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. 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. 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. We were soon caught in a violent storm and lost all communication with the station at Bari. The Americans knew almost nothing of Albania, a small, mostly Muslim country that had changed little in centuries. 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. Our other major concern was that our shoes were wearing out quickly because of the terrain, particularly those of the nurses. When we emerged from the clouds, our plane was very close to a German fighter plane and then to another. The British working in the country as well as an American officer sent in to help us eventually got us out. Three nurses remained behind in German-occupied Berat. They rode pack mules most of the way to the coast and were met by a torpedo boat, which took them across the Adriatic. 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. When we returned to Allied lines, we were not allowed to tell anyone where we had been, who helped us, or how we escaped.
– 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.)