flight was dispatched to locate it, to no avail. The occupational authorities were unaware of the 6th Company's fate until a German officer escaped and informed them of what had transpired. He reported that the German prisoners were being humanely treated, but when Böhme became aware of the situation, he decided that retaliation was needed. He ordered the III. Battalion of the 749th Infantry Regiment to burn down Gornji Milanovac and take hostages in order to expedite the recovery of the captured German troops. The III. Battalion started its advance on 5 October, fighting its way along the road to Gornji Milanovac and sustaining casualties in the process. Upon entering Gornji Milanovac, it gathered between 120 and 170 male hostages, among them a Chetnik commander who had been scheduled to meet his superiors the following day. Hauptmann (Captain) Fiedler, the III. Battalion's commanding officer, hoped to use this man to contact the Chetnik command and organize a prisoner exchange. Fearing that such an action would jeopardize the recovery of the German prisoners, Fiedler decided not to raze Gornji Milanovac. Around this time, Fiedler received an SOS signal from nearby Rudnik, where another German unit was involved in heavy fighting with the guerrillas. Fiedler decided to redirect the III. Battalion to Rudnik to relieve the unit. Assuming he would have to pass through Gornji Milanovac on his way back, he decided to postpone the taking of hostages in Gornji Milanovac and the razing of the town until his return from Rudnik. Contrary to Fiedler's expectations, the battalion was ordered back to Kragujevac immediately after relieving the unit at Rudnik, and was thus unable to raze Gornji Milanovac. Böhme was furious, and on 15 October, he sent the III. Battalion back to Gornji Milanovac to carry out his original orders. The battalion returned to Gornji Milanovac the same day, but now only forty people could be found to be taken as hostages. The town was then razed. This time, no attempt to exchange the hostages was made. Kraljevo massacre On 15–16 October, ten German soldiers were killed and 14 wounded during a joint Partisan-Chetnik attack on Kraljevo, a city about south of Belgrade and southeast of Gornji Milanovac. On 15 October, troops of the 717th Infantry Division shot 300 civilians from Kraljevo in reprisal. These reprisal killings continued over the following days, and by 17 or 20 October, German troops had rounded