On 7 December 1943, Dick Mallaby was awarded the Military Cross (even though a DSO had been proposed). Apart from some customarily flowery language such as ‘dropped alone into lake of Como by parachute’; finding himself ‘in conditions of unexpected difficulty that tested his courage’; and being ‘handcuffed and beaten’, demonstrating ‘exceptional coolness, perseverance and devotion to duty’, his citation states that if it were not for his excellent Monkey radio work, ‘the Allied landings on the Italian mainland may have been made with Italy still an enemy’. Cecil Roseberry sent Mallaby a personal letter on 11 December 1943, in which he emphasized that he was ‘very proud’ that this was the first honour for his section, while predicting that it would not be its last.
Although Operation Neck and its unexpected developments have, over time, been sporadically and summarily revealed, its details and the most remarkable implications have always been ignored and have remained hard to pin down. According to Foot, what happened ‘has been in print for over thirty years, and generally ignored, as too improbable (like much of SOE’s actual work) to be true’.92
The encoded Monkey–Drizzle transmissions officially went off air on 17 September; the last message from Monkey was No. 114.
The following farewell message was broadcasted from the Cumulus, the new radio station placed in Italy by the Allies: ‘He has done a marvelous job many congratulations to him’.93
Dick Mallaby’s first mission had come to an end and agent Olaf had ceased to exist.
A second special mission would begin for Mallaby more than a year later, and this one too, after several initial disasters, would have unexpected and remarkable results, and, moreover, would remain hidden even further in the shadows for decades.
5
The Second Mission
Mallaby and the German Surrender, February–March 1945
(Or: how, having been captured once again near Lake Como, Mallaby again manages to get away with it, convincing the surprisingly receptive Supreme Commander of all SS forces in Italy to begin secret negotiations for the local German surrender to the Allies.)
Decidedly individualistic, inconsistent in obedience, instinctively disrespectful of the law; easy to guide and misguide but difficult to control, impressionable in the presence of high rankers, prepared to imitate Machiavelli and convinced that everyone is equally inclined to do so, and more interested in form than content.
Description of the average Italian, according to the British Foreign Office handbook, dated 26 July 1943
More than servitude I fear liberty endowed by others.
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
The omnipotence of God, once the events are over, is not able to modify them subsequently, whereas historians can do so by changing the narration of the events that actually happened.
Voltaire (1694–1778)
In the immediate wake of the Italian armistice in September 1943, the northern and central areas of Italy were occupied by the Germans. The Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI – Italian Social Republic, informally known as the Republic of Salò after its de facto capital) was established, under the command of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. The south of the country, where the Italian civil and military forces loyal to the king of Italy were trying to reorganize, was in the hands of the Allies. Italian partisan forces, whilst of disparate political ideologies, began to fight against the Germans and Fascists with the support of the Allies.The beginning of the conquest of Italian territory from July 1943 caused inevitable disruption in the operational and organizational needs of the Allies and consequently SOE. The occupation of almost all of southern Italy had increased the ranges of Allied air sorties by hundreds of kilometres, and the airfields in Apulia, in particular, brought the Balkans much closer.
Following changes in the locations of various Allied organizations in the Mediterranean, SOE’s leadership began to set up bases in the Italian peninsula.
Although the Allies’ power to requisition was absolute, problems arose between the various armed forces in finding suitable locations for the different departments and branches. Given that no space was available in Brindisi, Monopoli (a little town 40km south of Bari) was chosen, and from the initial site there soon arose a whole series of offices, administration centres and training centres in the vicinity, all of which, in the words of Dick Mallaby, took place ‘in great secrecy’.
The base at Monopoli, established on 18 September 1943, became fully operational in mid-October and was codenamed Maryland, after Mary, the wife of its commander, Gerald (or Gerry) T. Holdsworth, also a member of SOE and a leading expert in sabotage and explosives.
The SOE department operating in Italy, for mysterious reasons, was given the name No. 1 Special Force.
Maryland’s value as an advanced logistics base continued to grow, given that all the missions targeted at the area of Italy governed by the RSI originated from Apulia, as well as many of those destined for the Balkans. As early as November 1943, all of SOE’s transmission activities in Italy were moved from Brindisi to Monopoli.
As the front line pushed north, Holdsworth moved to Rome, leaving his deputy, Hewitt, to run Maryland.
Dick Mallaby was obviously one of the first to be based at Maryland.
Mallaby was keen to conduct another special mission, but despite his repeated requests, he would have to wait more than a year, even though he was kept busy. This considerable gap was not only the result of lengthy preparations, but was also because he had been captured, photographed and precisely identified during his first operation; as a result, SOE’s leaders considered Mallaby better suited to the equally valuable, but less draining and risky, role of instructor and coordinator of direct missions to the areas of Italy under control of the RSI.
But there were further specific reasons for this decision. According to Dick Mallaby’s private memoirs, his requests for immediate reassignment to operations were not accepted because ‘I knew too much about the organization.’
To this must be added that Mallaby was the key player in and witness to the controversial armistice between the Italians and the Allies, an episode that was both well known and widely censored. Little of what Mallaby had seen, heard and transmitted coincided precisely with the official versions, while the desire to pin down the actual terms of the Italian unconditional surrender was not only of interest to journalists and academic historians, but also at the time to all the various parties – the Italians, Germans, Soviets, French, and not least the Allies themselves.
Mallaby’s superiors, while relying on his abilities, always kept in mind that he needed careful handling. Under no circumstances was he to fall into the hands of the Germans and RSI Italians, and, in any event, it was better that he had little contact with Allied personnel outside SOE.
Given that former agent Olaf was not to be used for missions into German-occupied territory, Mallaby was assigned to the wireless telegraphy section located about 15km south of Monopoli, in the Selva di Fasano area.
Mallaby’s memories of Apulia were positive: despite the hard work, the setting of the base allowed for some fun to be had in his free time, and its proximity to the sea was particularly appreciated. A small group of FANYs was also ordered to leave Massingham and relocate to Apulia. Among them was Christine Marks.
The journey of the future Mrs Mallaby and three of her colleagues to the heel of Italy was somewhat long, arduous and perilous. From Algiers, after a truck transfer across hundreds of kilometres of desert, her group arrived in Bizerte. From there, according to the original plans, they would travel by plane to Italy; however, organizational problems arose, and they were forced to stay there for 14 days, during which they took care of wounded American soldiers. When they finally left for Italy, the four FANYs travelled instead on a small landing boat, in far from peaceful, hygienic or comfortable conditions.
Having arrived at Monopoli, the FANYs found it in a fairly chaotic state. There was a water shortage and little available space, so much so that in its early
phases some sections were based out in the open. Eventually some space was found for them, with the FANYs’ office based on the first floor of a building. The secret, precious communications that the girls had worked on were sorted on the ground and second floors, and were lowered and raised between the three, somewhat primitively, by means of a beach bucket attached to a rope. They worked 12-hour shifts, and every few days one member of the group would take a break, leaving the other three to carry on working.
Now that they were reunited, Dick Mallaby and Christine spent Christmas 1943 together in Apulia. Dick asked Christine to marry him once the war was over. Christine said yes, and both hoped that developments in the war would not interfere with their marriage and future plans.
The peculiar situation that had evolved in Italy meant that in the months following the September 1943 surrender, the Allied special and intelligence services were the only ones effectively supporting anti-fascist forces both in the Italy ruled by the king and Badoglio, and the Italy under Mussolini’s control. In the opening months of 1944, Second Lieutenant Dick Mallaby (now officially seconded to SOE with the proviso ‘not to be made public’, according to his personnel file) continued his work begun in the previous months of coordinating and training agents in the Kingdom of the South and members of the resistance groups intending to operate as clandestine wireless operators in RSI territory. Mallaby was also one of the few recipients of the daily reports of the Italian interception service, demonstrating the importance of his role.
In the meantime Dick Mallaby’s mysterious existence was constantly and carefully monitored by the enemies’ intelligence agencies. A 1944 report stated the following: ‘It is known that [Mallaby] in the second half of August 1943 dropped into Como Province, where he was identified and placed under arrest. It seems, however, that he later managed to escape and rejoin Allied troops fighting in southern Italy, and currently is in Bari with the rank of captain.’1
The opening war years had seen the confiscation of the Mallaby family’s businesses, restrictions on travel and school attendance for the children, and isolation from the community in Asciano – few of whom even greeted them by now. In 1943 the dramatic news that Dick had been shot reached them: Mrs Mallaby did not want to tell her husband, but the pharmacist in Asciano came down one night to Poggio Pinci to break the news to him. Fortunately, it turned out not to be true, and was probably the result of local malice.
After September 1943, things became worse. Cecil Mallaby was warned not to leave his Asciano residence without permission. He would certainly have been interned, had it not been for the timely coded telegrams sent to him by friendly presences in the local Prefecture, who forewarned him of any likely attempts to detain him. Thus, Mallaby senior, like the partisans and the draft dodgers, took refuge in safe houses, where he spent a considerable amount of time. After September 1943 he established contact with a partisan known as Fulmine (‘Lightning’) from the Amiata group. If stopped by German troops, in order to mask his English accent he planned to gag himself and slur his words, pretending to have terrible toothache.
A typical event in wartime Asciano was the primary school march, organized by local teacher Maria Rispoli. She, together with her pupils, used to march to the Mallabys’ house, where the children were ordered to shout: ‘May God strike the English!’ (a famous phrase with which the militant journalist Mario Appelius concluded his anti-British propaganda radio broadcasts). To mark Easter 1944, the same teacher left a handwritten note at the Mallaby residence with the following message: ‘May God strike the English. May God strike the English. May God strike the English. May God strike the English. To the wishes of my students, I add mine a hundredfold. Maria Rispoli, Easter 1944’. Cecil Mallaby took the unpleasant note and inserted it into his private diary, where I found it almost 70 years later.
On 16 July 1944, a further key event, unrecorded in any other historical work, but relevant in this one, took place: a father saw his son reappear after almost five years of war.
The Allies had taken control of the province of Siena a few days previously, and in his private diary, Cecil Mallaby noted:
At 9 o’clock a large military truck drove up to the house, and when I reached the hall I found at last my dear boy Dick, looking very thin and quite wornout looking. He bore the pips of a lieutenant and the ribbon of the M.C.! I had not seen him since I saw him off at Milan Station on 1 September 1939 (a boy of 20 is now he is a wornout old man of 25!) – A great pity that this is only a ‘stolen’ visit he had to punch off again early in the morning – We have so much to talk about and so many people wanted to see him and salute him – as it was we did not get to bed till past 11.30 in spite of the early start tomorrow – Thank God for his mercies.2
The news spread through Asciano and many people came to the Mallaby house to see ‘Dìcche’ again and admire his Military Cross.
Cecil Mallaby’s private diary also reveals that his son left Poggio Pinci the following morning at 6.31am, heading for the town of Macerata in eastern central Italy. Archival documents confirm that Dick Mallaby accompanied Major John Henderson to the Macerata area for a brief fact-finding mission among the partisan groups in the area.3
For the remainder of 1944, Mallaby was also involved in the analysis of matériel provided by SIM’s interception service, and participated in some of the details in the planning of Operation Rankin – the secret activities designed to prevent, or curb, the conquest of Western European territories by the Soviet Union, in the event of a rapid and total collapse in Germany.
Finally, in the closing weeks of 1944, Mallaby was tasked with his long-desired, new special mission.
The way in which Mallaby’s second mission developed borders again on the unlikely and, apart from the creative courage shown by SOE’s young agent, the others involved – many of whom were well known – do not come out of it well.
SOE had been working with the Brigate Fiamme Verdi (Green Flame Brigade), a clandestine Catholic formation with branches all over northern Italy, the activities of which were being affected by its lack of adequate radio contact with the Allies. Mallaby volunteered to enter northern Italy covertly with some of its members to set up a transmission station in the mountainous area between the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia and instruct operators on site, in order to facilitate air-drops of matériel.
Initially, SOE’s leadership opposed Mallaby’s return to northern Italy, due to reservations resulting from his previous mission. A warm personal letter sent to Dick Mallaby by Cecil Roseberry on 3 January 1945 nicely summarized both Mallaby’s deep desire to begin a new mission, and the risks that his return to action might pose:
Dear Dick,
I have never answered your letter of the 14th. Nov., but this is not to be taken as any lack of appreciation – I was delighted to hear from you again. As you know, I take an ‘uncle’s’ interest in you and am always glad to hear of your doings. Your letter made me think that you would try to find some way of getting on to the dirt track again and now, you young devil, you seem to be half-way there. It’s no use my preaching anything about the risk to yourself personally – I know that does not count and that you could argue that it is safer than the trenches or even a bombing area. I do feel, however, that your risk is bigger than the next bloke’s as your appearance and your carriage are exceedingly individual, you are already ‘on the books’ and moreover, if they like to play cat-and-mouse they could give you a delightful little run until they had plotted all your contacts.
So it behoves you to act with more than ordinary circumspection. I feel sure you and JQ will have hit it off well and I hope you did not forget to thank him for the efforts he was making – not knowing the other line I was working – to get you out when you were in the bag.
Following his earlier capture, Mallaby’s details had been put on file. If he were captured again, this would guarantee the firing squad for him: in northern Italy the situation, atmosphere and mood were quite different to those of August 1943 an
d there were now two enemies instead of one.
But the operation was subsequently authorized, under the codename Edenton Blue. Following a covert entry into Italy from the Swiss border, the official aim of the mission was to provide operational and wireless transmission support to Lombard resistance groups, as well as further SOE missions, up until the German surrender. However, Mallaby had been confidentially informed that he was to remain in northern Italy, exercising full caution, and, following a cessation of war activities, was to be ready to move immediately to Milan, to take control of all British wireless communications in northern Italy.
In fact, Britain’s political leaders, and consequently SOE’s, were thinking ahead to winning the peace, after winning the war.The following outcomes were justifiably feared: the triggering of indiscriminate and bloody vendettas; attempts at insurrection; substitution in public office of elements politically oriented towards and controlled by the Soviet Union, without adequate representation of all anti-fascist forces; and Tito’s expansionist ambitions into eastern Italy.
Before departing for his second mission, Mallaby learned that, following further advances in the front northwards, No. 1 Special Force would move to the Tolomei Institute in Siena – the school that Dick had attended only a few years previously.4 The move took place in February 1945.5
Mallaby’s new mission was soon underway. He reached Lyon in France on 15 December 1944 in good company, his travelling companions being Edgardo Sogno, Alfredo Pizzoni (president of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia – CLNAI, the Committee of National Liberation for Northern Italy), and Ferruccio Parri (deputy commander of the Corpo Volontari della Libertà – CVL, the Volunteer Freedom Corps), among the most important figures in the Italian resistance movement.6
Mallaby then continued on to Lausanne, and then to Bern – this tortuous route was imposed by the need to avoid the front line. He remained hidden in the British Embassy in Bern until 13 February (mirroring his unnerving wait prior to Operation Neck), when he moved to Lugano and met up with the other members of the mission which he was to head: the priest Don Giovanni Barbareschi; a radio operator (codenamed Anselmo – real name Everardo Galassini); and another priest, Don Mario Zanin (alias Byron), who was a member of the Brigate Fiamme Verdi.7
An Englishman Abroad Page 16