Savage Will: The Daring Escape of Americans Trapped Behind Nazi Lines

In the tradition of incredible true stories from The Great Escape to Argo, Savage Will recounts a tale of survival, daring, and evasion behind enemy lines: that of American medics and nurses stranded for two months in Nazi-occupied Albania.



In 1943, men and women of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron boarded a routine flight from Sicily to the Italian mainland to care for wounded soldiers. En route, their plane drifted hundreds of miles off course and crash-landed in remote mountainous Albania.



The unarmed Americans were trapped hundreds of blizzard-plagued miles from Allied lines, in a country torn apart by rival bands of pro- and anti-German guerrillas. Hunted by German soldiers, the castaways relied on what one survivor called their savage will” to elude their enemy and find their way to freedom.



What followed is the most thrilling untold story of World War II—a saga reaching from President Roosevelt and top Allied intelligence officials to a host of brave Albanian Resistance fighters, the British and U.S. Mediterranean air forces, and the dashing English lieutenant and the tenacious American captain sent behind enemy lines to carry out a heroic rescue.

Timothy M. Gay is the award-winning author of Assignment to Hell, Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson, and Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend. His essays and op-ed pieces on American history, politics, public policy, and sports have appeared in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, and many other publications. A graduate of Georgetown University, where he majored in American history, Tim lives in Virginia with his wife and children.

About Timothy M. Gay