main transportation. There was little running water or electricity. Winters were brutal, food was scarce, and blood feuds were common among the ferociously proud peoples. 
 
 With only a general plan to reach the west coast and somehow cross the Adriatic to Italy, the Americans began walking in the wrong direction. Over the ensuing weeks, guided by the partisans, they trekked through mountains and valleys, sometimes cutting back or traveling in circles to avoid German patrols, living in the open or sheltering in villages and sharing cornbread with peasants. 
 
 The Americans were soon listed as missing in action, and War Department telegrams, beginning “regret to inform you,” were sent to their families back home. 
 
 The survivors, meantime, carried Sergeant Shumway on a stretcher made of seats from the plane; they later found pack animals for him. After five days, they rested at a partisan-controlled town called Berat, where they were cheered, mistaken for the vanguard of an Allied invasion to liberate Albania. They also met other partisan leaders, and learned of a British agent who had recently parachuted into the country. 
 
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 Their respite lasted only a few days. Then, they awoke to gunfire and the explosion of artillery shells as German forces entered the town. In the ensuing confusion, German planes strafed a truck carrying some of the escaping Americans. Three nurses were separated from the main group and left behind in Berat; they took refuge in a farmhouse, and remained in hiding in the area for four months. 
 
 The main group of Americans climbed on foot to a mountain village and were caught in a crossfire between partisan groups. “It was the first time the Americans had heard of the rival group, and they were beginning to realize they were in as much danger from the country’s internal battle as they were from the Germans,” Ms. Lineberry wrote in “The Secret Rescue.” 
 
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 They encountered other perils. “Some of the blankets offered to them to ward off the cold night air were infested with fleas and lice,” the author wrote. “Since they’d crashed, most of them had been unable to bathe, aside from splashing some water on their faces and arms from mountain streams or an occasional basin, and they were all filthy and now battling fleas, lice and the GI’s,” Army slang for diarrhea. 
 
 The Americans were often unable to find food. Facing starvation, they made tea by boiling straw and ate berries that worsened their diarrhea. Sharing with peasants was sometimes a culture shock. Mr. Hayes and another medic saw a sheep’s head roasted over coals, then split in half with an ax. 
 
 “The Americans watched wide-eyed as two women each took one-half of the head and ate everything, including the eyeballs,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “Nothing was wasted.” 
 
 As autumn waned, blizzards enveloped the Americans. Their clothing was too thin. Their shoes were worn out. “Though all their feet soon felt like blocks of ice and their bodies shivered, they knew they had to keep going,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “The snow was coming down so fast they could barely see the person in front of them, but they had to stay together to avoid losing one another in the blinding white storm.” 
 
 On Nov. 27, British intelligence in Albania learned from partisans that the American plane had crashed and that the nurses, medics and crew were alive, trying to reach the coast. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the families of the missing were told. 
 
 In December, an American rescue plan was developed, led by Army Capt. Lloyd G. Smith, 24, who was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under cover of darkness, he slipped onto the heavily guarded Albanian coast by boat and set up a base camp in a cave in the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic. Others joined him, and they moved inland to find the Americans. 
 
 The British, meantime, organized a second rescue effort under Lt. Gavan Duffy, a secret agent who with a small team had reached Albania months earlier by parachute and on foot. Through partisan contacts, he found the Americans in eastern Albania and began leading them westward, intending to reach the coast. 
 
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 But halfway there, at Gjirokaster, German troops blocked the way, and the Americans were too sick and exhausted to go on. He radioed for an American air rescue. Two C-47 cargo planes flew in with fighter escorts. But the Germans disrupted the landing, and Lieutenant Duffy called it off. 
 
 The Americans, after the euphoria of nearly being rescued, were crushed. But they resumed their journey, and with American and British help reached the coast. On Jan. 9, after a 63-day ordeal, 27 Americans — 10 nurses and 17 medics and fliers — boarded a British launch and crossed to Italy. 
 
 Three nurses remained behind in German-occupied Berat. Captain Lloyd Smith brought them to safety in March 1944. They rode pack mules most of the way to the coast and were met by a torpedo boat, which took them across the Adriatic. 
 
 After the war, Mr. Hayes returned to civilian life, attended Iowa State College and became an aeronautical engineer for North American Aviation, designing military planes and conducting studies for the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration until he retired in 1984. 
 
 He married the former Betty Allen in 1944. She survives him, as do two daughters, Margaret Bleakley and Victoria Sprott; two brothers, Karl and James; a sister, Virginia McCall; two grandsons and a great-granddaughter. 
 
 Harold Lyle Hayes was born in Pekin, Iowa, on April 11, 1922, to Ralph and Jenella Van Gorp Hayes. He graduated from high school in Indianola in 1940. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he was drafted, volunteered as a medic and by 1943 was in Sicily, flying evacuation missions. 
 
 “When he first returned to Allied lines, he had nightmares of being chased,” Ms. Lineberry wrote of Mr. Hayes. “Those faded with time, but as was true of many in the group, he rarely talked about his ordeal over the years.”
– When Harold Hayes said he had one helluva war story to tell, he wasn't kidding. The 94-year-old, who died on Sunday, was the last survivor of 30 intrepid Americans who crash-landed behind Nazi lines during World War II, plunging them into a surreal odyssey that included German attacks, blizzards, illness, and near starvation as they trekked 600 miles until their eventual rescue 63 days later. Details of their saga was a "long-held-secret" for decades, the New York Times reports. It all began on a clear day in November 1943 when a cargo plane carrying nurses and medics from Sicily to Bari, Italy, was blown off course by a major storm and fired on by German flak guns. After ditching in a remote area, the group learned they were in Albania from locals. Under constant threat of capture, Hayes, then 21, and the others bunked with peasants with little to share except lice-infested blankets. They boiled tea from straw and ate berries. Their limbs froze as autumn gave way to white-out blizzards. "When you're hungry, cold, and tired, you forget about almost everything else and are only thinking about surviving," Hayes said, per National Geographic. A British spy found them too sick to go on, and arranged a US air rescue that failed. Crushed, the group managed to continue moving west and reached the Adriatic coast on Jan. 9. To protect their Albanian saviors, they stayed mum during the war and for years after during the Communist years. Hayes "rarely talked about his ordeal," author Cate Lineberry tells the Times. (This lost WWII sub was found off Hawaii.)