Mallaby carefully read the note authorizing him to cooperate with Castellano and, for his safety and confirmation, details were given about the training camps in Algiers he had attended in the previous weeks, which no Italian could have known about.
Nevertheless, the British agent was far from ready and willing to provide the requested collaboration, as he feared a complex trap. He then thought up a plan that would allow a definitive verification.
Having convinced himself that it was OK to proceed, Mallaby was taken to another room where the radio, which indeed turned out to be one of SOE’s, was located.
So, proving that truth is often stranger than fiction, from a room on the top floor in the most strategically important and restricted place in Italy, a few metres from offices that still witnessed the daily presence of top-level German commanders, Dick Mallaby, a member of the most secret unit of Italy’s and Germany’s enemy, began to transmit.
Mallaby started with a conventional tuning message for about a minute, using the codes given to the Italians in Lisbon. Then, for verification purposes, he used the Maraschino Orange series codes to confirm his identity and signal that he was not under duress.32
Then, using the new double-transposed Monkey code, Dick Mallaby sent his first historic message around 4.00pm on 29 August 1943. It contained no confidential information, but when it was decrypted at Massingham (which had been listening out from 26 August) it was greeted with enthusiasm and relief: ‘Sergeant C. R. Mallaby, to Allied Forces HQ North Africa: I have been instructed by General Castellano to establish radio contact between the Italian Government and Allied Headquarters. I request instructions.’
The personal verification message that followed was more particular but gave further confirmation that the finger-tapping on the telegraph key belonged to Dick Mallaby: ‘Christine, I love you.’33
The answer from Massingham (only to the official part of the message, obviously) was: ‘Proceed. Continue transmissions.’ However, Mallaby was not informed that he was no longer a sergeant, having been promoted to second lieutenant.
Moreover, the Allies did not lower their guard, remaining still unconvinced of the good faith of the Italians. A message from Roseberry to Massingham dated 29 August, sent almost exactly at the same time that the transmissions from Rome began, advised checking carefully to see if the style of communications corresponded to that of Mallaby’s. The following day, Massingham signalled that, having listened to the first five Monkey messages, there had been at least two radio-telegraphists at work (one of which had been recognized as an Italian, by some details in his use of numbers and letters and his operating procedure).34
With the beginning of the Monkey–Drizzle transmissions of full messages on the morning of 30 August, specific steps were taken. Roseberry’s presence was requested at Massingham as a leading expert on Italian matters, and extra staff were brought in, notably Italian and French translators.
The only other account from this early stage of Mallaby’s new mission is that from Luigi Marchesi of the Supreme Command:
The general said that the responsibility for connecting to the r.t. [radio transmissions] office of the Allied HQ was entrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel De Francesco. I was to watch over the English officer, who was not to have contact with anyone outside our office.
To monitor him and help him in his transmissions, he was shadowed by Radio Marshal Baldanza. Mallaby was extremely suspicious and worried. Although Castellano had told him and proved that he was to act on the orders of the Allied HQ and his direct superiors in the Intelligence Service, he failed to understand. His position was very tricky … He was arrested in civil clothes and with a radio on… his position regarding all the war laws was unequivocal. Now suddenly his position was reversed.35
After the ice had been broken, the members of the Italian General Staff decided that, as a precaution, given that the Supreme Command HQ was frequented daily by Italian and German VIPs, Dick Mallaby should assume a new, Italian identity. As recalled in Castellano’s memoirs, those in charge of Mallaby’s custody and management decided on the name ‘Squarzina’, inspired by the large supply of quartz crystals found on him at the time of capture.
According to certain British published sources, Mallaby and his radio were even hosted for a few days inside the Palazzo Reale del Quirinale (the king’s official residence). However, this is highly unlikely, as confirmed by Mrs Christine Mallaby.36 The misunderstanding probably originated from the fact that in the autumn of 1943, there was a successful attempt made from Brindisi to establish a first radio contact with the Roman resistance, which was achieved using a radio left in Rome and kept at the Quirinale. Mallaby himself managed this series of transmissions, which were known with the code Rudder.37
Over the following few days, Dick Mallaby tirelessly transmitted messages from the Italian Supreme Command and the head of government to Allied Force HQ, and received the latter’s responses.
On the basis of the Lisbon agreements, the Allies were awaiting communications from the Italians by 30 August 1943 regarding acceptance or not of the unconditional surrender proposed to Brigadier-General Castellano and possibly arranging the next steps. This first achievement was easily communicated in time thanks to Dick Mallaby.
The communications transmitted by Mallaby (Monkey) and those destined for him (Drizzle) followed one another with increasing intensity.38
Mallaby’s tasks were not only top priority and top secret, but also very demanding, just considering the need of exchanging messages mainly in Italian, but in English too.
At Massingham, Douglas Dodds-Parker had assigned his four most trustworthy FANY personnel to the Monkey–Drizzle communications. They worked in pairs in eight-hour shifts. Among them was one of the most famous Yeomanry personnel, Paddy Sproule. Their working space comprised a bathroom, in which they were locked (from the outside) for security reasons.
The messages were transmitted in Morse code, in groups of five letters, using pre-established models, which included opening sequences and agreed textual errors to allow further verification of authenticity. The Monkey–Drizzle radio-telegraphic traffic was normally encoded and decoded, in double transposition, using the key taken from the aforementioned Bino Sanminiatelli’s L’Omnibus del corso (sent to Massingham from Lisbon, via London, just in time). The other codes (Maraschino/Maraschino Orange, Pallinode and Sleet) were available for service and personal communications, and for messages to and from London.
The Allies had also placed the station in Malta on alert to retransmit to Algiers any messages sent by Rome which had not been received by the North African office.
According to Mallaby’s memoirs, his activity in Rome began on 29 August 1943, which establishes not only the precise date of his liberation, but also that of the beginning of the historic secret transmissions between the Italian and Allied leaders.
Besides Baldanza, a small team of Italians had been installed alongside Mallaby, made up of the most trusted collaborators of Major Luigi Marchesi: Otello Griffoni, Luciano Del Col and Mario Della Corte. The mediator between this team and the leaders of the Supreme Command was Lieutenant-Colonel Renato De Francesco.39
Mallaby carried out the task for which he had been freed, and in those days worked continuously night and day. Thanks to the relationship established with Griffoni and the others, he was able to take a few hours’ rest, having instructed the Italians in how to use the radio, something which Massingham immediately detected, via analysis of the style of transmission and syntax, as already noted).
After a few days of transmitting, Squarzina began to fear that the Germans, by means of radiolocation, might be able to locate the source of transmission. This was not groundless, given that the Germans had installed a powerful interception station in Monte Vetta, south of the Italian capital. Consequently, Mallaby and his caretakers were moved to an unspecified apartment on the outskirts of the city, which was located opposite the staff of the German Red Cross office.
The Monkey–Drizzle messages constituted the sole means through which the Italian and Allied leaders communicated, at a distance of thousands of kilometres from each other. The historical relevance of these messages is unique, immense and unquestionable.
There is no complete collection of all the messages sent. Copies of most of them are available, in order of quantitative importance, at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, the National Archives in London and the Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito in Rome. Some messages in the series were lost, or rather, destroyed.40
All the seemingly unresolved debates and enigmas about the Italian unconditional surrender and the resulting catastrophe are clarified by the messages that Mallaby typed and received in those days. They are contemporary documents and are hard to manipulate, something which has preserved their integrity and veracity.
After decades of research in the Italian, British and US archives, and analysis of hundreds of publications relating to the events of September 1943, I believe I have compiled the most complete collection of messages between Monkey and Drizzle, although I continue to hope that I will be proved wrong by the emergence of unpublished papers from some corner of the world.
Those messages constitute the detailed chronicle of the days that were crucial to the fate of World War II.
A technical point should be clarified here, to provide the right context: from the moment the messages were authorized for transmission, to the time of their reading, hours sometimes passed. The text had to be encoded, transmitted and, upon receipt, decoded. This added confusion to confusion, as messages crossed with each other and often what was requested in one message had been dealt with in a previous message yet to be decoded.41
My gathering and collation of the messages indicates that the first official message documented between Rome and Algiers was that of 30 August 1943. It was received by Massingham in the late afternoon, and announced the imminent arrival at Termini Imerese, Sicily, of Brigadier-General Castellano, which logically implied the Italian acceptance of the terms of surrender, and their readiness to sign it and act accordingly.42
However, the ideas of the Italian leadership were unclear, mystifying and somewhat ambiguous, pointing towards disaster.
Vittorio Ambrosio, Chief of the General Staff, asked Castellano whether it was possible to give the Allies an answer which was neither an acceptance nor a refusal, and Castellano recorded their conversation in his report dated 15 December 1943:
On the morning of the 30th, I was summoned by the Head of the Government to a meeting with His Excellency [Chief of the General Staff Vittorio] Ambrosio, Minister [of Foreign Affairs Raffaele] Guariglia and Minister [of the Royal Household Duke Pietro d’] Acquarone. I was ordered to leave the following morning for Termini Imerese (as agreed with General Smith, should we accede) to inform the Allies that, if Italy had been free to act, it would have accepted the conditions offered, but that it was not possible to implement them since Italy’s military forces were vastly inferior to Germany’s, which could overwhelm them. The whole country, and Rome in particular, would have been subjected to German reprisals.
Italy could seek an armistice if, following Allied landings in sufficient numbers and in appropriate locations, the current conditions changed. These directives were given to me in writing: the Head of the Government added verbally that it would be necessary to land at least 15 divisions.
The rest of Castellano’s report testifies that the Allied leadership obviously communicated ‘that it could not budge an inch from what had been communicated to me in Lisbon, and that only two options were open to the Italian Government: fully accept the armistice conditions and required procedures, or not accept them’.43
Badoglio’s request for 15 divisions was ludicrous, lying beyond both the operational capabilities of the Allies and what was effectively needed. Walter Bedell Smith’s comment on this was emphatic, but helps give an understanding of the underlying ‘mutual incomprehension’: ‘if we had so many divisions available, we would certainly have done without the contribution of Italian forces’.
On the evening of 30 August, a Drizzle dispatch was sent by the Allies in reply to the Italian message:
For General Castellano from General Smith. Generals Strong and Smith and the other representatives of the Allied High Command are definitely awaiting General Castellano at Termini Imerese airport around 9am on Tuesday 31 August. There are many points to discuss. General Castellano’s plane should fly at an altitude of 5,000ft during its journey. General Frattini [none other than Brigadier-General Giacomo Zanussi], who is here, will also be present.44
Castellano reached Sicily secretly on the morning of the 31st, without being intercepted by the Germans, and in a military tent met with the Allies in company of Zanussi and Montanari. Edward ‘Teddy’ de Haan, one of SOE’s central figures in the Mediterranean during the period, attended the meeting, officially as a translator.
Massingham informed Rome that it would continue to listen without interruption.45
The meeting was inconclusive; the Italians asked for some military help in order to defend Rome while the mutual incomprehension kept on going.
On 1 September, Monkey received message No. 11 from Drizzle – a promising one, which read as follows:
With reference to your conversations yesterday with General Smith, the Supreme Allied Commander has agreed to commit a large airborne force in the vicinity of Rome at an opportune time, provided the necessary conditions presented to you by General Smith at the conference are guaranteed by the Italians.
The most important part of these conditions is that the Italians seize and maintain possession of the necessary aerodromes and cease all anti-aircraft fire, that the Italian divisions in the area around Rome take active and effective military action against the Germans and that the armistice is announced at the moment required by the Allied Forces.46
In response to this, Mallaby transmitted message No. 7 of that day, in which the Italian Supreme Command stated that Centocelle, Urbe and Guidonia airports could be used for landing the airborne troops.47
It seemed that some kind of fair cooperation was starting.
Thus, after a heated meeting, the Italians decided to go on.
Mallaby transmitted news of the acceptance: ‘The answer is affirmative, I repeat, affirmative … In consequence known person [Castellano] will arrive on the morning of Thursday 2 September hour and place fixed’.48
But just to layer further complications and ambiguities into the negotiations, the Allies requested that Castellano (codenamed ‘Ferrari’) be legitimized in signing as a declared representative; the Italians took almost a whole day to reply only to confirm that the previous message contained an ‘implicit acceptance of the armistice conditions’.49
The events proceeded as follows.
In a three-part Drizzle message dated 2 September, from Sicily, the Italian general announced:
The Supreme Allied Commander will in no way discuss military matters unless a document of acceptance of the armistice conditions is first signed.
As military landing operations on the Italian Peninsula will begin soon, such a signature is extremely urgent.
The Supreme Allied Commander will accept the signature of Ferrari [Castellano] if this is authorized by the Italian Government.
Please send this authorization within a day by these means, and provide an urgent confirmation to Minister [Sir D’Arcy Godolphin] Osborne that I have been so authorized.
The Supreme Allied Commander will operate in accordance with the agreements already explained by me and with sufficient strength to ensure the degree of security we desire.
I am personally convinced that the operational intentions of the Allies are such as to ensure the satisfaction of the needs that we discussed at the conference on the morning of the 2nd of this month.50
Castellano found himself in an increasingly unpleasant position in Sicily, something which he made clear to
Rome, surrounded as he was by various leading Allied commanders, who were openly condescending towards him.
On 3 September Badoglio firstly informed with message No. 8 the ‘implicit acceptance of the armistice conditions’, but message No. 9 of 3 September actually contradicted that by announcing: ‘Our number 8 is cancelled. General Castellano is authorized by the Italian Government to sign the acceptance of the armistice conditions.’51
The transcript of this decisive message was delivered to Castellano by Edward ‘Teddy’ de Haan of SOE, demonstrating that the Baker Street Irregulars continued to be deeply involved in the delicate and secretive negotiations.
Thus, the Italian delegate signed the historic unconditional surrender in Cassibile that same day, 3 September, a fact communicated in message No. 22 received by Dick Mallaby: ‘At 1700 hours today by proxy as authorized by Marshal Badoglio, in the presence of General Eisenhower I signed the armistice conditions corresponding to the agreed text. Castellano.’52
The Short Armistice was signed. But the Italians hadn’t realized that in signing the first one they also accepted the Long Armistice, which didn’t get attention, despite the fact that it was in their possession. Also, the Allies had decided not to attempt to coerce the Italians into signing the more punitive Long Armistice at this key moment.53
However, the additional clauses of the Long Armistice were nonchalantly handed to Castellano immediately after the signing. The Italian brigadier-general was furious, but Article 12 of the Short Armistice should have at least aroused his curiosity, and that of the others involved in the decision, given that it stated: ‘Other conditions of a political, economic and financial nature with which Italy will be bound to comply will be transmitted at a later date.’
Although fundamental and monumental, the entire armistice negotiation was personally referred to by Eisenhower as a ‘gigantic bluff’ and ‘a dirty business’, the details of which would not be made public ‘until ten years after the end of the war’; so, although present, Eisenhower refused to sign the document, though he was pictured in official photos shaking hands with Castellano.
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