Intelligence is about people and a study of people. It is not simply a question of studying people on the other side, but studying one’s own as well. We have to learn about one another, not just about strangers
Maurice Oldfield
The catastrophe that befell the Afrika Korps at Tunis was as serious as the reverse at Stalingrad six months later. Although there was debate among the Allies of when to open the Second Front in north-west Europe, an invasion of the soft underbelly of Southern Europe was the logical next step, initially by invading Sicily in Operation Husky.
Much of the photographic interpretation fell to the 1st Army Photo Interpretation Centre, which had been formed in March by Captain Tim Ashby. Since future operations were going to involve the Americans, a detachment commanded by Major Frederic Fugelsang joined the Fifth (US) Army Photographic Interpretation Centre, then receiving most of its photography from the 3rd US Army Air Force Reconnaissance Group commanded by Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the son of the US President. The Army Air Photographic Interpretation Unit in Cairo studying Sicily amalgamated in June with the RAF Middle East Interpretation Unit to form the Mediterranean Allied Interpretation Unit on an organizational basis similar to Medmenham. Its Western Desert Section took up residence in the Phoenicia Hotel, Malta in early July and was renamed the 8th Army Photographic Interpretation Unit, with an establishment of forty-seven officers. However, the island was an invasion assembly area and after two officers were killed in an air raid it moved to Maxim’s Restaurant.
While the First and Eighth Army Field Security sections prepared for the landings, a further five arrived from Great Britain, including 3 (1st Infantry Division), 31 (46th Infantry Division) and several Lines of Communication sections. Envisaging that Field Security and US Counter-Intelligence Corps would work together, on 2 June Allied Force Headquarters issued the security objectives during and after the invasion of Sicily, which had been codenamed ‘Horrified’. The content will be familiar to members of the Intelligence Corps of any generation:
To prevent the conduct of Allied operations being prejudiced through espionage or other causes by damage to our material through sabotage to our material and communications through subversion espionage directed against Allied activities.
The 1943 Manual of Field Security listed the duties of the FS sections:
• The compilation and issue of highly classified lists of ‘White’ (politically acceptable), ‘Grey’ (indeterminate or neutral politics) and ‘Black,’ (arrest on sight) of military and civilian Nazi and Italian functionaries and collaborators and members of the SS and Gestapo, and, since 1942, the German Secret Field Police.
The lists had been collated in card indexes at GHQ Middle East and at MI14 (Germany) by Lieutenant Shearer, who had started by listing German academics and their political leanings and then expanded the database to include information sources such as the London Reception Centre, interrogation centres, SOE and MI6.
• Field interrogations of high category prisoners, such as SS and Gestapo.
• Contributing to the Divisional HQ Intelligence Cycle by searching buildings, translating documents and briefing intelligence officers.
• The security of key points and conducting security investigations prior to deployment.
When not employed in security tasks, sections were liable to be called forward as infantry reinforcements and were on stand-by to be included in S Force-type operations. A censorship strategy was designed to prevent the transmission of information prejudicial to the security of the Military Government and the occupying forces by forming Field Censorship, Prisoner-of-War, and Mail Censorship sections. It was acknowledged that more information would be forthcoming about the Italian Secret Service and their agents and plans, the Italian Police, the Fascist Party, the German Intelligence and Security organizations in Sicily and, finally, elements friendly to the Allied cause. It was planned that a special unit of three officers attached to 5th Army, then codenamed Force 141, would develop agents and counter-intelligence networks inside the occupied territories.
The Intelligence Corps association with the Airborne Forces can be traced to 28 June 1942 when 89 (Parachute) FSS was raised to support the Airborne Division. It had an enlarged establishment of a FSO, Company Sergeant Major, four sergeants, twelve corporals and lance corporal/batman, with each brigade supported by a detachment of a sergeant and three corporals. In the event of successful airborne operations, the Section was expected to control the civil population. Interpreters and interrogators were also found from within Field Security. The first Intelligence Corps to earn his wings was Corporal John Loker, a French and German speaker, who was serving with 302 (Southern Command) FSS at Salisbury and had been attached to 31 Independent Brigade Group in October 1941 when it was converted into the 1 Air Landing Brigade. He and Lance Corporal Emil van Laer, a Dutch, Flemish, French and German speaker, were followed by Acting/Sergeant Grazebook, a French, German and Italian linguist, and Lance Corporal Jack Linden, who spoke Italian and German, completing the Airborne Forces Depot training at Hardwick Hall before winning their parachute wings and red beret by dropping through the hole in the floor of a Whitley bomber over RAF Ringway. The section formed up at Melrose Cottage, Figheldean, near Netheravon, under command of Captain Jack Dunbar. Within weeks, Loker was promoted to Company Sergeant Major (CSM) after two warrant officers were injured in training. In September, Loker, Granville and van Laer joined 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (1 Parachute Battalion) for Operation Crucible, a proposed raid on Ushant Island to eliminate the garrison and remove or destroy items at the radar and meteorological station, but it was cancelled minutes before the Whitleys took off.
Spearheading the British assault on Sicily was Operation Fustian involving the two parachute brigades and one air-landing brigade of the Airborne Division; 89 Parachute FSS arrived in April and was based in Oran before moving to Mascara where it liaised closely with the FS sections in Tunis. One role was to ensure that troop morale was maintained so when a Divisional Headquarters clerk was reported spreading rumours predicting a high casualty list, he was investigated and sentenced to fourteen days in prison.
A counter-intelligence watch was kept on the assembly airfields. Appreciating that an invasion of Sicily was likely, the Italians conducted several raids and information-gathering operations and 413 FSS was instrumental in capturing and interrogating several Italian parachutists tasked to raid an Allied airfield near Benghazi, as well as intercepting a raiding party landed from a U-Boat shortly before the landings. The section had fought through the advance from El Alamein and had lost Corporal Ronald Eastwood during a dive-bombing raid in January 1943. Reports of pigeons being released turned out to be that 1st Army had lost about ninety birds. Each FS detachment was expected to prepare a Top Secret Security Plan.
When Fifth and Eighth Armies established airborne intelligence cells in their Headquarters, Captain J.B. de Silva liaised with the Americans in Cairo and discovered that the Staff had little understanding of the nature of airborne operations and that his expectations were resented; nevertheless, he persuaded the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre in Cairo to form an Italian Section. In May, tasked to recce the drop zones, he was a passenger in an RAF Beaufighter which took off from Malta and, surveying the 1 Air Landing Brigade objective of Ponte Grande Bridge, he concluded that trees and farm walls would restrict glider operations. He believed that the surrounding high land at Primosole Bridge near Catania would confine the parachute drop to one brigade.
Operation Fustian did not go well during the night of 9/10 July. Offshore winds and poor visibility led to gliders ditching in rough seas and being shot down by nervous naval gunners, with just twelve landing anywhere near their landing zone. Captain Dunbar, a strong swimmer, was in a Divisional Headquarters glider that ditched near the shore but was drowned when he went to help a non-swimmer; the weight of his assault vest, camera and equipment may have been a factor. Corporal Linden swam ashore and Corporal Granville turned up later, after being reported missing in action, having accepted the surrender of an Italian infantry company. For the next nine months, CSM Loker commanded the Section. When XIII Corps began landing at Cape Passero at dawn, CSM Reginald Weaver of 19 (50th (Northumbrian) Division) FSS was on board the landing ship HMS Winchester Castle:
The Mediterranean filled with shipping – the storm arose on 9th July and how we all lay in our bunks wondering how we could possibly get ashore in such seas. As if answer to prayer, the sea suddenly subsided and then in the early hours of 10th July, the engines stopped and we knew we had arrived. An Italian light suspiciously swept the sea and we held our breath as it crept nearer to our convoy and then, amazingly, was turned out. The tense voice over the intercom calling all troops to man their boats and then order ‘Away!’ These Landing Craft Assault (LCA) set off into the darkness with the first wave of the lads. I waded ashore a few hours later with ‘Ginny’ Anson. The warships were still shelling the coast.
Here’s how 17 (5th Infantry Division) FSS described the landings, in the manner of a Sports Day:
The event began with an interesting water obstacle, the Mare Nostrum, in which mines, surface craft, submarines and gliders were successfully negotiated by all competitors, and ended with a 200-yard sprint through the surf. An amusing and impromptu variation was provided when competitors were required to dive head first into small holes in the ground to avoid machine-gun bullets kindly purveyed by the opposing team. Next came Windy Corner, where competitors were required to undergo dive-bombing at frequent intervals.
The security of ‘Liberation’ money locked in a strong room was secured by 412 (HQ XIII Corps) FSS detachment, commanded by Captain K.A.F. Hornby on the troop transport SS Elizabethville. The remainder of the section landed three days later and, linking up with 17 FSS in Syracuse, then entered Augusta where they made several arrests. By 6 August, Hornby’s men had requisitioned the Casa del Fascio in Catania with one NCO noting that, ‘The Sicilian people had been subjugated to a large extent and the shadow of the Mafia seemed to be like a lid over the island’. Food was short and the section won some compliance by exchanging bread for information. After Sergeant Grint had been wounded in a counter-intelligence operation, civilian weapons were confiscated and locked in a police cell. His brother was then serving with 71 (PAI Force) FSS.
After stubborn German resistance that typified the Italian campaign, Sicily fell on 17 August and then, on 3 September, Eighth Army landed near Reggio in Operation Baywater. A green taxi, a 1912 Bianchi and a Bennelli motor cycle were requisitioned by 412 FSS to compensate for the loss of its jeep, lorry and motor cycles deposited in 10ft of seawater. The section joined the advance up the toe of Italy against limited opposition but hindered by bridge demolitions and mines on the few roads. It left detachments on lines of communication security and, covering four towns for the next three months, made several arrests from its Black Lists.
Following the overthrow of Mussolini on 23 July and the Italian Government offer of surrender, one of two senior officers sent by General Eisenhower to meet the Italian delegation was his Chief of Intelligence, Major General Kenneth Strong. Although the Allies were still unconvinced, during the evening of 8 September Italy surrendered, with some units capitulating and others indicating that they wished to join the Allies. The Fascists generally declared for Germany. For thousands of Allied prisoners in Italian prison camps, there was a catastrophic muddle when MI9 controversially sent orders ‘to stand fast’, little realizing the speed with which many were scooped up by the Germans and transported by rail to camps in Germany and Poland. A few who ignored the order reached Allied lines after weeks of evading enemy patrols and sheltering with Italian families, while others were rescued from beaches in MI9 operations. Some survived by their wits and joined partisan bands. The Italian-speaking Lieutenant H.E. Stewart, who had been captured in North Africa, escaped from a prison camp hospital and reached Switzerland. He was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits.
Early the next day, the X (British) Corps and the VI (US) Corps landed at Salerno, about thirty-five miles south of Naples, in Operation Avalanche, with a view to hastening the advance by outflanking the Germans, but resistance was stubborn. Landing with its FSO, Captain Watts, 35 (56th (London) Division) FSS, which had served in Norway, Iraq and North Africa, had detachments attached to 201 Guards Brigade and 167 and 169 Infantry Brigades. CSM Freeman was to follow with the Section tail and 91 FSS landed, on loan to the US 5th Army as its Port Security Section. Sergeant G.A.P. Cockell, serving with 276 FSS, commanded by Captain Basil Rafter, spent the first day under heavy shelling on a Landing Ship Tank which eventually beached on the second attempt. With orders to find Divisional Headquarters or the Field Security assembly point, he splashed ashore on his motor-cycle, crossed a small bridge and followed a lane until he met a captain at a crossroads who told him that there was heavy fighting, with German tanks involved. During some shelling, Cockell shared a trench and a cigarette with a Royal Signals officer. Finding Divisional Headquarters under shellfire, he reported to Captain Watts and, after digging a foxhole near the Section lorry, pulled his mosquito net over his head and drifted off to a sleep interrupted by the noise of battle. After a breakfast of bacon and a cup of tea, Watts moved his headquarters to a farmhouse where the NCOs interrogated prisoners and rounded up suspects. Cockell then led a FS patrol into Salerno, one of the first British patrols to do so, and examined records at the Police Station and at the Post Office, where he found a telegram suggesting that the Italians expected a landing on the 7 August. He also took a call from an Italian colonel in a Naples brothel asking if the Germans still held the town. When a woman who had crossed the lines mentioned seeing German tanks assembling in a cemetery, the intelligence was passed to the Royal Navy, who bombarded the area.
The next day, Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory officers arrived and enforced a curfew, sealed the banks and imposed security controls. Meanwhile, 35 FSS vetted civil labour employed to unload ships. Captain Watts moved to 27, Via Indipendenzia on 11 August, where three women introduced domesticity by laying up tables with tablecloths, changing plates between courses and pouring wine.
FS HQ consisted of five NCOs from 35 FSS and three each from 31 (46th Division) and 276 FSS. Counter-intelligence and protective security operations began in earnest with searches for intelligence at the local authority offices, Fascist and military headquarters, and for stay-behind parties and covert observation posts in abandoned buildings. The brothel was vetted. The Italian-speaking Sergeant Eric Brentini proved invaluable. Support was given to the Military Government and the mayor when a refugee collection centre was established. On 13 August the headquarters was reinforced by an officer and four agents from the 5th (US) Army Counter Intelligence Corps, four NCOs from 312 FSS and two from the 35 FSS sea-tail, but lost a 31 FSS NCO evacuated after he was wounded on 14 August. Three days later, the headquarters was damaged by shelling. As the stream of refugees increased, Captain Rafter and four more NCOs from 276 FSS landed, as did two more from 31 FSS. Although 2 Special Service Brigade was not supported by Field Security, once it had captured Cava on 24 August, a 35 FSS patrol searched the town for stay-behind parties and items of intelligence interest and when an Italian contact reported a wounded commando in a cave with a sprained ankle, Corporal Tom Bewick helped him back to the beachhead. Captain Rafter was then asked by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to work with a father and son working with the US Office of Strategic Service (the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency) to find a Bersaglia Regiment officer, Colonel Zaniboni. Reputedly, he had fled to the Isle of Ponza after being implicated in an assassination attempt on Mussolini and the Political Warfare Executive wished to use his services. Bewick and the two agents found Zaniboni on the island of Capri but he insisted on making a speech in every village and town they passed through. On 28 August, Corporal Travenen entered Nocera with 201 Guards Brigade and accepted the surrender of a battery of 75mm guns. After the Allies broke out of the beachhead on 17 September, 35 FSS handed Salerno to 276 FSS and, joining the Eighth Army advancing north, entered Naples.
Sergeant Norman Lewis had landed at Salerno and later recorded his experiences in Naples ’44, in which he described the human tragedies and poverty, such as encountering a group of blind young girls from an orphanage where conditions were very bad, and sampling the fables of Ancient Greece along the coast. Nevertheless, he went about his duties grooming informants, vetting applications by British soldiers to marry Italian women, speaking with local politicians and interviewing escaped British prisoners of war, noting that while the Italian villagers treated them as sons and brothers, if they had harboured Germans, they were punished by the Allies. Lewis later achieved considerable fame as a travel writer.
On the same day of the Salerno landings, XIII Corps, which included 1st Airborne Division, landed at Taranto and Brindisi. CSM Loker kept 89 (Airborne) FSS divided into the three Brigade detachments supported by FS Headquarters in the Italian Officer’s Mess in the town consisting of himself, an Italian-speaking sergeant and Captain Dunbar’s batman. The section could provide linguists in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Russian, the latter proving useful when several former Red Army serving with the Germans were captured. Loker retained a motorcycle and four folding bicycles and expected the Section to requisition transport. The opening paragraph of his Security Plan included:
INTENTION
To safeguard the Division from hostile acts committed by civilians or Italian Military in the town and to prevent the enemy from maintaining contacts in the town for the purpose of acquiring information or assisting in the escape of his agents subsequently, to carry out these functions in the area occupied by the advance of our troops.
The section investigated the extent of German support among civilians, local authorities and police and then, when the Allied Military Government arrived, it enforced internal security and curfews, escorted suspect officials to the Divisional prisoner of war cage, confiscated wirelesses, shut brothels and had to placate Italians presenting requisition receipts for motor spare parts and vehicles issued by British troops signed ‘Joe Soap’ and other fictitious characters. Key points, such as fresh water tanks, Italian ammunition, fuel and logistic dumps and docks were checked for sabotage and their protective security needs assessed. Sergeant Terence Armstrong (later a Polar scholar and Fellow in Russian) and his detachment vetting the several prisoners in Altamura Jail were unable to discover why they had been locked up. Several thousand refugees, mostly Yugoslavians, and prisoners of war en route to prison camps in Egypt were screened. The German and Italian headquarters in the Europa and Miranda Hotels were searched for documents and booby traps. While Sergeant Glyn Williams was briefing Loker on the former, there was a massive explosion from the harbour. Both thought it was a booby trap; however it was the minelayer HMS Abdiel striking a mine that led to sixty men of the 6 Parachute Battalion being killed. Several days after landing, Loker was instructed to seize the German consul in Bari as a bargaining chip for Allied diplomats in enemy hands. Accompanied by Captain de Silva and Sergeant Armstrong, in uniform, they drove sixty miles in a battered requisitioned car through enemy-held, hilly country not cleared of mines, weaved through tank traps and arrived at the Consulate. The consul was an elderly man and after they gave him time to pack a suitcase and bid farewell to his family, they returned to Taranto where he congratulated the soldiers for undertaking a ‘disagreeable duty’. He was then transferred to the Divisional Cage.
On 10 September, 91 FSS was transferred to Taranto to work with 68 FSS in setting up the port security facilities, Two months later it was transferred to be the port security section at Foggia and then, in mid-December, it assumed responsibility for Barletta from 38 FSS. The section took over in Bari in April 1945. In Sicily, 51 FSS took over the security of Palermo in February 1944 from US counter-intelligence and, in-between screening employees for dock passes and carrying out political intelligence monitoring, arrested eight spies and six Fascist agents. Throughout their time in Italy, 91, 51 and 68 FSS worked closely together with NCOs being cross-posted between them. A close link was also established with the US Counter Intelligence Corps.
When Airborne Division clashed with the German 1st Parachute Division a few miles north of Taranto and 4 Parachute Brigade was held up near the village of Castellaneta, Captain de Silva helped carry Major General ‘Hoppy’ Hopkinson to an ambulance jeep after he had been mortally wounded while watching the battle. Lieutenant John Linklater, an Italian interpreter, was briefly attached to 10 Parachute Battalion and reported missing after the battle for the Gioia del Colle. Born in Prague, he had been captured while serving with the Czech Legion and had reached England after three escape attempts. He was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and joined SOE. He had served in Tunisia and with Italian partisans until he was captured but again escaped by jumping from a train.
By now, the term ‘Y Service’ had largely been replaced by ‘Signals Intelligence’. HQ Eighth Army was supported by No. 2 (A-Type) Special Wireless Section and 22 Wireless Intelligence Section of ten Intelligence Corps officers and twenty-eight other ranks. HQ XIII and XXX Corps were each supported by a Type-B which included an enlarged Intelligence Section that grew from three Intelligence Corps officers and seventeen other ranks to ten and twenty-eight respectively. The Germans took every opportunity to frustrate Allied interception by reverting to line. However, by October 1943, the combination of Very High Frequency terrestrial communication range, as opposed to line of sight, and improved use of Allied Direction Finding eventually provided 60 per cent of airwave intelligence. Early in 1944, the introduction of medium-grade ciphers protecting a new map reference system, and more frequent changes of wireless frequencies to several times a day led, by the autumn, to virtually every weakness in German communications being eliminated.
The main tasks of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres was to gather intelligence for opening the Second Front by identifying German units in Italy and hoovering up information from prisoners who had served in France, in particular, Normandy. Captured Poles were offered the opportunity to join the 2nd Polish Corps while Indians were interrogated about Indian units in the Wehrmacht. When the British were given responsibility for the post-war administration of part of Austria, a special camp was established for prisoners with knowledge of the country.
With the capitulation of Italy, most Italian garrisons on Greek islands surrendered. With Prime Minister Churchill pestering SOE for an opportunity to ‘set the Balkans alight’, 234 Brigade Group landed on the Aegean Islands of Leros and Cos in mid-September with a view to using the airfields. The force on Cos was supported by detachments from 291 FSS, which had been formed in Cairo in early 1943, and 407 FSS, commanded by Captain Michael Wood, which landed on Leros. The latter FSS had formed up in Iraq in 1942 and, supporting the 10th Indian Division, had been in Palestine after a short spell in Cyprus. However, the German reaction was swift and after eight weeks of punishing air raids that inflicted heavy losses of men, equipment and ships, and a parachute assault on 23 November, 234 Brigade Group surrendered, handing the Germans their last victory of the war. Captain Wood was killed, as was Lieutenant Osmer Lamb, then serving with 807 Fortress Headquarters, Royal Artillery. Sergeant Costas Nicholaides escaped by masquerading as a Greek. Sergeant C.A. Thwaites was awarded the Military Medal for his conduct, which included destroying classified documents under heavy fire and escaping in a rowing boat using his helmet to paddle. Meanwhile, 291 FSS joined HQ Aegean Force on Samos until more air raids forced its evacuation to Turkey.
Rome remained the prize but, as winter approached, the Allies were confronted by the formidable Gustav Line that was anchored to the heights of Monte Cassino and stretched across the Apennines to Ortona. The magnificent monastery on Monte Cassino commanded a panoramic view south across the River Sangro, Dogged defence, mountain mist, mud, rain and snow led to the Allies becoming bogged down in wretched conditions.
Weather permitting, every day, a flight of three Photographic Reconnaissance Spitfire IXs each fitted with a two camera oblique fan of 36in focal length and a single vertical 20in camera, flew at 25,000ft scanned the front. Typically, coverages of divisional frontages resulted in about 100 prints, usually delivered to the headquarters by a pilot dropping packages. During the early hours of 7 December, a brigade HQ interpretation lorry in V Corps was hit by a shell, killing an officer and severely wounding another. As the Germans tightened up their camouflage, information from interrogations was often followed by sorties to provide confirmation. As air photography grew into an important intelligence asset, more units insisted on having a photographic interpreter. Captain Alan Gilbert was attached to the 1st Free French Motorised Division and supported its commander, who always plotted his attacks based on intelligence provided by air photography, interrogation and topographic analysis. Captain M.C. Matthews was attached to the 8th Indian Division:
The divisional section consisted of two officer PIs, two draughtsmen/clerks and two driver/batmen. Transport consisted of a three-ton office truck and a jeep. In practice, the section was often complemented by the addition of a surplus divisional section, and sometimes robbed to provide reinforcements for divisional sections. There were other divisions which on arrival had no experience of air photographs and more or less rejected their PI sections for some time. There was a tendency sometimes in the opposite direction when the PI was regarded as a miracle worker and expected to find things which did not exist or others which would never be visible, or worse still, both.
An interesting German order was captured near Ortona:
The enemy are taking air photographs every day so that they know as much about our positions as any one of us. To reduce this leakage of information you must avoid making footpaths and you must carefully camouflage your positions. In particular, you must avoid exposing your bare backside during the daytime as they would be clearly visible on the photographs and might pinpoint our positions.
In February 1944, the joint Allied Mediterranean Photographic Interpretation Centre subdivided into East operating from Cairo and West from Foggia, where Major Tim Ashby controlled the tasking and distribution of photography to the 5th Army Interpretation Centre, which was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Fugelsang, and to the Eighth Army Photographic Interpretation Unit.
In an attempt to outflank the German Tenth Army defence, 1st Division, and its 3 FSS, and the 3rd (US) Infantry Division landed unopposed at Anzio on 22 January. However, cautious US leadership missed a golden opportunity to seize Rome. Corporal Malcolm White landed from a tank landing craft and rode his BSA motor cycle over the sand dunes with the intention of finding 2 Infantry Brigade, which he was to support. Following a coast road heading north, he was ‘chuntering’ along in an empty landscape when suddenly he was hailed, ‘Oi! Stop!’ by an infantryman in a ditch who told him that he had just crossed the front line. Rapidly turning around, he returned down the road and eventually found Brigade Headquarters. As the fighting escalated, 3 FSS shepherded civilians fleeing from the fighting in the forward areas. Section HQ was in a farmhouse near an ammunition dump at the assault beach. Once the fighting was over, the work of the NCOs became routine counter-intelligence and learning Italian.
While the 1st (Canadian) Division was advancing from Reggio after Operation Baytown, it was supported by the X Interpreter/Interrogation Section of six officers. Captain Kim Isolani, of Italian parentage and serving as ‘Arnold’, was approached by Captain Gay, a member of the Folgore Parachute Division which had capitulated following the Italian surrender, claiming that his men were demoralized and wanted to fight with the Allies. Isolani discussed the proposal with Captain Sir Ian McLeod, who was serving with the Eighth Army Combined Services Interrogation Centre and was also part Italian extraction, and together they persuaded Army Headquarters to form the volunteers into the 1st Autonomous Italian Detachment. Isolani tested them on several patrols, in which the Italians wore civilian clothes. In January 1944, the Detachment was reinforced by 200 men from the Folgore and Nembo Parachute Divisions and formed into F Reconnaissance Squadron that reported direct to GSO 2 (Intelligence), HQ XIII Corps. Issued with British uniforms and equipment and wearing their parachute wings, the Italians patrolled the Sangro sector throughout the bitter winter. In February, Isolani returned to England and was replaced by Lieutenant Alewyn Birch (Royal Ulster Rifles) and Lieutenant John Amoore from X Interpreter/Interrogation Section. After spending two years at the British Consulate in Barcelona, in 1941 Amoore had returned to England and was then attached to the 3rd Carpathian Division, 2nd Polish Corps in Italy in time to see the 12 Podolski Lancers raise a makeshift Polish flag above the monastery at Monte Cassino. By May, F Squadron had carried out 642 patrols, killing eighty-nine Germans and capturing 118 at the cost of sixteen killed, twenty-seven wounded and two missing. Supporting the Poles was 417 FSS, which had arrived in Taranto from FS Headquarters in Algiers, with 418 and 419 FSS reinforced by Italian-speaking NCOs from 268 FSS, then supporting V Corps in the Sangro River valley and working with the Italian Military Intelligence Service.
As the Allies poured through the breached Gustav Line and the Anzio beachhead broke out, the glory of taking Rome was too much of a temptation for General Mark Clark, and he ordered the Fifth (US) Army to enter the capital but, in doing so, allowed the German 10th Army to retreat north. In April, after Captain McLeod had died of natural causes, Captain Isolani returned to Italy in time to join the US-led S Force entering Rome with the British element in the column of jeep, trucks and motorcycles, including 31, 35, 276 and 314 FSS. Passing through the wrecked town of Cisterna shortly after a bloody battle and along the Appian Way and over the Alban Hills, the Field Security Group entered the city on 4 June and requisitioned 11, Via Rossini, a villa that had been used by SS-Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler, the head of the German security forces in Rome and infamous for ordering the Ardeatine Massacre in which civilians were murdered as reprisal for an ambush on a SS patrol. He also frequently accused the Vatican, with some justification, of harbouring escaping prisoners passing along the Rome Escape Line. The offices in Via Sicilia were sandwiched between the Office of Strategic Services on the top floor and US Counter-Intelligence Corps on the ground floor. Responsible for searching the Hotel Flora, which had served as the German headquarters in Rome, was 314 FSS, which rounded up SS, SD and Gestapo and their agents and collaborators.
When the Polish Corps reverted to Eighth Army advancing up the east coast of Italy, British FS detachments served alongside Polish FS attached to the 3rd Carpathian and 5th Kresowa Divisions. The Poles had also formed censorship units, interrogation centres, photographic interpretation sections and signals intelligence units. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1944, the Allies tackled stubborn German resistance until held up by another winter of bloody fighting by the formidable Gothic Line covering the River Foglia. After Ravenna fell in December 1943, Sergeants Collis and Hedderly, of 47 Port and Security Section, interviewed every inmate in the prison and sorted them into ‘dangerous’, to be retained, ‘harmless’, to be released and ‘doubtful’, to be investigated. Two admitted to being Italian Navy frogmen who had buried a cache of mines. At Sulmona, 417 FSS screened Allied prisoners who had escaped from prison camps after Italy’s capitulation. In September, 471 FSS established its HQ in Cortona, Tuscany, where it arrested Abwehr agents and was involved in railway security between Rome and Florence. NCOs were also detached to S Forces as the Allies entered towns and helped interrogate agents at Detailed Interrogation Centres. By the end of 1944, the section was training Italian FS sections. Meanwhile, 314 FSS also joined Eighth Army near Ancona where a woman was recruited to visit German-held towns and report on enemy dispositions. It is said that she wore an Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform on her forays. The section also persuaded RAF technicians to fit a radio transmitter into one of their vehicles and then liaised with other radio operators to triangulate a U-Boat known to be landing three agents, one a woman. Their interrogations netted seventeen spies and saboteurs; most were ‘turned’. The few that resisted were executed and their photographs then dropped to the Abwehr training establishment. The section also lured three S-Boats into Ancona harbour by convincing their crews that they would be useful for operations against the Soviets. In November 1943 85 FSS had landed near Naples and was on port security duties at Barletta where it was involved, a year later, in capturing three Italian frogman tasked to attack ships and, in a joint operation with the US Counter Intelligence Corps, arrested a doctor who turned out to be a Fascist agent; he was convicted and shot.
Prior to mid-1943, the SOE made little attempt to infiltrate Italy until, in March 1944, GHQ in Cairo formed HQ Special Operations Mediterranean, codenamed Maryland, at Monopoli on the premise that it would support military operations. In 1942 the Executive and the Office of Strategic Services formed ‘Massingham’ near Algiers as an advanced operating base for operations in Southern France. Commander Gerry Holdsworth, a former Intelligence Corps, officer, arrived at Bari, after managing SOE seaborne operations from Cornwall, and created No. 1 Special Force as a cover for clandestine operations in Italy. Its security officer, Major Peter Lee established 300 FSS as its pseudonym for the issue and delivery of post and military equipment and, although it had been agreed that no postings should be made to it, it seems that it was used as a convenient administrative mailbox for lodging officers and men posted to Special Operations. Lee had joined the Intelligence Corps from the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1940. Force 139 in London controlled SOE operations in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Force 266, reporting to HQ Balkan Air Force at Bari, had responsibility for operations in Yugoslavia, Albania and Hungary and used flights operating from Brindisi. As the Executive had already discovered in Greece and the Balkans, communist Resistance groups were well organized and allied to Moscow. After the German invasion in 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia fragmented into the pro-Axis Croatia, the remainder of the country covered by the royalist Chetniks and the communist Partisans under Josip Broz, also known as Tito. Several Allied missions sent to northern anti-communist Albania proved largely unproductive while communist groups in the south were effective but not entirely trustworthy. When Major Stephen Martin-Leake was appointed Head of the Albanian Desk, among those he recruited was Captain Peter Kemp, who had been wounded fighting with the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and had a ‘dare devil’ reputation. Joining the Intelligence Corps in July 1940, Kemp took part in several raids with the Small Scale Raiding Force and then, in 1943, was dropped into Albania. He survived for seven months, during which he was wounded twice, once shot his way out of trouble and, in another instance, escaped arrest by disguising himself as a woman. He was eventually betrayed to the Germans by pro-Nazi Kosovans but escaped. In May 1944, Martin-Leake returned to Albania as part of Operation Sculptor to support Partisan operations, but was killed a month later when German aircraft bombed a guerrilla camp near Permet. Although he was buried with full honours by the partisans, the communist government later reburied Allied servicemen killed in Albania in unmarked graves. He is now commemorated on a memorial in Tirana. Kemp later served in the Soviet Union and the Far East.
After a rest from operations in Crete, in November 1943 Captain Xan Fielding returned to the island and landed from a submarine near Koustoyerako. He was joined eleven months later by Sergeant Major William Knox and an officer scheduled to take over from Major Leigh-Fermor in Eastern Crete. Knox had served in six FS sections before he joined Force 133. Also in Crete was Captain Ralph Stockbridge, a Cambridge University classicist, who had enlisted in 1940 and, as a Field Security sergeant, had been evacuated from Crete shortly before the German invasion. Loaned by the MI6 Inter-Services Liaison Department, Cairo, to SOE, he returned to Crete as the wireless operator to an officer co-ordinating the rescue of evading Allied servicemen, but such were their privations that they existed on grass soup and herbs. In February 1942, Stockbridge was commissioned but was then evacuated after being betrayed. Returning as a member of MI6, he landed from a Greek submarine as the senior officer in Crete to concentrate on collecting information, but he was frequently frustrated by supply drops bursting on impact or being lost in ravines. In his book Hide and Seek, Fielding wrote:
Of all the British agents on the island, Stockbridge was the most subtly disguised. He washed and shaved carefully at least once a week, wore shoes rather than boots, an overcoat and horn-rimmed spectacles. His appearance, stumbling walk and mannerisms were exactly those of what he was pretending to be: a village schoolmaster.
Awarded a bar to his Military Cross, Stockbridge admitted to trembling when passing through German checkpoints.
Shortly after Italy surrendered, Major Leigh Fermor had persuaded General Angelo Carta, the Italian commander of the 51st (Sienna) Division in Crete, to defect and escorted him to Cairo. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Friedrich Muller, commanding the German 22nd Infantry Division in Rhodes and Crete, interned his former allies; nevertheless, substantial quantities of weapons were diverted to the Greek Resistance. SOE concerns that it might attempt a coup d’etat quickly grew when two small German garrisons on Crete and a relief force were ambushed. Muller retaliated by destroying several villages and killing about 500 Cretans. The idea of kidnapping a German general from Crete had first been suggested in 1942 and rejected; however, with the island in turmoil, the idea was resurrected and, during the night of 5 February 1944, an aircraft circled the snow-covered and fog-shrouded Kathero Plateau and Major Leigh Fermor jumped out. However, his colleague, Captain Bill Moss, and two Cretans were unable to do so and arrived by boat two months later. Moss describes Leigh Fermor:
He wore a smart moustache, kept his hair neatly under control, and his fancy dress included a finely embroidered Cretan bolero, a long, wine-coloured cummerbund (into which were thrust an ivory-handled revolver and a silver dagger), a pair of corduroy riding-breeches, and tall black boots.
Leigh Fermor told him that Muller had been replaced by Lieutenant General Heinrich Kriepe. Over the next three weeks, they hiked across the mountains to the north of the island, enjoying a typical Easter Cretan celebration in a village. Meanwhile, Sergeant Major Knox had formed an effective relationship with the New Zealander, Staff Sergeant Dudley Perkins, and was ambushing patrols, collecting intelligence and integrating themselves with the villages by attending christenings and weddings. Shortly after a wireless operator arrived in late February 1944, Perkins and his guide were killed in an ambush and their wireless was captured. Knox took over Perkins’ network and withdrew with the radio operator to a cave in a valley in the knowledge that collaborators were helping German searches. Early on 23 March, as a masked Cretan led a German battalion towards the cave, Knox and several Resistence enticed the Germans away from it but at the cost of Knox and two Cyprus Regiment soldiers killed. The Germans withdrew leaving the radio operator undisturbed; however, his recklessness later led to his arrest.
Meanwhile, having concluded that seizing General Kreipe from his villa at Knossos was impossible, Leigh Fermor and Moss decided to intercept him during his twice-daily journey to his headquarters at Ano Arkhanais and focused on the T-junction that linked Arkhanais, Heraklion and Knossos as a suitable ambush site. It was shrouded by high banks and bordered by deep ditches and ideal because cars travelling towards Knossos had to slow down. A 250yd cable connecting two buzzers was run from a hillock to the T-junction and a defence group covered the ambush. At about 9.45pm on 26 April, the buzzer warned Leigh Fermor and Moss in the ditch that the General’s car was approaching. Masquerading as two German military police, they signalled it to stop and then Leigh Fermor dragged the General from the front seat and bundled him into the back, where three Cretans were sitting, while Moss pushed the driver towards the defence group; they later killed him. With Moss driving and Leigh Fermor relying on the Germans recognizing Kriepe’s pennant, they negotiated twenty-two control points and then ditched the car and left a letter and some British equipment at Heraklion to give the Germans the impression that they were meeting a submarine on the north coast, and headed south. Next day, they linked up with the defence group and a wireless operator and crossed the mountains, sometimes staying in villages, and were picked up by the Royal Navy during the night of 14 May. General Kriepe was sent to Special Camp 12 in Bridgend. The Germans concluded that Kreipe had been abducted by a military force and did not retaliate. The kidnapping was dramatized in the book and film of the same name, Ill Met by Moonlight, in which Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde. Leigh Fermor became a renowned travel author. In May 1994, six members of the Corps and three Greek Army commandos followed the route taken by Leigh Fermor and met some of those associated in the kidnapping.
The political solidarity in the Greek Resistance achieved by Brigadier Myers during Operation Harling did not last and while the SOE took a pragmatic decision by equipping those of greatest risk to the Germans, that is the communists, the loyalists secured weaponry after Italy collapsed. Attempts by Allied Military Missions to introduce solidarity largely failed and, although SOE brokered a ceasefire during the 1943 civil war, the communists refused to help sabotage the railways, pleading fear of German reprisals. Major Hammond was dropped into Thessaly as the Macedonia Area Commander in the British Military Mission but spent most of his time defusing internecine strife; nevertheless, he attacked an important bridge in the Tempe Pass in early 1943. By the autumn of 1944 German forces in Greece, in danger of being cut off from Germany by the Soviet advance towards Eastern Europe, began withdrawing. Some right wing groups, such as X led by Lieutenant Colonel George Grivas, agreed not to harass the Germans.
Under the March 1944 Caserta Agreement, the Allies agreed that Greek Resistance should be placed under Allied command when the country was liberated. In early October X Corps landed in the Peloponnese and, by 14 November, 23 Armoured Brigade and part of 2 Parachute Brigade were in Athens. They were accompanied by 20 FSS in western Athens and 24 FSS in eastern Athens and on port security at Piraeus. Between them, they arrested at least eighty pro-Nazi agents, mostly Greek collaborators, and a German paymaster. An 89 (Parachute) FS detachment, reformed after Arnhem, was also in support and 11 Indian Infantry Brigade was in Patras, while the remainder of 2 Parachute Brigade and 9 Commando were in Salonika. As engineers and logistics troops began aiding a country that was politically, economically and administratively in ruins, hopes that the ideological factions would co-operate creaked when the communists declared that the Greek Mountain Brigade and the Sacred Squadron, which were part of the Allied order of battle and in Athens, should be disbanded. The arrival of the Greek Government from exile on the 18 November attracted some opposition; however, when Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie, who commanded III Corps, suggested that the constitutional armed forces should be reformed, public disorder spread with right wing groups terrorizing the left. Following a serious riot in Athens on 3 December, the communists attacked the Greek police and British troops, cut the road to Piraeus and captured the British-Greek naval headquarters. On 18 December, RAF Headquarters at Kifissia Airfield and about 100 British forces, including 1 Mobile Detachment Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre defending a complex near the Tatoi and Aperghi Hotels, were captured and rescued several hours later. When X Corps divisions were diverted from Italy, 268 FSS arrived in October under control of Security Intelligence Middle East until, in November, it moved with 290 (4th Indian Division) FSS and the Indians to Salonika, where they unearthed evidence of Soviet subversions and collusions with Greek communists. A Censorship Directorate also arrived. Meanwhile, 4th Infantry Division and its 5 FSS took over the Piraeus sector, and by Christmas Day had re-opened the port and the road to Athens, allowing reinforcements to be landed. 31 FSS and 278 FSS arrived with 46th Infantry Division. With its CSM a Savoy Hotel chef and one of the NCOs a wine merchant, in Algeria, 94 (Port Security) FSS had a reputation as a comfortable section. After a largely contrived international conference shortly before Christmas, loyalist support collapsed when it refused to accept the ceasefire. On New Year’s Eve, King George II of Greece appointed a Regent to stabilize the political situation. However, several hundred of 20,000 hostages seized by the communists died of exposure after being marched into the winter-clad mountains. Others were executed by ‘people’s courts’. When both sides agreed to an unconditional ceasefire on 15 January, the second Greek civil war was over, although the right wing pursued the left in the White Terror.
Most of the British returned to Italy, leaving 4th Division split between Athens and Salonika, supported by a Military Mission provided by III Corps and the FS sections monitoring the threat to Greece from the communist factions in Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Counter-intelligence operations were controlled by Security Intelligence Middle East; 278 FSS on port security at Piraeus and Corinth had detachments in several Peloponnesian ports. On 12 February 1945, the Varkiza Agreement saw the communist hardliners fleeing to Yugoslavia and Albania after surrendering obsolete weapons. Villagers supplied information on caches of modern weapons. General elections in March saw the pro-royalist Populist Party winning a majority, which generated a third civil war. Citing severe economic problems, on 24 February 1947 the British announced their decision to leave the Balkans by the end of the year. But 24 FSS remained in Athens and Salonika monitoring the border with communist Bulgaria until late 1949.
When General Alexander lost XXX Corps for the invasion of North-West Europe, No. 1 Special Force supported Eighth Army operations throughout the autumn and winter of 1944/1945 by harnessing the partisans harassing Tenth Army as it retreated north toward the Ligurian Alps. Although possessed with strong communist sympathies, the northern groups were less tainted with political intrigue and were hosting Allied prisoners who had ignored the 1943 MI9 Stand Fast order. By the spring of 1945 most were being supported by Allied Military Missions. In October 1944, Major Alistair Macdonald parachuted near to the mill town of Biella, north-west of Milan in Piedmont, in command of Cherokee Mission. Commissioned in 1940, a year later he was seconded to the Political Warfare Executive. In July 1944, he had parachuted into the Central Massif in France to co-ordinate Resistance operations and advise General de Gaulle’s military delegation and, when the Germans withdrew from the region, he helped to re-establish local administration. Among the ‘Banda Biella’ reception party were three prisoners, one of whom, Gunner George Evans, lodged an account of the Cherokee Mission with the BBC in November 2003. A cook with 4th (Durham) Survey Regiment RA, he had been captured in 1942 when Tobruk surrendered and had ignored the Stand Fast order, as had his two Australian and Scottish colleagues. They refused Macdonald’s offer to escape to Switzerland. Hitherto, ‘Banda Biella’ had relied on private and captured weapons; however, with the Allied offensive expected in the spring, Macdonald organized a large supply drop into a snow-covered valley northeast of Biella. Under the guise of collecting firewood, the partisans hacked a drop zone by thinning the forest and then, during the night of 17/18 November, an explosive expert, a radio operator and an instructor dropped with the canisters. Evans was delighted to be wearing Battledress again. Macdonald attacked a railway bridge in the D’Aosta Valley, north-west of Biella, being used by a foundry to send steel to Germany through the Dora Valley. As German sappers were repairing it, Macdonald blew up another railway bridge south of Biella. The explosives officer trained two partisans to handle explosives and, after dark on 23 December, they carried the charges through the cellars of a hotel and collapsed a bridge into the River Dora, forcing the Germans to organize a bypass. When Macdonald arranged the largest supply drop of the Italian campaign on to the drop zone before sunset on Boxing Day, a squadron of Liberator bombers ignored anti-aircraft fire from the Fascist garrison at Lessona and dropped multi-coloured parachutes, each signifying a different content in the containers. However, recovering the supplies proved difficult because the only transport was a few donkeys. When Major Macdonald was captured in a café during a German security operation to protect their lines of communications and was taken to Gestapo HQ, the Banda Biella dispersed, with one group sheltering in the sewerage system of an isolated farmhouse. After Macdonald had quickly escaped and was rowed across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland by a boy, the partisans continued to harass the Germans by derailing trains, dropping pylons and damaging a bridge near Livorno, until a second mission arrived in the form of Lieutenant Amoore and three officers, with instructions to disrupt the enemy ‘scorched earth’ policy. By March 1945, the German Tenth Army was being pressed hard by the French and, while retreating through the D’Aosta Valley, was forced, by the destruction of two bridges, to transfer supplies from railway wagons to lorries and then back onto trains at Ponte San Martino. The troops marched on. By mid-April the partisans, supported by daily supply drops, had effectively closed the railway through the valley and then turned their attention to ambushing roads.
To the south-east of the River Po, F Squadron was warned by XIII Corps that a detachment was required for a parachute operation to support the partisans disrupting enemy lines of communications as the Germans retreated toward the river. Captain Gay advised General Sir Richard McCreery, who was now commanding Eighth Army, that either his whole unit would jump or none. In the event, the confusion caused by F Squadron in Operation Herring led to the capture of 8,000 prisoners. When the squadron was disbanded, it had lost thirty-five killed and twenty-nine wounded and had gathered several Italian gallantry awards. Many returned to Folgore Parachute Division.
Captain Amoore was visiting a well known Italian racing driver on 2 May, the day that the German Army in Italy surrendered and accepted unconditional terms offered by General Schlemmer, the LVII Corps commander, and 100,000 troops and Fascist militia. Major Macdonald and Amoore were both awarded Military Crosses. Macdonald returned to take up the post of Military Governor of Biella and Aosta.
By the time that the Germans surrendered, eighteen FS section and five Port Security sections were protecting Allied lines of communication that stretched from North Africa to Venice. Meanwhile, 417 FSS handed over to 418 FSS and moved to Pesaro and, in September, reached its final destination of Bologna, where it was actively involved in raiding hidden arms dumps and taking a greater interest in the activities of the communists. And 38 FSS was still in Bari when, shortly before midday on 9 April 1945, the Liberty ship Charles W Henderson exploded while unloading ammunition, killing 309 people, injuring 1,600 and causing extensive damage from debris and a tidal wave that ripped through the harbour. Among the fatalities was Lance Corporal Leslie Joseph, of 47 Port Security Section, who had boarded the ship for lunch while waiting for another vessel to dock. His colleague, Lance Corporal Ken Tomlinson, had returned to their office to type some reports when their office disintegrated around him. When 38 FSS was disbanded in June 1946 and Tomlinson was transferred to Taranto, he was the last British soldier to leave when the port was handed back to the Italian authorities.