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Last survivor of harrowing flight from Nazis dies Harold Hayes of Medford was the last surviving member of a 30-member group whose story was told in "The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines." Mail Tribune / file photo Wednesday Jan 25, 2017 at 5:00 PM Jan 25, 2017 at 5:00 PM Harold Hayes, the last surviving member of a group of medics who crash-landed in Nazi territory during World War II and dodged enemy troops for two harrowing months before being rescued on the Adriatic coast, died Sunday in Medford, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Hayes died at age 94 after an operation to remove a blood clot from his leg, his daughter Margaret Bleakley told the Times. Hayes' story was told in "The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines," a book by Cate Lineberry published in 2013 by Little, Brown and Co. Hayes was 21 when he was assigned to an Army medical evacuation unit based in Sicily late in 1943. The group, which included 26 passengers (13 of them female nurses) and four crew members, was to fly to Italy in a C-52 transport plane to evacuate sick and wounded from Bari. The crew became lost in a storm after being chased by a German fighter plane and landed on the edge of a lake. Unbeknownst to the group, the plane had crossed the Adriatic Sea into enemy territory in Albania. With the plane low on fuel and bogged down in mud, the group set off to find help. The medics and crew spent the next 63 days fleeing enemy attacks, living on little food and little sleep and trekking through steep terrain for at least 342 miles before being rescued by a British boat in the dead of night. In 2013, Hayes told the Mail Tribune, "One person told me it was one of those experiences you wouldn't take a million dollars for, but you wouldn't do it again for another million."