Mission Rogers was a World War II Special Operations Executive (SOE) medical and military expedition to Yugoslav Partisans in Dalmatia, western Bosnia and Slovenia.
Codenamed "Vaseline" the mission left southern Italy in a Royal Navy submarine and reached the island of Vis in late November 1943.
By this time, Yugoslav Partisans led by Marshall Tito made significant wins and territory gains against both Italian and German war machine.
At the same time - frostbite, typhoid, scurvy, serious shrapnel and gunshot wounds required surgery, patient isolation and periods of hospitalisation, almost impossible to provide in such a volatile situation.
[2] Deakin realised the significant "moral credit" that the British mission received for Mackenzie's presence, and the importance of the care for the wounded: "The morale of the army was shown to be dependent, in an intimate and mutual bond between the fighting Partisan and his wounded or sick comrade, on its ability to protect the defenceless and to preserve the unity and order of the whole main body under operational conditions.
"Upon arrival on the island, the three medics engaged with local doctors and converted an empty villa into a hospital settling for the winter, although under daily Stuka bombardments.
[3] They carried their stores and left Vis in the dead of night on a small fishing boat, heading north while trying to avoid German E-boats.
[4] After some time wandering in the frozen landscapes of Lika, the group reached Plitvice, and the regional Partisan HQ led by General Ivan Gošnjak.
Here, Rogers reported to the British Military Mission and met Brigadier Maclean, Randolph Churchill, Andrew Maxwell, Major John Clarke and a Signals officer called King.
"[8] Shortly afterwards, Maclean had told Rogers to take charge of a Military Mission at Petrovac relieving its American commander Linn "Slim" Farrish who had to go to Italy.
Soon after Farrish left, some thirty downed American airmen, exhausted and sickly, arrived asking for evacuation via the nearby airfield, which was organised sometime later.
[9] Rogers returned to his medical work and started operating both on wounded soldiers and local civilians at an improvised hospital at Ataševac.
One day, they were visited by Gojko Nikoliš who told them that they would be running a "three-week course in surgery" for a group of Partisan doctors and nursing staff, picked from nearby brigades.
The hospital was also visited by John Talbot, a Reuters correspondent, who told Rogers about the Anti-Fascist Youth Congress about to take place at Drvar.
[10] The area came under a frequent aerial bombardment as the Germans looked for Partisan convoys, field hospitals and a locomotive used to clear the local railway track with a snowplough.
Finally, with all their medical stores prepared and packed Rogers, Gillanders and Stanley boarded a DC-3 aircraft at Brindisi aerodrome on 14 July 1944 and few hours later parachuted to Črnomelj.
The hospitals had to be extremely well concealed as the German troops were never far away: "After we had been walking the forest road for almost an hour, Igor stopped, as though searching for something among the small trees on the roadside.
We pushed our way through the low undergrowth, covering our tracks with dead branches, and then found, leading off at right angles on the stony forest floor, a series of "stepping stones".
[15] His dedication and competence did not go unnoticed and soon he was invited to meet Josip Vidmar and Boris Kidrič, the two most senior Partisan politicians in Slovenia.
"In early May 1945, as the war was nearing the end, Lindsay Rogers left Slovenia, his friends, colleagues and patients, who gave him a great send-off party.