-Caveat Lector- >From Associated Press Wednesday March 31 1:20 PM ET NATO Strikes Recall WWII Bombings By SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - ``Planes got off the ground for the third day in a row and went to Belgrade, Yugoslavia .... The mission was a complete success with all planes returning to this base.'' Thus reads a U.S. war diary - from World War II. The NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia represent the second time this century that U.S. warplanes have participated in bombing the country. The first time, 4,000 Serb civilians were killed in attacks on Nazi occupiers. Airfields, rail marshaling yards, bridges, an oil refinery, radio transmitters, aircraft parts factories and electric power plants were the targets in 1944. Civilians died in so-called ``collateral damage'' in residential and public areas. NATO began airstrikes last week, aiming to eliminate Yugoslav air defenses and hamper President Slobodan Milosevic's ability to attack Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. After a week of air bombardment, NATO decided early Wednesday to widen the area of its attack, which could bring bombs on downtown Belgrade. Potential targets include government military complexes in the city center, and some military strategists have urged NATO to hit bridges and other structures important to the military. Yugoslavs fear those would also include railroads and other parts of the civilian infrastructure. In 1944, as now, U.S. bombers flew out of bases across the Adriatic Sea in Italy. ``Planes got off the ground for the third day in a row and went to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to bomb Zemun airdrome there,'' said the war diary of April 16, 1944, for the 414th Bomb Squadron (Heavy) stationed at Amendola, Italy. ``The mission was a complete success with all planes returning to this base.'' The 1944 Easter Bombings - a series of raids around Orthodox Easter - killed 4,000 - double the number of civilians who died in a surprise attack on the capital by Nazi Germany three years earlier. The German commander of the 1941 attack, Luftwaffe Marshal Alexander Lohr, was later tried and executed for the bombings. In 1944, Allied bombings of German military targets had been requested by Yugoslav guerrilla leader Josip Broz Tito, who assumed power after the war. The 1944 bombing campaign extended beyond Belgrade to towns throughout Serbia and Montenegro. ``Strict rules were in place aimed at avoiding civilian casualties and pilots were briefed: 'These are friendly populations, so don't take it out on them,''' said Richard Davis, a Pentagon historian. U.S. planes dropped about 4,500 tons of bombs at various targets in Yugoslavia during the war. This contrasts with 50,000 tons dropped on Berlin alone, or 30,000 tons on Vienna, Davis said. ``Still, you always had a lot of collateral damage, the bombs would spill over into residential or commercial areas,'' Davis said. Belgrade's Sava River bridge, built in 1942 by the Nazis to replace an earlier span blown up in 1941 by the retreating Yugoslav army to impede the Nazi advance, was a prime target of the U.S. raids. Yet it survived the April 1944 bombings, while residential areas around it were leveled. ``The bombs were bursting everywhere except on the bridge,'' remembered Slava Mejavsek, who watched the bombing from a hillside suburb where she and her husband had taken refuge. When her mother reached them after escaping a downtown home that had taken a direct hit, her hair was singed and still smoking from the blast, Mrs. Mejavsek said in a phone interview from her home in Belgrade. Belgrade residents helped downed U.S. pilots evade Nazi search parties, she recalled. The Yugoslav resistance rescued hundreds of U.S. fliers who were downed by the Germans during the war. U.S. commanders were disturbed by Serb fatalities caused by American bombs, and Gen. Carl Spaatz requested a detailed account of the raids. The resulting investigation found that accuracy was so poor that the majority of bombs dropped during the raids struck at least 600 yards from their targets. ``And that was on a good day,'' explained Davis. >From Reuters Wednesday March 31 10:45 AM ET Serbs Pack Kosovans Onto Exile Trains <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo By Sean Maguire BLACE, Macedonia (Reuters) - Hundreds of Kosovo Albanian refugees arrived at the Macedonian border by train Wednesday, accusing Serb forces of rounding them up at gunpoint and locking them on board without food or water. Weeping men, women and children from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, were pushed off a first train into a field just inside Macedonia before dawn, and spent hours shivering in drizzle while local police registered them. They spoke of being rounded up from several districts early Tuesday, marched to the main station and forced to board the passenger train at gunpoint. The doors were locked by Serb police, and passengers spent hours without food or water. ``The police came yesterday morning and told us 'Go, just go.' They shot in the air, so we left,'' said Berishe, 38. He and his family were given three hours notice to pack and leave. A second train arrived at the Serbian side of the border late in the morning, and around 1,000 people were forced to marched down the railway tracks into Macedonia. Most said they came from Urosevac, some 25 miles from the border. ``They (the Serb police) said: 'Go from your house. This is not a place for you, this is the heart of Serbia,''' said Nazmi, a man of about 60. ``They took our ID cards and said don't come back. They said if you do come back we'll take your head off,'' said Gafur, a 32-year-old man. The arrival of the trains took the Macedonian authorities by surprise and provided further evidence of the systematic expulsion of Kosovo Albanians. ``My Serb neighbors came to us and told us we had to leave,'' said Victor, a passenger on the first train. ``They gave us five minutes and then we joined a line of people that went down to the station where the train was waiting.'' Passengers feared they were going to be used by the Serbs as human shields against NATO air attacks. ``We thought we would be used as prisoners of war or in case of NATO attacks,'' Victor said. The Pristina headquarters of Yugoslav army and Serb police units have been hit hard by NATO warplanes in recent nights. But Victor doubted Serb forces were substantially weakened, with most police units moving into homes vacated by ethnic Albanians. ``They think they are safe there from NATO,'' he said. Passengers said friends who remained in Pristina had told them by mobile phone that men in the city had been rounded up and put in a football stadium. The report was unconfirmed. Other refugees trembled with fear as they described how they were terrorized into leaving. Baci, 25, a student, said masked men came to his district, parked a tank on a corner and went on a rampage of looting and burning. ``They burned everything. They took everything from us,'' he said. He added that he saw Serbian police kill three people when the train stopped at Kosovo Polje, a suburb of Pristina. The trainloads of refugees added to a wave of human misery piling up at the Blace border point, 20 miles west of the Macedonian capital Skopje. Macedonian authorities, who had slowed refugee arrivals to a trickle Tuesday, effectively threw the border open and shepherded waiting crowds onto buses. Those arriving said hundreds of cars were backed up some 6 miles into Yugoslavia. Kefser, a middle-aged woman, rubbed her aching legs as she described a two-day wait crammed into a small car along with six other people. ``Many people have started to abandon their cars and just walk to the frontier,'' she said. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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