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This website is dedicated to a World War II hero, Joseph Maloney. Not only did Joseph Maloney risk his life for the freedom of others, but Joe has also makes it his goal to educate the public about his hero, Major William Jones, who perhaps changed the course of World War II as he was a British Intelligence Officer working with the Partisan movement in Eastern Europe. Joe also works hard to make sure that the public is educated about the Partisan movement so that people are aware of the lengths they went to in order to save so many of Allied airmen shot down during Second World War.
The above picture illustrates a biography of Joseph Maloney, written by the talented Ray Zinck. This is a fascinating book that captures the true essence of Joseph Maloney and the struggles he overcame while fighting in World War II, as well as how his story came together only within the last ten years. The title of this book is "The Final Flight of Maggie's Drawers". To obtain a copy of this book, please email us using the email link below.
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Joe Maloney signed up for the American Army in 1943, and would later become a B-24 tail gunner attached to the 15th Air Force which was based in Southern Italy. On April 2, 1944, Joe and his crew would board their B-24 called Maggie's Drawer's to aid in the bombing of a little village in Austria named Steyr, where a good number of Hitler's war weapons were being produced. The plane would be fatally hit, forcing the crew, including Joe, to bailout. Joe landed alone in a foreign land where no one spoke English - Yugoslavia. It would be the Allied Partisans that would come to Joe's rescue and lead him to safety, away from the Germans. The Partisans had no ties to the former exiled Yugoslavian government, and were purely a people's army determined to drive out the Nazi invaders. Their leader was a revolutionary labour organizer named Tito.
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Forty-six years after his experience in Yugoslavia, Joe still remained in the dark about many of the details of his escape in Yugoslavia. Joe would finally begin to learn more about his terrifying experience in 1990 at a St. Patrick's Day party at the home of a friend in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. It was at this party that Joe would meet Ana Brodarec, from Croatia, who was in the town visiting her son, Dr. Ivo Brodarec - a local doctor. Ana herself had been a Partisan during the Second World War. Joe told Ana as much as he could remember about the mountains and villages he had seen in Yugoslavia. Ana slowly started to put the pieces together for Joe and through her connections back in Croatia, Joe would gather much information that would enable Joe to tell his story. Joe would also learn that his hero, Major William Jones, was from Bear River, Nova Scotia - only an hour away from where Joe is currently living.
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