Forgotten 500

"An amazing but unknown World War II adventure story. Told in riveting detail for the first time, The Forgotten 500 is a tale of unsung heroes who went above and beyond." -- James Bradley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian villagers risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers, and for months the airmen lived in hiding, protected by farmers and peasants, waiting for rescue. In 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes -- without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and back without getting shot down themselves. Suppressed for more than half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the breathtaking behind-the-scenes look at the most daring escape of World War II. Gregory A. Freeman is an award-winning writer with more than twenty years of experience in journalism. He is the author of Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It and Lay This Body Down: The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves. Patrick Lawlor is an AudioFile magazine Earphones Award winner and Audie Award finalist. His recent audio includes Grace Under Fire, edited by Andrew Carroll, and The War for All the Oceans by Roy and Lesley Adkins. "Lawlor is masterful." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer