The Heroes of Halyard screened at royal White Palace

BELGRADE - Alexander Karadjordjevic, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia, and his wife, Princess Katherine, hosted a screening of the WWII-themed film The Heroes of Halyard in the cinema theatre of the royal White Palace in downtown Belgrade on Monday evening.

"I am very grateful to our dear friend Rados (Bajic, actor and director) not only for bringing this film to our home, but for shooting it in the first place. The heroes of Mission Halyard, the brave soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland who risked their lives to rescue Allied pilots, must always be remembered. This is a film that needed to be made not only for the sake of our ancestors, but for our sake and for the sake of our people and our national memory," Crown Prince Alexander said.

We have waited for too long for this story to be told, but the wait eventually paid off, he said.

"Although frequently referred to as the 'forgotten 500', the pilots who were rescued are, in fact, not forgotten. Neither are all the brave men who, under the command of their fearless leader General Dragoljub Mihailovic and my father King Peter II as the army commander-in-chief, launched and successfully completed an operation of rescuing their allies. Their courage and determination to live in a free world are a mark showing us the path to the future," he said.

Bajic said he was very happy to have had an opportunity to screen his award-winning film in the home of the Serbian royal family.

The Heroes of Halyard is a war drama inspired by the largest single rescue operation for Allied pilots behind enemy lines in the history of world aviation.

During Operation Halyard, which took place in 1944, more than 500 US and British pilots, as well as several airplane crews from Russia, France and other Allied nations, took off to freedom from an improvised landing strip in the village of Pranjani, near Gornji Milanovac, central Serbia.

The operation was spearheaded by the Royal Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland and the US Strategic Services Office.

US President Harry Truman posthumously decorated Mihailovic with the Legion of Merit, one of the top US honours awarded for support to Allied forces and contribution to victory in WWII.