32 Beyond cryptographic techniques, the touch on the key of each operator is like a fingerprint, which becomes recognizable to those who usually receive the transmissions. This allowed a rapid identification of who was actually transmitting (and even some idea of their psychological state). The most experienced operators soon learned to distinguish whether the transmitting agents, who in any case often worked in highly tense conditions, were operating under duress (see Marks 1998, pp. 601–02).
Luigi Marchesi, who at the time was a major seconded to the Supreme Command and right-hand man of the Chief of the General Staff Vittorio Ambrosio and Castellano (and, in those days, the chief guardian angel of Dick Mallaby), confirms that operators known to Mallaby were used in the transmissions so that he could ‘recognize the rhythm of the key’ (Luigi Marchesi, Come siamo arrivati a Brindisi, Bompiani: Milan, 1969, p. 62; and also Luigi Marchesi, 1939–1945 Dall’impreparazione alla resa incondizionata, Mursia: Milan, 1993, p. 52).
In his memoir, La guerra continua, Rizzoli: Milan, 1963, p.78, Castellano recalled: ‘At first [Mallaby] refused, but the reward I had promised him, freedom, led him to start work, albeit with considerable mistrust. However, when he received the conventional phrase “Tie Rock” from Algiers, he was reassured and, from that point on, renamed “Squarzina”, he served the Supreme Command.’ Castellano is the only one to refer to this confirmation phrase used by Massingham.
33 In common with almost all radio-telegraphists, on several further occasions Mallaby interspersed brief personal or playful statements in his messages. These often got the intended recipients (mainly Christine Marks) into trouble and disciplinary sanctions (see also Bailey 2014, p. 316).
34 TNA: HS 6/779.
35 Marchesi 1969, pp. 61–62 and Marchesi 1993, p. 52. From Marchesi’s recollections, we can infer that Castellano did not make clear to his collaborators that the radio had arrived in Italy with him and not Mallaby.
In his secret diary Dick Mallaby states that ‘Maresciallo Baldanza was placed at my side to operate and to keep an eye on me ... I instructed in how to use the device, so that I could rest while he continued.’
Between the September 1943 surrender and the arrival of Allied troops in the Italian capital (4 June 1944), Baldanza was in charge of the transmissions from a secret transmitter called ‘Centro X’.
36 Mrs Christine Joyce Northcote-Marks Dallimore-Mallaby’s statement on this, and others besides, were compiled and recorded by me on 19 June 2008 in Milan.
Marks 1998 (p. 335) describes the Quirinale event; whereas, according to the detailed report contained in Palermo 1967 (p. 157), at least until the morning of 5 September, Mallaby operated from the Supreme Command HQ.
37 Stafford 2011, p. 15.
38 Ruggero Zangrandi, in 1943: 25 luglio – 8 settembre, Feltrinelli: Milan, 1964 (p. 335), hypothesizes that the secret radio traffic managed by Mallaby was also used by Ambrosio and Castellano to exchange important confidential messages. There is no proof of this.
39 In his interrogation dated 27 February 1945, Lieutenant-Colonel De Francesco confirmed that ‘all the secret radio messages were brought to me’ (Palermo 1967, p. 410). Otello Griffoni, in his unpublished memoir (in my possession), states that due to Castellano’s and Marchesi’s commitments, De Francesco entrusted him with the ‘encoding and decoding’ of the messages.
40 See: Zangrandi 1964; Toscano 1966; Palermo 1967; and Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993. In the latter work (p. 310) it is noted that the Monkey–Drizzle messages were destroyed at 7.30am on 9 September, as confessed in the diligent report of the following day, signed by the appointed, Major Mauro Aloni, complete with countersignatory confirmation by Lieutenant-Colonel Primo Peraldo of the General Staff, who authorized the destruction as ‘head of the Exchequer’. In Annex I, point 11 of this report it can be read that the papers burnt included ‘A collection of about 50 incoming and about 30 outgoing radio messages exchanged between the Supreme Command and the Allied commander in chief’. This provides a very useful quantification of the number of successful Monkey–Drizzle messages up to that point. This document can be found at AUSSME: N. 1-11, Fondo Diari Storici 2 G.M. b. 3000/III, and is reported in I Documenti Diplomatici Italiani, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato – Libreria dello Stato: Rome, 1990, pp. 957–58.
There were more destructions of documents relating to the Italian surrender (implemented by SIM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) during this period.
41 Castellano 1945 (p. 184, note) notes the unprecedented operational detail, stating that ‘For security reasons all the telegrams, after deciphering and translation, were paraphrased and again retranslated.’
42 Carlo De Risio, in La tenda di Cassibile (Editrice Science Technology History: Rome, 1993, p. 82) refers to this message, but without a citation.
43 Castellano 1945, p. 128. AUSSME, n. 1–11, Diari Storici 2 G.M., b. 3000/III.
44 TNA: HS 6/779.
45 Ibid.
46 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, p. 397.
47 Ibid., p. 398.
48 The message is reproduced in its entirety in Castellano 1963 (p. 89). In Massingham the news was enthusiastically welcomed. The always very self-restrained Douglas Dodds-Parker gave Mary MacIntyre, the FANY who handed him the message, a kiss straightaway, then rushed the message to General Walter Bedell Smith, who commented: ‘This is very satisfactory.’ Eisenhower, on hearing the good news, declared himself ‘very pleased’.
49 Castellano 1963, p. 88. AUSSME, n. 1–11, Fondo Diari Storici 2 G.M., b. 3000/III.
50 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, p. 210.
51 Castellano 1963, p. 90. AUSSME, n. 1–11, Fondo Diari Storici 2 G.M., b. 3000/III.
52 Ibid. See also Harry Cecil Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower, Mondadori: Milan, 1948, p. 38; Vanna Vailati, L’armistizio e il Regno del Sud, Palazzi Editore: Milan, 1969, pp. 205–06; Castellano 1945, p. 157; and Castellano 1963, p. 90.
53 The 44-clause Long Armistice (the ‘Instrument of Surrender of Italy’) was eventually signed in Malta on 29 September 1943 aboard HMS Nelson by General Eisenhower and Marshal Badoglio, but kept secret until November 1945.
54 AUSSME n. 1–11, Fondo Diari Storici 2 G.M., b. 3000 bis.
55 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, pp. 310–11.
56 According to a secret message sent at the time from Rome to Berlin, Badoglio declared that the Italians would not necessarily attack the Germans or the Allies: ‘It depends on who acts first.’
57 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, pp. 313–314.
58 Ibid., p. 217.
59 For both, see AUSSME: Diari Storici 2 G.M., ‘Mancata difesa di Roma’, b. 3000.
60 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, pp. 316–17 and Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages.
According to Dodds-Parker 1984 (p. 140), the message was dictated down the telephone to him by Eisenhower. The first two parts of the message were dictated at 11.30am, but there was then a two-hour delay before the last part was received. Eisenhower informed Dodds-Parker that the last part (evidently subject to careful drafting by committee with other Allied political, diplomatic and military leaders) would be sent by military courier with the utmost urgency. Someone, however, forgot to point out this urgency, as the courier only delivered the envelope to Massingham only after having eaten his lunch in the time between consignment and delivery.
61 Aga-Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, p. 317. Eisenhower Library, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages.
62 Eisenhower Library, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages.; TNA: HS 6/780; and Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, pp. 311–12.
63 From the original transcript of the BBC radio programme Now it Can Be Told, which aired on 25 June 1950, in the Mallaby family papers/my archive.
64 Aga Rossi, L’inganno reciproco, 1993, passim.
65 AUSSME: Diari Storici 2 G.M., ‘Mancata difesa di Roma’, b. 3000. See also Marchesi 1969, pp. 110–11; and Marchesi 1993, p. 85.
66 Melton C. Davis (Davies 1973, p. 418) claims that Mallaby was accompanied by five officers, three non-commissioned officers and an Italian radio technician, as well as the radio. According to the same author (who does not indicate a source), the plane was piloted by Major Giovanni Battista Vassallo.
Vassallo was in charge of the Supreme Command’s air transport requirements, as well as being the personal pilot of Chief of the General Staff Vittorio Ambrosio. Although Vassallo’s position might have allowed him to recall various interesting details (he even flew Castellano to Sicily and back in those days), he has never been the subject of research, interviews or investigations. I have only managed to ascertain that Vassallo died in 1997.
67 TNA: HS 6/870.
68 Eisenhower Library, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages.
69 Ibid.
70 TNA: HS 6/780.
71 The transcription of this message bears the following note: ‘Monkey went off the air at 2000 hrs GMT in spite of all our protests.’ Eisenhower Library, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages. TNA: Ibid.
72 Practically all the accounts relating to this phase of the journey (one among many in Davis 1973, p. 449) refer to heated arguments, due to de Courten preventing some people from boarding (which was clearly the case), and the presence of an angry crowd on the harbour wall at Ortona (which is not true).
73 Both events are reported in Manlio Masci, I Savoia. L’ultimo giorno, Editrice Italica: Pescara, 1966, pp. 161–62 and pp. 168–69.
74 According to Luigi Marchesi’s memoirs, his group (which also included the officers De Francesco, Adam, Marshal Baldanza and Sergeant Della Corte, plus Mallaby) was ferried across by boarding barge, together with King Vittorio Emanuele III, his consort and his son.
According to other eyewitnesses (Masci 1966, p. 167), the royal family reached the Baionetta on board the fishing boat Littorio.
Otello Griffoni, in his memoirs, refers to three transfers across: the first (with the members of the royal house, the leaders of the Supreme Command and Mallaby) was a calm affair, while the others were less so.
75 Luigi Marchesi, Edgardo Sogno, Carlo Milan, Per la libertà: Il contributo militare italiano al servizio informazioni alleato, Mursia: Milan, 1995, p. 10.
76 Zangrandi 1964 (p. 399) reports the presence of ‘another British officer, assisting with the radio, soon no longer undercover’. This has no basis in fact.
77 Another eyewitness on board the Baionetta, Pietro Mellano, was the only one to report a further event, comprising a pair of German aircraft – a Ju 88 reconnaissance plane and another plane that flew very close to the ship. He also notes: ‘We had requested a fighter escort from our airfields in Apulia, but none were ever seen. Perhaps they didn’t exist anymore’ (Pietro Mellano, Da Roma a Brindisi (via Pescara), n.p., Rome, 1967, p. 78).
78 Zangrandi 1964, pp. 438–39; Agostino Degli Espinosa, Il Regno del Sud, Editori Riuniti: Rome, 1973, p. 10.
79 This particular ‘non-event’, which aroused suspicions among many alternative theorists, was actually stimulated by King Vittorio Emanuele III, who made the following surprising and slightly ambiguous statement on the matter: ‘At 1.00 pm on 10 September, a German plane targeted our ship. I thought that it had been deliberately sent to bomb us, but having identified us, it flew off.’, according to Nino Bolla Il segreto di due re, Rizzoli: Milan, 1951, p. 28.
One of the best-informed witnesses, Eugen Dollmann, made apparently conflicting and ambiguous statements on the matter. Having denied for decades the existence of an agreement, on 4 February 1984, during an interview in Munich, he asserted that a sort of tacit agreement was in place and also claimed credit for it. See Franco Manaresi, ‘I tedeschi dietro la “fuga” del Re: Un colloquio e una corrispondenza con Eugenio Dollmann’, in Nuova Storia Contemporanea, VI, November–December 2009, pp. 123–38.
80 TNA: HS 6/870.
81 See also Zangrandi 1964, p. 436; Vailati 1969, p. 308.
82 TNA: HS 6/780. Conversely, Mallaby at that time was asked to report to Algiers that the light cruiser Scipione Africano would remain in Brindisi at the king’s disposal.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 See TNA: HS 6/870 and Degli Espinosa 1973, pp. 53–78, for an accurate memory of the atmosphere existing in the autumn of 1943 in Apulia between the Italians and the British.
89 TNA, HS 6/775-872.
90 TNA: HS 6/779.
91 Dodds-Parker 1984, p. 136; Foot 1984, p. 296; Marks 1998, p. 397. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, Doubleday & Company: Baltimore, 1948, p. 183.
92 Foot 1984, p. 329.
93 Eisenhower Library, Walter Bedell Smith collection: Capitulation of Italy – Messages.
CHAPTER 5: THE SECOND MISSION
1 ACS: ACC microfilm, Public Safety, item: Cecil D. Mallaby, reel 166 C.
2 Private diary of Cecil Mallaby, 1 July 1942–31 December 1953: entries for 16 and 17 July 1944 (courtesy of Mrs Pia Teresa Mallaby).
To understand what can happen to a father who has not seen his son return home, the following sad tale from Arezzo helps.
Outside the railway station, or at the corner of the main street of the city, during the 1960s, stood a very distinguished man, tall and thin, getting on in years, staring into space, with a bicycle next to him. His clothes, as well as the bicycle, were completely coloured in gold. This man was waiting. He was waiting for his son, who left during World War II for the Russian Front and never returned. In his devastating, dignified and lucid delirium, he hoped that, after such a long time, his son would return. And so, to be easily spotted, he frequented the busiest places in the city, in that unmistakable colour, so that his son might recognize him after all that time.
3 According to Stafford 2011 (p. 152), Mallaby went with Henderson ‘to liberated Macerata, to resume contact with the partisans and assess the relevance of their activity, document their activities in the region, obtain elements that could be useful for northern Italy, recover weapons and matériel, which would have been used for “banditry”, ensure that the partisan leaders now replaced by the Allies were well treated, and inform the Allied Military Government about the problems they might expect in the future, from partisan units that had been stood down. As the Allies advanced northwards and larger areas of Italy were liberated, the latter problem was emerging as one of the most pressing and complex.’
Carla Giacomozzi’s Un eccidio a Bolzano confirms that Mallaby was simultaneously training Italian agents destined for missions in territory under RSI control (Città di Bolzano/Assessorato alla Cultura, alla Convivenza, all Ambiente e alle Pari Opportunità Ufficio Servizi Museali e Storico-Artistici Archivio Storico: Bolzano, 2011, pp. 38, 103).
4 Mallaby was able to share his knowledge of the area with his colleagues, and so a group of FANYs began to attend the gymnasium of the famous fencing master Enrico Barbera. Mallaby had already practised the noble sport in his time in Modena before the war. Pawley 1999 (pp. 82–83) contains a photo taken after the end of Mallaby’s second mission, showing Barbera and six FANYs holding fencing swords.
5 Demonstrating good taste, SOE’s leadership had requisitioned Villa Scacciapensieri, near Siena, for the FANYs’ accommodation. The name of the villa means ‘banish thoughts’, a highly appropriate choice.
6 Edgardo Sogno 1996, p. 295. Parri was arrested on 2 January and Sogno on the night of 27/28 January, which delayed the beginning of Mallaby’s mission (Ferruccio Parri, Due mesi con i nazisti, Carecas: Rome, 1973, p. 27). TNA HS 6/785.
7 Don Giovanni (known as Giovannino) Barbareschi was born in Milan on 11 February 1922 and was ordained a priest on 13 August 1944. He was the son of Gaetano Barbareschi (a socialist parliamentarian of Genoese origin, who serv
ed as Minister of Labour in the Parri government and in the first De Gasperi government after the war). Don Giovanni was a prominent member of the Catholic Brigate Fiamme Verdi, which between 1943 and 1945 formed one of the many Italian resistance bodies, but at war’s end saved men and women of the RSI and German structures operating in Italy from reprisals. He was also a member of the Aquile Randagie and Organizzazione Scout Collocamento Assistenza Ricercati – OSCAR. I contacted Don Giovanni Barbareschi by telephone and letter, but he rather abruptly and enigmatically refused to discuss his contact with Mallaby. Fortunately, Dick Mallaby’s son Vaky succeeded (like his father) in an impossible mission, interviewing Barbareschi on 27 November 2012. Don Giovanni Barbareschi passed away on 4 October 2018.
8 The report (drawn up six days after the events) by the Servizio Informazioni della Difesa (SID – Defence Information Service), signed by Colonel Collu, confirms that the arrest of the four occurred in Lecco (TNA: HS 6/873 and TNA: HS 6/874).
9 As reported by Don Giovanni Barbareschi in his aforementioned interview on 27 November 2012, the address in Via Sant’Agnese was where Barbareschi himself had lived.
10 Aloisio Bonfanti, in his 2008 research into the 75 years of the Opera Don Guanella institute in Lecco (private publication), wrote (p. 18) that Don Zanin ‘managed to escape from his Lecco prison and finally came knocking on the door of a religious institute [most probably the Opera Don Guanella]. There, having tested him by making him recite the breviary, to make sure that he really was a priest, they gave him lodging.’ Don Mario Zanin is also mentioned in Roger Absalom’s A Strange Alliance (Leo Olschki: Florence, 1991, p. 106).
11 Ferruccio Parri recalls that his transfers as a prisoner from Milan to Verona and vice versa were always carried out at top speed, to avoid being hit by Allied airplanes (Parri 1973, pp. 65–74).
12 According to the Italian information in British possession, De Leo was ‘very active, an expert in counterespionage, particularly good at investigations and the compilation of irreproachable denunciations’ (Bailey 2014, p. 148). The important role played by De Leo in the RSI did not prevent his election as mayor of Bagnara Calabra in the post-war period, which he held for longer than any other person from 1958 to 1964 and from 1969 to 1977.
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