Sharing the Secret

by Nick van der Bijl

  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 t
hree 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.