The Vatican Pimpernel

by Brian Fleming

  On the top floor of this building the Major and the Monsignor were met by John May and brought in to join the British Minister. The Minister explained that the note from Derry expressing thanks for the original 3,000 lire and his request for more had prompted Monsignor O’Flaherty, on seeing it, to think that maybe a meeting would be a good idea. In essence, over the course of that conversation it was agreed that the Council of Three would now become a Council of Four with the English Major in charge of organisational details. Derry stayed overnight in the Minister’s accommodation and spent most of the next day there catching up with war news in order to be able to pass on as much information as he possibly could to those he had left in the mountains, as he had decided to return to them with further assistance and set up an organisational structure there. That evening he donned the clerical robes again and made the return journey with O’Flaherty to the German College. Looking out the window of the Monsignor’s bedroom, Derry realised that they were quite close to where the British Minister was located.

  ‘Didn’t we go rather a long way around?’ I asked wondering if it had been some sort of elaborate joke. ‘We did so’, he agreed, ‘but the important thing is we got there and we got you back. There is a much shorter way, but it means going through two or three gendarmerie posts, where they are used to seeing me alone, and would have been suspicious of you at once. So many people go in and out of the big gates that there is far less risk of being questioned’ … ‘You think of everything’ I said admiringly. ‘Thinking of everything’, he replied, ‘is going to be your job in future’.4

  Having stayed overnight in the Monsignor’s room, Derry returned to his colleagues in the mountains in the company of Pietro Fabri, the smallholder, and passed on to them the 50,000 lire which D’Arcy Osborne had given him. D’Arcy Osborne also helped Derry set up an organisational structure. Leaving Rome was not too difficult even though there were no supplies to hide under. Guards were more careful of those coming in and did not really take any interest in those leaving. Although there were regulations as to what could be brought in and out of Rome and who could come into the city, a group leaving with an empty cart was of no interest. A few days later, again under the vegetables, he returned to Rome and the German College where he donned the Monsignor’s clothes and went across to visit the British Minister. In the meantime, D’Arcy Osborne had checked out some of the background information in relation to Derry by means of a coded message which, by some unexplained means, found its way to the Foreign Office in London, then to the War Office and finally to the local police force in Newark, Nottinghamshire, where Derry was from. In this way the Minister was able to satisfy himself as to the Major’s credentials and he was in a position to allow him to start work. Derry realised that his background had been checked out thoroughly. He assured D’Arcy Osborne that he was genuine and anxious to help.

  ‘Quite so Major’, he said, ‘but you will understand I have to be very careful. The Monsignor never checks up on anybody; he simply accepts at face value everyone who asks him for assistance, and immediately gives all help he can, whatever the risk. I worry about him sometimes, but there seems to be no way of convincing him that his own life is well worth preserving. I imagine he made no attempt to check up on you?’5

  Derry’s role was to build an organisational structure on the work that the Council of Three had already undertaken, including finding places for men to live and ensuring that they regularly received food and all the necessities of life. The Minister also promised to arrange for some other officers, already availing of sanctuary in the Vatican, to provide some administrative back-up to Derry. And so, what came to be known in Government records in London as the British Escape Organisation, came into existence in late November 1943.

  The administrative work involved was huge. At this stage, there were more than a thousand escapees in contact with the organisation and an early decision was made to keep as many as possible out of Rome because the risks were greatest in the city. It was also more difficult and more expensive to keep people supplied with food within the city. At the same time, future escapees, not being aware of the dangers, were most likely to drift towards Rome so a system was set up whereby they could avail of temporary accommodation before being sent out into the countryside again. Derry quickly realised that he had little chance of achieving his objectives without the assistance of the Irish Monsignor and an interesting exchange of views took place when they met later that day. Derry remarked to O’Flaherty ‘It is a good thing you are pro-British, Monsignor.’This provoked a strong response when the Irishman quickly outlined his experiences, and those of his countrymen, as he was growing up. Confused, Derry then asked why the Monsignor was now being so helpful to British escapees. It emerged that O’Flaherty listened to propaganda on both sides in the early years of the War and was unsure what to believe. The experience that changed his views was the treatment of the Jews in Rome. In June 1942, the Roman newspaper Il Messaggero had published a photograph on its front page showing 50 or so Jews working as forced labour along the banks of the Tiber. This had been the final breaking point for O’Flaherty.

  ‘Why am I helping you now? Well, I will tell you, me boy. When this war started I used to listen to broadcasts from both sides. All propaganda, of course, and both making the same terrible charges against the other. I frankly didn’t know which side to believe – until they started rounding up the Jews in Rome. They treated them like beasts, making old men and respectable women get down on their knees and scrub the roads. You know the sort of thing that happened after that; it got worse and worse, and I knew then which side I had to believe.’6

  After this clearing of the air, the two men got on well and Derry moved to live in the Monsignor’s quarters at the German College. A real Vatican identity card bearing a genuine photograph of Derry was produced for him, describing him as Patrick Derry, an Irish writer employed in the Vatican. For this short period of his life, his papers described him as Roman Catholic whereas in fact he was Anglican. These documents were enough to enable Derry to get through any routine checkpoint on the streets of Rome. However, there was always the risk that the validity of the documents would be checked by contacting the neutral Irish Legation which had a list of Irish citizens living in Rome. The authorities there would have been obliged to make it clear that there was no such Irishman in Rome as Patrick Derry. Fortunately for the Major, nobody took this step. The advent of Major Derry as an active participant in the escape organisation has an added advantage for those of us looking back at the period. In contrast to the Monsignor, he kept detailed records and he recounted his experiences in a book published in 1960 under the title The Rome Escape Line. This is the period of the War about which we know most in relation to Monsignor O’Flaherty.

  Derry then began to introduce himself to the local organisation. He decided to visit the various locations where escapees were being catered for. This enabled him to get to know these locations but also it made him aware of the extent of O’Flaherty’s network. His first visit was to the flat on the Via Firenze and he was guided there by the New Zealander, Fr Owen Sneddon. The next day he was returned to the German College and met a Fr John Claffey who was a native of County Westmeath. Fr John brought him to an apartment he shared with another Irish priest, from County Galway, Fr Vincent Treacy. Both were members of the Congregation of the Priests of St Mary and lived at the Via de Penitenzieri quite close to the Monsignor’s office. Their accommodation was very often used as a clearing house for new escapees on their arrival. Fr Claffey took Derry on to meet Br Robert Pace, a Maltese De la Salle Brother. Br Robert had a mini-organisation of his own going within the greater group at that stage, consisting of two young Italians, Sandro Cottich, a law student, and Mimo Trapani, a medical student. Br Robert introduced the Major to his gallant countrywoman, Mrs Chevalier. At that stage Mrs Chevalier had four British soldiers staying with her. Her attitude to the crucial role she played is well reflected in her comment to the Major: ‘They are
absolutely grand, these boys. They are just like my own children. It is all so marvellous.’7

  Like the Monsignor before him Derry emphasised to her the dangers involved in this work. He immediately decided on a cautious strategy, whereby those lodging with her were warned that, in the event of any danger, her safety and that of her family had to come first. Others who were active in the organisation whom he met at that time were Fr Tom Tuomey from Tralee and Fr Ben Forsythe from Fermoy; the Maltese Augustinian priests Fr Egidio Galea, Fr Aurelius Borg and Fr Ugolino Gatt; Fr Anselmo Musters from Holland; Fr John (‘Spike’) Buckley from Mayo; the Italian film director Renzo Lucidi and his wife Adrienne; Fr Madden and Fr Lenan. Among the local supporters he met at that time were Giuseppe Gonzi, Sandro Cottich, Mimo Trapani and Fernando Giustini. He was also introduced to the third member of the Council of Three, Count Sarsfield Salazar. Salazar advised that the Swiss Embassy was still being inundated with requests for help from escapees who were situated in the surrounding countryside. It was agreed that he would continue to be the channel to provide funds and other resources to them. Within a couple of days however, the Monsignor got a tip-off that the authorities were aware of Salazar’s activities as he had been betrayed. The Count had to go into hiding which was just as well because a raid was carried out on the Embassy some days later. However, he continued his work for the organisation from his new location in hiding.

  In the next few weeks Derry got to know other helpers of O’Flaherty’s including the Pestalozza family, Prince Caracciolo, the Irish Br Humilis, a Franciscan monk at St Isidore’s, and another valiant priest from New Zealand, Fr Flanagan. Br Humilis was bursar to his community and, over the years, had become expert in turning the operation of the black market to their advantage. He now brought this expertise to the O’Flaherty organisation, buying food and provisions for the various escapees in large amounts. He quickly located a farmer with a false-bottomed cart who helped to effect deliveries, and was in charge of the expenditure of significant amounts of money, running into millions of lire in the next few years. Derry was brought to most of these billets by Monsignor O’Flaherty and he recalls those events:

  If the distance was reasonable we walked, partly because I needed the exercise, but chiefly because the Monsignor liked walking. In any case, tram journeys were always worrying because sometimes a voluble Italian wanted to talk, and my ‘dozing’ act was not invariably successful.8

  He was lost in admiration for what had been achieved already by O’Flaherty and his colleagues.

  Tramping around Rome with him, I marvelled at how his organisation had so far concealed more than a thousand ex-POWs in convents, crowded flats, on outlying farms.9

  6

  More Volunteers

  As well as Princess Nini, the organisation now had another expert in producing counterfeit documents, a mysterious German lady, known only as Mrs K, who concentrated on producing bread coupons which enabled the organisation to purchase directly from the bakeries at prices cheaper than the going rate on the black market. A Madam Bruccoleri was a widow working in the Red Cross organisation in Rome. Letters which arrived in Italy from families of British prisoners of war, whether they were still incarcerated or in hiding, would come to the Red Cross in Rome. Mrs Bruccoleri was kept up to date by O’Flaherty on all those whom the organisation was catering for, so when she came across a letter regarding one of them she would slip it into her clothing and her daughter Josette would deliver it to O’Flaherty the next day. This way, those in hiding within the city and outside were kept in touch with home.

  The Major also met some of the French diplomatic representatives. As we have seen, the Ambassador, Bérard, had no sympathy with the Allied cause. By contrast, the First and Second Secretaries, Jean de Blesson – who had lost all his family property to the Germans – and François de Vial were very much supporters of the Free French movement and de Gaulle. A similar situation existed in the Irish Embassy where the Irish Minister Thomas Kiernan was obliged to follow the Irish Government policy of strict neutrality while his wife, the noted singer Delia Murphy, and their daughter Blon, were free agents and very much active supporters of O’Flaherty.

  It was quite natural that Kiernan’s wife, Delia Murphy, and Monsignor O’Flaherty would become friends shortly after her arrival in Rome. They were two of a kind: gregarious, outgoing and sociable. It was because of Hugh of ‘the twinkling eyes’, she explains, that she began to get involved in helping the escapees:

  For a time I wrestled with my conscience and prayed for guidance about what I should do to help Fr O’Flaherty. A voice inside me said charity was something God intended for all humanity, in war and peace, I remembered the words of St Paul: Now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; the greatest of these is charity. What else could it be but charity to help those in trouble with the Nazis? Around the city during the nine month occupation of Rome, the Germans had splashed posters warning that anyone found sheltering an Allied prisoner of war would be shot. I doubt if they would have shot the wife of the Irish Minister, but they might not have hesitated with others in our group … I made sure none of the high-ranking German warlords who invited the Kiernans to their feasts, ever suspected what an Irish woman in Rome was doing in her spare time.1

  A very intriguing incident which involved Delia was the case of a German soldier whom an Italian had found exhausted near one of the bridges across the Tiber. This German soldier claimed to be a priest and explained he was fasting in the hope that he would be able to say Mass if he found someone who was in a position to assist him. Delia Murphy brought the German to Monsignor O’Flaherty and as soon as they were satisfied that his claim was genuine they arranged for him to say Mass. As Delia observed:

  As I watched him slowly mount the steps to God’s altar I wondered about the foolishness of war and the sacrifices of life. Say what you like, I am sure if women were allowed to rule the world, there would be no more wars.2

  Another well-known episode involving Delia Murphy was the case of the disappearing boots. Aside from money and food, the most pressing need of those who were on the run was proper footwear. Many of them were travelling long distances by foot, moving from place to place outside of Rome. In his usual way, John May identified a likely source. He discovered that a building which backed on to the garden of the Irish Legation had been taken over by the Germans and was turned into a depot where they repaired boots for their personnel. The boot depot was not guarded at night. Presumably the authorities did not anticipate trouble. For a number of weeks, boots began to disappear and were thrown over the wall into the back garden of the Irish Legation where they were subsequently gathered and passed on to O’Flaherty. Delia Murphy was certainly involved in this, by her own account, and most probably was assisted by her daughter Blon. Br Humilis comments on Delia Murphy’s motivation and indeed, his own, in helping O’Flaherty.

  She did it for humane reasons to save lives. That was my thinking too, because it made no difference to me if they were German or English. I did it to save lives.3

  During all of this time, of course, her husband was attending to his routine diplomatic duties. In November 1942 he wrote to John Charles McQuaid, the then Archbishop of Dublin, assuring him that the authorities were respecting Vatican property in the appropriate manner. He addressed this issue again in November 1943 when he reported back to the authorities in the Department of External Affairs.

  I attach a photo of the German patrol on the demarcation line between the Vatican City and Italy. There have never been more than two sentries, who halted all German soldiers and military cars and cycles and turned them back. They have not interfered with other people, who are stopped by the Swiss Guard or Vatican police from entering the Vatican or the Basilica unless they have Vatican passes.4

  D’Arcy Osborne assigned to Major Derry some military personnel who had already secured sanctuary in the Vatican to support him administratively, most particularly a Captain Henry (Barney) Byrnes of the Royal Canadian A
rmy Service Corps. Derry and Byrnes immediately set up a record-keeping system. Derry anticipated that as the organisation was beginning to spend significant amounts of British Government money, it was likely, at some stage, that he would be asked to account for it. Byrnes kept these records and buried them each night in the Vatican Gardens. Money continued to be supplied by O’Flaherty’s traditional supporters among the nobility and the wealthier citizens of Rome, but more and more funds were now coming from the US and British Governments through Tittmann and D’Arcy Osborne.

  Inevitably because of the military involvement, the work of the organisation strayed into espionage. Derry took careful steps to make sure that O’Flaherty was not involved, for fairly obvious reasons. However, in this aspect of the ongoing work, the Monsignor’s contacts throughout Rome usually meant that he had a fair idea of what was going on. British espionage agents working in the south of Italy were unaware of developments in Rome and the arrangements which had been put in place to support escapees, so they decided to send one of their agents north with money to help any he might meet there. This agent was an Italian, Peter Tumiati, who when he arrived in Rome immediately sought out O’Flaherty, like so many others seeking help on reaching the city. O’Flaherty introduced him to Derry who was rather nervous, not knowing Tumiati’s background. Derry was always on the lookout for agents from the German side who might be trying to penetrate the organisation. When Derry expressed these concerns to the Monsignor the reply he received was, ‘why me boy, I know him well.’5