Given their limited options, Lieutenant Garrone decided to take a risk. He approached a farmer working in his fields and told him they had escaped from the Germans and needed a place to hide. The farmer turned out to be an enthusiastic anti-Fascist and eagerly agreed to help. Because the Germans visited the farmhouse nearly every day, he suggested the men stay in a shed, where they soon set up their radio and began communicating with their base.
The operatives quickly discovered that anti-German sentiment was strong in the region. They requested that the OSS send in supplies for the partisans in the area and arranged to meet a supply boat on September 23. Unfortunately, German activity in the area made the rendezvous impossible that night and for several successive nights. “Since the last night we awaited the landing an armed encounter occurred with a German patrol, we decided to leave the zone for a Partisan area before the Germans started to mop up the region,” reported Garrone.
Deprived of their resupply, the former Axis commandos suffered through the next couple of weeks. The men reported that they were “scarce in clothing, many times suffering from malaria fever.” Despite the cold and sickness, the men “continued in [their] work until 12 October,” when Garrone and Maletto returned to the OSS base in a boat a partisan sympathizer provided. Montanino remained behind to continue the mission. Less than a week later Maletto returned to the area with a full load of weapons and other supplies for the partisans in the region. For several months the San Marco men served as intermediaries between the Allies and the partisans to coordinate attacks on German targets. Although the poor winter weather conditions canceled many planned supply runs, the mission provided critical resources to the Italians fighting the Germans.
The Bionda Mission also enabled the team to carry out important espionage missions, including the destruction of key bridges and roads used by the enemy. During one such incident Montanino received intelligence that three German armored cars would be traveling down the road to Porto Corsini. He recalled, “I immediately reached the road and mined it with German mines, then I watched if the charges would have done their work; a few minutes after a truck loaded with German troops coming from Porto Corsini was blown to bits by an explosion.”
All in all the Bionda Mission was considered highly successful. “During the time of the mission 339 cables concerning military intelligence were sent to the Base for the Command of the Eighth Army. Furthermore, three groups of OSS agents, three Allied Fliers, and two Allied soldiers who had escaped from concentration camps were recovered” behind enemy lines. Garrone added, “During those days all Allied Commands praised us in any possible way for our excellent work.”
A HALLMARK OF MODERN American special operations forces involves killing or capturing high-value targets. On the Gina Mission, OSS agents from the Eighth Army Detachment, working closely with Italian partisans, managed to blow up a staff car and kill the commanding general of a German division on the Vergate front. OSS teams also destroyed a crucial supply depot, causing 60 million lire worth of damage to the enemy. They captured thousands of Germans and helped exfiltrate dozens of downed Allied airmen and former POWs.
Most importantly, the OSS agents also transmitted highly valuable information. They scoped out the defenses of the Gothic Line. In fact, the detailed data, plans, drawings, and photographs they obtained from the Gothic Line were considered “the best piece of ground-intelligence work that has come out of Italy.” This team was also the first to employ a newly developed miniature box camera in the field, paving the way for the use of numerous such devices in the decades to come. Much of the intelligence the Eighth Army Detachment missions obtained helped the Allies track troop movements and identify supply lines and other targets for attack.
OVER TIME, THE SIZE of the Eighth Army Detachment grew significantly from the original single officer and four men to four officers and fifteen OSS men working with fifty-three agents and five members of the Italian air force. The detachment and Dick Kelly’s Maritime Unit successfully conducted over a dozen missions in key occupied areas of northern Italy, with as many as thirty-five agents behind enemy lines at one time. Their close cooperation with the Italians also meant that they had four airplanes to use. They were essential in resupplying teams behind enemy lines, especially when the moon was bright, precluding the use of boats. “One cannot overstress the importance of having an airplane completely at one’s disposal,” noted an operative. One plane, the Savoia, was particularly successful, even attempting missions in broad daylight while under heavy enemy fire. “This was the only airplane in Italy which would attempt to drop in heavy flak area. The record proves that every time it went out, flak was encountered. It is a tribute to the skills of the pilots and to the crew as a whole that the airplane always returned safely.”
When the moon was dark the Eighth Army Detachment were able to employ their PT boats to ferry in supplies and personnel. “In all, fifteen sea operations were attempted by this Detachment and nine proved successful. The PT boats always had on board members of the Detachment who personally went ashore every time to insure success and to talk to the people on shore.”
Throughout this period, the British Eighth Army leadership was so impressed with the work of the OSS and MU that they relied on the organization to handle all clandestine operations in the area instead of their own SOE, which was also in the theater. At one point the Brits even recommended that Thiele “be incorporated into the Eighth Army G3 as Special Ops Officer.” Such accolades were largely unheard of. OSS records drily note, “It is gratifying to note that [the British] preferred an American organization to their own.”
*For over fifteen years the author has been friends with Monteleone, whom his daughter fondly calls “Uncle Frank.” Every day the author wears a very special gift from Monteleone: an eighty-five-year old scapula that the former OSS spy wore around his neck throughout all of his missions behind the lines in World War II. Monteleone sent the scapula to the author just before he accompanied the Marines of Lima Company 3/1 into the Battle of Fallujah. While in Fallujah, the author barely escaped death on several occasions; he remains convinced that the amulet played a powerful role in helping him survive.
23
STELLA
NOT ALL OF THE MISSIONS CONDUCTED by the MU or Eighth Army Detachment were a success; many were miserable failures. Infiltrating behind enemy lines was incredibly dangerous, and agents faced brutal torture and near-certain death if captured. One OSS operative, a macho Italian who improbably went by the code name “Stella,” recalled meeting a beautiful woman in a bar while on a mission in the Udine region deep in enemy-held northern Italy. The seductive, blue-eyed blond sat near him and struck up a conversation by asking for a match. She flirted openly with Agent Stella, eventually asking him, “Are you Roman?”
Stella confirmed that he was. The woman whispered to him that “she knew a very easy way to cross the line . . . ‘for a nominal fee.’” Stella erred on the side of caution, replying that “it wasn’t my intention to put my life in jeopardy and I preferred to await developments.”
After leaving the bar, he soon met up with an undercover resistance officer named Captain Martellini, whom he decided to use as a shield. “I mentioned the fact that I had met a young lady there who could arrange for a person to cross the lines for a certain sum, and the captain begged me to introduce him to the young lady as one wanting to go to a certain city in ‘invaded Italy.’”
Stella met the young woman again a few days later and informed her that he had a friend who wished to cross the lines. Thereafter Stella realized he was being followed, but “due to the bizarre layout of the city, it was not too difficult to elude his shadow.” However, within days Stella’s shadow reappeared. Identifying himself as German police, he arrested Stella and dragged him into Gestapo headquarters for questioning. “We know who you are,” they began. The Gestapo inquisitors informed Stella he would only be freed if he answered their questions, saying, “We also know that you have asked to cross the
front lines for your own personal reason.” The gorgeous Axis counterintelligence agent at the bar had done her job. Understanding the Germans didn’t really know who he was at all but had merely taken the bait according to his plan, the OSS agent refuted their claims and added, “In regard to crossing the lines, it is necessary that I clarify the fact that not I, but the GNR Captain Martellini had expressed that desire.”
A quick telephone call brought Martellini to the office. The captain assured the questioners that he had, in fact, been the one interested in crossing the lines. Martellini went even further, saying that Stella had never made any anti-Fascist remarks and adding, “As far as I am concerned, this man is to be excluded from any suspicion whatsoever.”
Despite the officer’s assertions, the Germans continued to interrogate Stella, repeatedly asking him where he lived. Knowing that he had a potentially damning letter in his room, Stella attempted to put them off. But the interrogators began their “sweet tortures.” After many rounds of brutality, Stella eventually passed out. They revived him with a bucket of cold water and carried him away to a temporary cell. Stella recounted what happened next:
The following afternoon a stinking-drunk sailor was thrown into the same room. He had scabs over his face, and on his front gums he had only three teeth. The lackey who accompanied him shoved him inside, saying (from what I could get), that I was a partisan. The drunken sailor grunted something, then threw himself at me, sinking those three lurid teeth into my neck; I fought him off with all my strength, and a few moments later he fell asleep. I soaked up the blood and tied a handkerchief about my neck.
When Stella next went in for questioning, one of the Germans asked about the handkerchief. Stella “told him of the incident and that vampirish individual.” In response, the German grinned. “You are in a fine fix!” he exclaimed. “That man is venereally [sic] diseased. If you behave yourself we will see that you are taken care of and that you are given the first treatments to kill the bacilli.”
Faced with this new horror and knowing that his landlady—an Allied sympathizer—had likely destroyed the evidence in his room by this time, Stella told the Germans where he lived and agreed to take them there the next day. He remembered, “When we arrived, the landlady gave me a slight nod, and I understood that everything had been taken care of. My spirits rose.” Despite searching for several hours, the Germans found nothing incriminating. Stella began to hope that he would soon be released when disaster struck. An old friend saw him on the street and greeted him by name. Stella, who had been using a false name, couldn’t explain the incident away. The Germans took him away for weeks of “indescribable torture.” Stella fell severely ill and remained imprisoned until the Allies liberated the city.
24
INDIANA JONES
“THIS COAST IS HOT,” MORDE NOTED. “There are minefields all the way. A PT boat hit one two or three weeks ago and blew up, losing ten men.”
Despite the treacherous nature of the Italian coast, Lieutenant Ted Morde, the archaeologist who found the Lost Temple of the Monkey God, traveled to Ravenna for the purpose of exploring what the OSS, MU of Company D in particular, could do to further support British actions on the northern Italian front. The Brits “showed an appreciation” for MU’s work, but it was difficult to see how the unit’s boats could be brought into service in the area. MU and the Eighth Army Detachment in particular had been very effective on the eastern coast of Italy on the Adriatic Sea because that side of the country had a coastal road that was easy to access by water, providing plenty of targets for the frogmen. The northwestern shoreline, known as the Ligurian Coast, didn’t have a similar coastal roadway. Instead, the roads in the area head “inland, supplying the Germans in the mountains,” explained Morde. “Thus, with no coastal road at that point, meaning no culverts, bridges, tunnels, etc., there are no suitable targets for sabotage of the type Kelly’s outfit, the San Marco group, pulled on the Adriatic side.” In addition, the Germans had excellent radar coverage of the Ligurian coastline extending as far as fifteen miles out to sea, as well as a fleet of warships in the region. And they had constructed an extensive minefield that covered a similar range of the water and the beach as well. The mines came in “all types: magnetic, acoustic, contact, and a new kind of the ‘trip’ variety, a mine from which extends snag lines on floats to catch any vessel that trips a line, these extending for as much as 100 to 300 meters. There are thousands of them.” The British believed it would be impossible to clear the mines, and Morde agreed: “For a one-time venture, no attempt could be made to clear the mines without costly losses. And not a damned thing, other than a seagull, could get over them, not even a canoe drawing three inches of water. Certainly not a PT, or our ARBs, or even a mattress, meaning electric surfboard.” The days of easy infiltrations were gone.
With the waters heavily mined, the OSS called on Italian fishermen for help. In late January and early February, the MU hired several of these anglers to make a reconnaissance of a projected base. They did so and located a man who owned a great deal of property in the area. “This man agreed to organize partisans if MU would supply the arms.” MU, of course, agreed. The fishermen carried the landowner and two San Marco men back to the area. The two successfully relayed information about German patrols and helped organize the partisans. When the Germans closed in on their positions, it was again the local fishermen who were able to exfiltrate the agents successfully.
The OSS continued relying on these locals for some time and outfitted four fishing boats with machine guns. The hazardous conditions meant that the British were unwilling to put vessels in the water, even though Italians were willing to make the runs. A report noted, “They rely on their shallow draft and good fortune” to avoid the mines.
In spite of the hazards, the OSS had moved Company D and two PT boats into the region, stationing them in the city of Livorno. “It was agreed that it would be best and wise to keep the boats here to stand in case there were any change.”
However, the MU suffered a devastating setback that deprived it of the use of one of its PT boats and one of its best operatives. On the morning of Saturday, January 13, Morde and another OSS operative climbed on board P-584 to meet with Ward Ellen, who skippered the craft. They met and discussed trivial matters from 8:30 a.m. until just before 9:30, when Morde went back to shore. He later recalled what happened next: “I had gone about 100 yards when I heard an explosion, but thought it came from another direction, since the sound was muffled by the wind, and a pile of bombed out buildings separated me from the pier near where Ellen’s boat was tied up.” Morde went aboard the other OSS boat, P-568 and was speaking with its captain when a crewman burst in.
“Come quick,” the sailor shouted. “There’s been an explosion on the other boat!”
Morde took off running and reached the scene “in two minutes flat, in time to see the crew of a U.S. salvage ship nearby pouring fire extinguisher fluid into the still burning interior of the P-584.” Taking charge, Morde ordered everyone off the craft, knowing that it had thousands of gallons of high-octane gas on board that had not yet exploded. “Had that 3,800 gallons gone up, so would half of the harbor and at least six large ships nearby.”
Still, the damage done by the smaller explosion was extensive. Although conscious, Ward Ellen was in shock and “badly burned about the face, head, hands, and feet. The skin hung in shreds.” Despite his injuries, “before Lieutenant Ellen would allow himself to be taken to the hospital, he insisted on personally seeing that every member of his crew had reached safety.” That task accomplished, a Jeep whisked the officer and the other agent who had been meeting with Morde to the nearby hospital as quickly as possible. There the pair “were swathed in facial and hand [bandages] for nine days, while their burned portions swelled, as all burns do. They were kept drugged for much of the time. Hair such as eyebrows had been singed off, and their faces with closed eyes for a time looked like two brown and red cabbages.”
AROUND THE SAME T
IME, the OSS shipped Sterling Hayden back home for some R&R. The movie star-turned-operator met briefly with the vice president of the United States. After a short rest, Hayden headed back to Europe, this time assigned to work with the First Army outside Germany. There Hayden felt that he came face to face with the real war for the first time. “For three and a half years I had managed to sidestep the war,” he wrote. “War in the sense it is known only to the man in the line who fights—with no real knowledge of why it has to be, no commitment beyond his conditioned response to military discipline and love of country. That and the lack of any practical alternative.”
Once an idealistic believer, Hayden was becoming disillusioned with war. He added, “The horror of war was finally clear as it swallowed men whole, rejected their identities, dulled their senses, lashed them with terror, then spewed them into this raid or that patrol, any time of day or night. . . . The average citizen hated military service, not so much because of the dislocation of his life and the sacrifice it involved, but simply because suddenly he was booted about, ordered around, and slammed up into the line because ‘they’ said so.”
The First Army assignment also brought him into contact with members of other military branches who had little use for the OSS. Reporting for duty, he met with Colonel B. A. Dixon, the G-2 of the First Army, in Dixon’s office trailer located outside Spa, Belgium. When Hayden entered, the colonel was meeting with several of his officers, and all were smoking and drinking cognac.
“I don’t mean to be impertinent,” began the colonel, “but what in hell is a Marine captain doing up here tonight?”
“Well, sir, I—,” stammered Hayden.
“Ah ah,” Dixon stopped him, raising a hand. “Don’t tell me. You’re OSS—ten thousand dollars says you’re one of Donovan’s beagles. Right?”
First SEALs Page 17