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Chapter 5

Unsurprisingly, Mike Lees emerged from his epic crossing-the-line mission to a hero’s welcome. His verbal briefings and the sketches he carried of enemy positions electrified Allied high command, while the two Italian resistance leaders – Salvi and Piva – also yielded priceless intelligence. Lees’ record from October 1944 reflected what a star performer he had become in the eyes of the SOE.

‘He is energetic, courageous, fit and willing to undergo physical hardships, and has a good knowledge of Para Military activities for which he is ideally suited,’ concluded Lt.Col. R. T. ‘Dick’ Hewitt, one of SOE Maryland’s senior commanders. ‘An excellent paramilitary officer,’ added none other than Major General William Stawell, head of special operations across the Mediterranean region. ‘He has a most attractive personality.’

Lees seemed destined for higher things. Hewitt and Stawell’s Special Confidential Report on Lees was rushed to SOE’s headquarters, in London. His record from autumn 1944 reflected the fact that Lees was being shaped for a new role – namely to join the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS, also known as MI6). MI5 – the UK’s domestic intelligence agency – began running deep background checks on Lees, with a view to clearing such a role.

Oddly, MI5 picked up an issue of possible concern. ‘During 1939 and 1940 a titled lady with identical surname, of Lytchett Minster, Dorset, came to our notice as a pacifist propagandist. Her pacifism was based upon religious principles . . .’ MI5 were referring to Lady Madeleine Lees, Michael Lees’ aunt, known as ‘Auntie Maddie’ to all. Thankfully, the domestic intelligence agency was able to conclude there were ‘no grounds for believing her activities intended to be subversive’.

That October a formal application for Lees to transfer to SIS was got underway. Lees duly signed the Official Secrets Act, declaring: ‘I undertake not to divulge any official information gained by me as a result of my employment either in press or book form . . .’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those at the helm of SOE were less than keen to let Lees go, or at the very least not until the war was won. SOE wrote to the Secret Intelligence Service, agreeing only to ‘submit this officer’s name and qualifications . . . at the termination of hostilities in Europe . . . His name will not be submitted now, as it is felt that his release from S.O.E. at this stage . . . is undesirable.’ A few days later a reply on 54 Broadway headed paper – for two decades 54 Broadway was the central London headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service – read: ‘Let us leave it that when the time comes that you have no further employment for him, you will let us know.’

While the tug-of-war over Michael Lees was underway, what the man himself hungered for most was getting a flight over the Gothic Line to rejoin Major Temple and his Italian partisans. That autumn Lees found himself in the SOE’s forward base in the city of Florence, which lay just to the south of the Gothic Line. Florence had recently been liberated and was fully under Allied control, and Lees was desperate to find a way to return to war.

His other chief concern, of course, was whether Morton, Long, McClelland and the rest of his original party would make it safely through the lines. The news, when it reached him, was most edifying. It came by telegram in November 1944: ‘Morton and Long with four others arrived by boat at Mentone this morning.’ Mentone was the same ancient port town that Lees and his party had first been taken to, after crossing the lines on foot.

War reporter Morton had commanded a reduced party of just six, including the giant piratical raider, McClelland, plus Sergeant Bob La Rouche, a USAAF air gunner who had been shot down on operations. Forced to leave Pigna village when it had come under enemy assault, they had disguised themselves as Italian country-folk, opting to follow Lees’ advice and seek a sea-borne means of escape.

En route to the coast they’d stumbled upon a piece of priceless intelligence. A partisan leader had passed on captured German documents, including maps showing all the minefields for that section of the Gothic Line. Morton, Long and party had proceeded to sneak through German checkpoints carrying those documents, and disguised in the traditional dress for locals sheltering from the rain – potato sacks.

‘We were able to wear sacks over our heads in the approved peasant fashion, which added to our disguise,’ recorded Morton and Long in their post escape report, penned for the SOE. It was a real dash of ingenuity.

Thus disguised, they’d made it to a friendly fisherman’s house, intending to row across the lines themselves. Instead, he’d offered the assistance of his two strapping sons – seasoned seafarers. Their addition made what had been a daunting voyage something of a pleasure cruise. ‘Once out of mortar, 88mm and machine-gun range we turned broadside to the coast,’ Morton recorded. ‘I unlimbered the bottle of Cognac and passed it around. We started to sing patriotic songs. Fair stood our boat for France!’

Upon reaching Allied lines, Morton, Long and La Rouche personally briefed Colonel Blythe, of the American 7th Army, on their escape. La Rouche and Morton went on to report to Major General Curtis LeMay, a senior USAAF commander in Europe, on all that they had learned. LeMay was keenly interested in their accounts of operations with the resistance. He wanted to build airstrips across territory held by the partisans, to greatly increase the Allies’ reach.

Subsequently Long and Morton appeared on Italia Combatte (Italy Fights), a radio station based in southern Italy, and operated by the Political Warfare Executive, transmitting direct to the Italian resistance. They had emerged from their daring sojourn with a huge respect for the partisans, and this was reflected in their Italia Combatte broadcasts.

In his official SOE report Lees made clear he shared their enthusiasm. ‘The Partisans are always ready to take advice and grateful for encouragement or acknowledgement of their work . . . The morale of the Partisans is excellent. The Italians are particularly suited to this flamboyant type of work. They have great ingenuity and are very keen. They do not need encouragement to carry out demolitions.’

Lees urged greater ‘propaganda’ support for the partisans, and for the message of their successes to be more widely heard. ‘The Partisans should be encouraged by broadcast to mine all roads and attack German convoys and troops on the move. There are tremendous possibilities in this type of work.’ Such efforts to arm and support the partisans could significantly aid the breaking of the Gothic Line, he argued.

Long was interviewed on BBC radio, where he spoke in glowing terms about how the partisans ‘make the Germans’ life a hell. They snipe [at] them in the street. They ambush them wherever they move in small numbers . . . I don’t suppose the partisans kill more than ten Germans a week. They make for a constant nerve-racking hell for thousands every day though.’

Tellingly, Long concluded: ‘There is a faith in one thing, an indefinable fineness in human nature, a quality they believe will live again in this their country, given one condition – that not one man of the enemy’s [forces] will remain.’ Such a message must have been music to the partisans’ ears.

Morton echoed Long’s sentiments, speaking on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio. ‘Patriot guns are roaming all northern Italy. They are hitting the Germans and Fascists wherever they find them. They are controlling villages and towns, helping the poor and depressed, feeding the starving. And when the opposition against them grows too tough they creep back into their mountain strongholds, fighting as they go.’

In so speaking out, Morton and Long were fulfilling Churchill’s edict to win the information war by lauding the achievements of the resistance. They were also fulfilling their SOE brief, to ‘provide the Press an account of patriot activities and sabotage exploits’. Their daring escape and the intelligence – and white propaganda – they had furnished was another feather in Michael Lees’ cap, or so it should have been.

But it was now that a shadow began to cast its malevolent presence over the SOE’s Italian operations, one that would dog Mike Lees’ return to behind-the-lines operations. As Morton set about preparing a series of scintillating newspaper reports – which the British Army censor declared to be the most exciting that he had ever read on the Italian campaign – the winds of fortune were rapidly turning against him.

By the time Morton had polished off his stories, which were to be syndicated worldwide, he was called to Rome, to appear before the senior commanders of Canadian Army Public Relations. Having led a daring escape across the lines, bringing with him priceless intelligence and an American airman, plus the ‘white propaganda’ that he and Long had prepared, Morton was more than a little surprised at the reception he received.

With little ceremony, he was told that due to ‘inappropriate conduct’ and other ‘unspecified offences’, his accreditation as a Canadian war correspondent was being revoked. Further disciplinary action was pending. On the night before deploying to the field it was SOE tradition – long-standing, irrevocable – that agents would have a few stiff drinks. Indeed, a redoubtable SOE veteran, one Sergeant Carter, ran a bar beside the flight line for just such purposes.

Likewise, Lees and his party had enjoyed a good booze-up before they deployed on Operation Flap. Someone had challenged Morton’s martial credentials, for he was a reporter and no soldier. Morton had responded by pulling his pistol and shooting some holes in the bar. Fairly tame stuff, by the standards of SOE pre-departure high jinks. Supposedly, that was the ‘inappropriate conduct’ being cited as the reason for Morton’s accreditation being cancelled.

Far worse was to follow. When Morton contacted his employer, the Toronto Daily Star, he learned that only one of his reports – the first, ‘I live with patriots in Nazi lines’ – was to be published. It was too late to stop that. But all the rest – Morton’s eight subsequent stories, all of which had been cleared by the British Army censor – were to be cancelled.

Stubborn, dogged, undeterred, Morton sought other outlets for his stories, but after initial enthusiastic reactions doors kept slamming in his face. In short, he could find no publisher for those further articles, and the original plans for worldwide syndication withered and died. That this should all be due to some drunken high spirits immediately prior to mission departure made little sense.

In truth, the dark machinations now being orchestrated against the hapless reporter went far deeper. Morton had earned a reputation among the SOE as being a brave and talented reporter and a capable leader of men, so who had slid in the proverbial knife? Why the stab in the back for a man who should have won fulsome praise?

That autumn, the Political Warfare Executive had been transferred to the Foreign Office, the arm of the British state overseeing foreign affairs. Subsequently, it had been amalgamated with the equivalent American body, the new organisation being renamed the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD). PWD was to specialise in many forms of psychological operations. One of its favourite tactics was scattering ‘black propaganda’ leaflets over enemy lines from the air, or assaulting the enemy ranks with loud-speaker-born propaganda.

In the autumn and winter of 1944 the message emanating from the PWD – the mouthpiece of the secret British and American states – began to change markedly over Italy. At first, there were intimations that the role of the resistance should be given a little less prominence. Suggestions were made that the partisans, many of whom had avowedly communist leanings, should no longer receive such widespread Allied support, with a view to the new war that was coming – the Cold War.

By November 1944 this had crystallised into a specific set of directives, by which the Foreign Office sought to redefine Allied objectives. They identified the first and overriding policy in Italy as being the need to halt the spread of communism. Second was the need to create a stable nation following liberation, which would look to the Allies – and not Soviet Russia – in the post-war world. The third – and last – priority was to mobilise the partisans to aid in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

‘I am very much afraid that, if we are not careful, we shall be building up in northern Italy with arms and money a rival Italian government,’ the Foreign Office (FO) warned. The FO criticised the eagerness of Allied commanders to ‘make use of this Resistance Movement’, worrying that communist partisans would seize control. In November PWD issued a clear directive ordering the ‘playing down’ of the role of the partisans by all concerned.

Those at the helm of SOE Maryland railed against this volte face. They lobbied for the support of the partisans to continue. Time and again they argued that the communist partisans would come peacefully into line once the war in Italy was won. That same month General Alexander himself – Allied commander-in-chief in Italy – issued his ‘Winter Directive’, in which he continued to laud the achievements of the Italian resistance, working hand in glove with the SOE.

‘What do the partisans do?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘The toll of bridges blown, locomotives derailed . . . small garrisons liquidated, factories demolished, mounts week by week, and the German nerves are so strained, their unenviable administrative situation taxed so much further, that large bodies of . . . troops are constantly tied down . . . Almost any frontline troops could tell stories of Partisan assistance . . . Their fighting qualities and local knowledge are constantly proved invaluable.’

An increasingly bitter power struggle was in train over the fate of the Italian resistance. On one side was the military and the SOE; on the other, the Foreign Office and the PWD. It was no secret who wielded the darker power: the Psychological Warfare Division were past-masters. In the dying months of 1944 war reporter Paul Morton’s message – that the Italian partisans, communists included, were embroiled in a noble and heroic struggle deserving full Allied support – ran contrary to what they intended.

There was a rift developing between those determined to further military support for the partisans, in order to help vanquish the enemy, and those who believed the need to combat communism should take priority. That fault line had sucked in an unwitting victim: Paul Morton. That was why he – and his stories – had to be disavowed and, if necessary, destroyed.

Of course, Michael Lees was privy to little if any of this. His reports made clear that he had few concerns regarding the partisans’ political leanings. Pragmatically, he concluded: ‘At present, the political situation is not dangerous. There is ill-feeling amongst the two main Parties, but as yet no action. With firm Allied control there is no reason why any dissention should arise . . .’

Unaware that moves were afoot to sideline – betray – the Italian resistance, Lees continued to lobby for a return to ‘his’ partisans, as he saw it, rejoining Major Temple’s mission. But in late November 1944 his hopes were to be utterly dashed. Lees received a shattering message: surrounded by enemy forces determined to finish off his partisan forces, Major Temple had been killed. News of his tragic loss had reached SOE headquarters via radio, from Bert Farrimond, Temple’s dour Lancastrian coal miner turned W/T operator.

‘The area was under considerable enemy mortar fire,’ Farrimond telegraphed, ‘and Major DAREWSKI decided we should leave on a truck loaded with stores . . . Before he was able to climb on the truck the driver let in the clutch and the truck seemed to skid and crush Major DAREWSKI against the wall. I was told that he had fractured both arms and probably his pelvis.’

Major Temple had been evacuating his headquarters, as the enemy executed a fierce sweep of the valley. Never one for hyperbole, Farrimond reported that ‘everything went wrong, catastrophe overtook us, the Major receiving fatal injuries in the accident.’ Within forty-eight hours Farrimond had been pulled out by air. ‘With the Major gone the mission was finished, so to this end . . . I came out with eleven others in a bomber . . .’

Lees mourned the loss of such an iconic figure and good friend, not to mention the collapse of the entire Flap mission. A few days after being pulled out, Farrimond met up with him in Florence. They had much to discuss. In the days prior to his death Temple had taken his mission to new and unprecedented heights. Via the landing strip that they’d just finished constructing, he’d requested a drop of fifty million Lire, to fund ongoing partisan operations. He’d also asked for twenty-five cargo aircraft to fly in, with weaponry and arms.

Temple’s 12 November shopping list reflected the scale of combat that he feared was coming: ‘25 81mm mortars (English), petrol 500 gallons, clothing and 3,000 blankets, 2,500 rifles and Stens and heavy automatic weapons. What about Breda 20mm or even 40mm [heavy cannons]. Is it possible to land? If so both the landing ground and the whole area could be held against all-comers.’

He reported on a recent raid by his partisans, one that had been so successful that Il Duce – Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator – himself had decreed that Temple’s partisans were to be destroyed ‘at all costs’. In response, some 3,000 German and Italian troops backed by armoured cars and tanks had thundered into the region, to wipe out Temple’s 500-odd partisans.

It was mostly to resist this offensive that Temple had sent his 12 November shopping list of arms and equipment. Though its tone was somewhat desperate, little had reached him in terms of the supplies that he’d requested, and six days later Temple was dead, his surviving partisans scattered into the mountains. As for Farrimond, he’d got out by the skin of his teeth: he’d been lifted out from the airstrip just before enemy forces overran it.

Had Major Temple received the supplies that he’d requested, his forces might have held firm. The failure to provide them arguably cost him his life and signalled an end to the Flap mission. By the winter of 1944, supply flights to the partisans had dropped off to critically low levels. SOE agents in the field were complaining bitterly that they and their partisans were being thrown to the dogs.

Having lamented the loss of their dear friend, Lees turned to the other business that was foremost in his mind. He had a sense that an alternative mission was about to come his way, and he wanted to know if the long-experienced radio operator might join him. Married to local Lancashire girl Jane Glover, Farrimond was an utterly reliable salt-of-the-earth type. Now approaching his 34th birthday, he was a hugely-experienced pair of hands, hence Lees’ hunger to recruit him.

At outbreak of war Farrimond had signed up to the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, an armoured regiment more commonly known as the ‘Knife and Forkers’ – motto, ‘For Hearth and Home’. But in August 1943 he’d been sought out by SOE. On paper Farrimond was an odd recruit: it was his wireless abilities that would draw him into the cloak-and-dagger world. In October 1943 he’d duly signed the Official Secrets Act, pledging to preserve ‘any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information which relates to munitions of war,’ or ‘any secret official code word, or pass word . . .’

In November 1943 the former coal miner was posted to India, to complete a short course at SOE’s Eastern Warfare School, before being sent for wireless training at their specialist radio school, codenamed ME9, situated near Meerut, a city in northern India near the foothills of the Himalayas. In a sense, there was no better training ground for behind-the-lines operations in the Italian mountains. For his subsequent services on Operation Flap, Farrimond was recommended for a Mention in Despatches. But the gritty former collier didn’t much hanker after gongs: what he wanted most was to return to the mountains.

Lees asked what he had been up to since his evacuation. ‘I’m just waiting around for orders,’ Farrimond replied.

‘D’you want to get back into North Italy?’ Lees probed.

Farrimond paused before answering. ‘It all depends on what I’d have to do.’

Lees had already been assigned a radio operator, but he’d far prefer to take a man of Farrimond’s pedigree, one with whom he’d built up such a close rapport. ‘Would you like to come in again with me, Bert?’

Farrimond was silent for a moment. ‘I’d go with you, sir, if I went with anyone . . .’ he ventured. ‘When are you going?’

Lees replied that he didn’t know for sure, but no sooner than a week’s time, at the very earliest. He asked Farrimond to think it over. That evening Farrimond returned to see Lees. He told him that he wanted in: if Captain Michael Lees was deploying, so would Corporal Albert Edward Farrimond. It now only remained for the SOE’s Maryland office to clarify the nature of their coming operation.

SOE’S Italian mission had been codenamed Maryland by its chief, Commander Gerald ‘Gerry’ Holdsworth, for a very specific reason. A still-waters-run-deep type, Holdsworth – a seasoned mariner and a former rubber planter from Malaya (now Malaysia) – nursed a deep passion for the things he cared about, plus an occasionally explosive temper. He’d been described variously as being ‘as brave as they come’, ‘half hero, half pirate’, and an ‘expert in clandestine warfare in all its aspects’.

A former film-maker, Holdsworth had been recruited into SOE by the traditional ‘tap on the shoulder’ method. He’d played a key role organising and commanding the ‘Helford Flotilla’, a collection of small boats that ferried the earliest SOE recruits to and from occupied France. Its base was a farmhouse called Ridifarne, on the secluded Helford River, in Cornwall, from where the flotilla set sail. The Ridifarne HQ had been run by Holdsworth’s wife, Mary, herself a top expert in the use of explosives for demolition and sabotage work.

Fittingly, Holdsworth had named SOE’S Italian mission after her, and he cared about it as passionately as he did its namesake. He was backed to the hilt by Major General Gubbins, SOE’s chief. ‘It is desperately important to encourage resistance in northern Italy by every means possible,’ Gubbins had urged. Likewise, General Alexander had exhorted SOE to unleash maximum efforts against the enemy, and he had gone as far as speaking to the Italian resistance leaders directly, urging ‘violent and sustained’ attacks.

That their work had borne fruit was perhaps best gauged by the reaction of the enemy. By the summer of 1944, German intelligence had reported some 20,000 dead, wounded or missing at the hands of the partisans. None other than Field Marshal Kesselring – Hitler’s chosen commander in Italy – had started to refer to the Italian resistance in the following haunting terms: ‘Our Wehrmacht [unified armed forces] is being stopped by a shadow.’

By October Kesselring had become so concerned that he decreed ‘a week of anti-partisan war’. He’d ordered his best forces, equipped with tanks, flame-throwers and artillery, to take the fight to the hills. When such measures failed to secure a definitive victory, Kesselring – with Hitler’s encouragement – ordered his men to resort to widespread brutality.

‘It is the duty of all troops and police in my command to adopt the severest measures,’ he announced. ‘Every act of violence committed by the partisans must be punished immediately.’ He ordered ‘a proportion of the male population’ to be shot, while pledging to ‘protect any commander who exceeds the usual restraints’. Hitler added fuel to the fire, ordering ten partisans killed for every German casualty.

Winston Churchill – a key proponent of irregular warfare across occupied Europe – was privy to Kesselring’s orders. Code-breakers working at Bletchley Park had decrypted the German commander’s messages, sending them directly to the British prime minister. They made for grim reading. In August 1944, in the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, SS troops had machine-gunned 560 men, women and children, as reprisals for partisan operations. Then, in late September, at Marzabotto, they had perpetrated one of the single greatest massacres of the war, wiping out over 700 villagers, including the priest.

These were far from isolated examples, and the level of bestial horror visited on remote Italian populations was terrifying. It reflected the growing desperation of Kesselring. For many this was seen as being out of character for a commander of his long experience. A decorated First World War veteran who had masterminded the rebuilding of the Luftwaffe, Kesselring had commanded the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War, the forces of Nazi Germany that had fought alongside the Fascist armies of General Franco.

At the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 he had orchestrated the invasion of Poland, Holland and France. From there he’d gone on to oversee the invasion of the Soviet Union, earning Hitler’s very highest regard. Kesselring had vowed to the Führer to fight for every inch of Italian soil. He was a diehard believer in the Nazi cause and had recently adopted a policy of hanging any would-be German deserters. Allied commanders respected, if not feared, his military acumen.

Come the winter of 1944, Kesselring worried about the partisan threat more than ever. It was a phenomenon that he absolutely hated and reviled – irregular, unpredictable guerrilla operations by forces that could melt into the mountains. He branded Italian resistance activities ‘a degenerate form of war’, deserving ‘the utmost severity’. In short, Kesselring was rattled.

A high-level Allied report, written from the enemy’s perspective, spelled out the ‘Reasons Why the Germans Stay in Italy’. It read: ‘If we wish to defend the Reich it is better to defend the frontier as far south as possible and do the fighting on someone else’s soil . . . The important industrial output of North Italy contributes to our war effort . . . Italy is one of the Axis partners and nearly our only Ally left. It would be a serious blow to the political morale of our own people to abandon Fascist Italy.’

Aware of all this, SOE Maryland’s chief, Holdsworth, fought tooth and nail to counter any directives that might pour cold water on the work of the Italian resistance. He had few doubts what the 150,000-odd partisans positioned north of the Gothic Line could achieve, if properly armed and trained. Crucially, they could ‘harass German lines of communication by sabotage and guerrilla warfare and . . . impede the withdrawal of German forces from Italy, in order that the Allied armies might be able to get at them and destroy them.’

Heaven forbid that they should be stopped, and by what amounted to outright abandonment by the Allies. This was doubly so, for in the winter of 1944 Allied forces were under-strength, compared to those of the enemy. In December, the Allies had nineteen divisions facing Kesselring’s twenty-seven, and while the Allies enjoyed air and sea superiority, the terrain, the weather and the Gothic Line itself favoured the enemy.

Allied commanders reckoned that Kesselring’s attempts to crush the partisans were tying down eleven divisions. Militarily, their role was utterly critical, and so far Holdsworth and his ilk had succeeded in beating off the naysayers. Mike Lees had been promised his new mission courtesy of such efforts, but for how much longer the believers could persevere was anyone’s guess.

In early December Lees was briefed on his coming deployment by Major Charles Macintosh, head of the SOE’s Florence headquarters. Lees mission was critical: he was to parachute to join the partisans positioned to the rear of the Gothic Line, at the exact point at which the Allies planned to achieve their vital breakthrough.

The cold, snow-bound months of winter 1944 had become known as the ‘winter of disappointment in Italy’. Churchill had been promised that the war there would be over by Christmas. Instead, the Gothic Line had held. The fighting had been relentless and the few territorial gains had been won at enormous cost. Troops were exhausted, morale was low and the weather bitter. If Lees could foment havoc in the enemy’s rear, Allied forces might achieve the elusive breakthrough.

Lees’ mission – codenamed Envelope – came with one or two unfortunate caveats. As Macintosh was at pains to point out, Lees was being sent in to join another SOE agent, a Major Wilcockson. Wilcockson was of an age and rank that fully justified his posting, whereas Lees, a twenty-three-year-old captain, apparently was not.

Once in the field, Lees would be under the orders either of Wilcockson, or another SOE agent, Major Jim Davies, who ran a neighbouring mission. Davies had served in the Burma jungle, before deploying to Greece with the SOE and working closely with the resistance. On the upside, he was a die-hard believer in the potential of partisan warfare. On the downside, Lees didn’t particularly relish the idea of being under anyone’s direct control.

Still, a mission was a mission – and this one was not to be sniffed at.

Lees and Farrimond were to be dropped during daytime to a point just a few miles behind the enemy front. They would do so during broad daylight, and Lees could only imagine that the partisans were in real strength and must hold considerable territory. Inserting that close to the Gothic Line, they were bound to see serious action and would need to liaise closely with Allied forces on the opposite side of the lines.

As Lees studied his maps, his enthusiasm grew: the terrain was high, broken and mountainous, so ideal for guerrilla operations. To Lees’ mind, the potential to wage war here appeared unlimited. But while he thrilled to the prospect, he didn’t feel that he’d exactly hit it off with Macintosh. The man had a somewhat effeminate manner, Lees decided, and a ‘limp and clammy hand’.

Macintosh had seen action, before becoming chained to his desk at SOE’s Florence headquarters. In August 1944 he’d driven into enemy-held Florence in an armoured car borrowed from the Americans, with a large white Angolan rabbit called Poggibonsi perched on top of the Vickers machine gun. It was vintage SOE. The 27-year-old Macintosh was of New Zealand extraction, and was tall, broad-shouldered and charming. Women, apparently, went wild about him. On paper, he and Lees should have hit it off, but it hadn’t exactly felt that way.

A few days after his mission briefing Lees was woken at five o’clock in the morning. He dressed quickly, pulling on underclothes and battledress, plus the plethora of kit vital to such a mission: binoculars, compass, fighting knife, revolver, water bottle and medical gear. Over it all went a thick woollen flying jacket, which in turn was zipped inside a set of overalls, fashioned without any buttons or tags that might snag in a parachute harness. Lees knew that he would be thankful for all the layers: outside it was bitterly cold and it would be especially so at altitude.

For today’s deployment – as with his previous SOE missions – Lees was laden down with an extra burden: money. In addition to the several million Lire he was carrying, he’d been given a bag of gold sovereigns. That he’d tied in a handkerchief and stuffed into an ammo pouch on his belt, while thick wads of Lire were jammed into his every pocket.

It struck Lees how ludicrous the situation was: his pay, all thirty pounds a month, would be dribbling into his bank account, yet he here he was entrusted with a king’s ransom in cash and gold. If he cared to steal it, no one could possibly prove that he had done so. But how else was SOE supposed to fund such operations?

The previous night he and Farrimond had transferred to Rosignano Airfield, located a few dozen kilometres south of the SOE’s Florence HQ, which was situated in a villa on the outskirts of the city. At Rosignano, the US 64th Troop Carrier Group had established a flight of Douglas C-47 Skytrains – the DC-3 in civilian parlance; dubbed the ‘Dakota’ in British military service – the classic twin-engine transport aircraft of the Second World War. From Rosignano the 64th’s mission was to service the needs of special operations across all northern Italy.

Alongside the ranks of Dakotas there were one or two other, more curious airframes. One was a distinctive Nardi FN.305, a sleek Italian two-seater trainer and liaison aircraft, which in 1939 had achieved a world speed record. The other was even more instantly recognisable: it was a spindly, long-legged Fieseler Fi 156 Storch – Stork – a single-engine German spotter plane with an unrivalled short take-off and landing capability.

Both aircraft had seen service with the Italian air force against the Allies. Now, they’d been repainted in friendly colours to meet the SOE’s needs. They were perfect for executing ultra-clandestine flights behind the Gothic Line, and especially as they boasted a pilot of untold renown. Lieutenant Furio Lauri was an Italian fighter ace credited with twelve Allied kills, including one Lancaster bomber. He’d been shot down twice, once by a Hurricane and once by anti-aircraft fire. Both times he’d survived.

By the time of the Italian surrender he’d been awarded the War Cross for Military Valour and the Italian Crown, plus the Order of the German Eagle, among other decorations. Regardless, he’d signed up with the Italian resistance and it wasn’t long before the clandestine operators had come calling. Lauri had been approached by both the SOE and the US equivalent, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He’d decided to work with the British, hence his installation at the Rosignano airbase on SOE business.

As he strode out to the waiting Dakotas, Lees paid those former-enemy aircraft small heed, little realising what a crucial role they would play on his coming mission. He clutched the flying suit closer to his six-foot-two frame. The sky was grey, the weather bitingly cold. Three aircraft were being readied: one was already packed with Lees and Farrimond’s weaponry and kit, while the others were stuffed full of arms, ammo and supplies to drop to the partisans.

As Lees clambered aboard the American transport aircraft he was struck by how different this deployment was from those that had gone before. When heading into Yugoslavia, and later to join Major Temple, there had been rich theatre and drama in the moment. He remembered his 1943 departure, flying out to join the Yugoslavian Chetniks. The dark, gaping bomb-bay of the Halifax – the route via which agents had had to exit the aircraft – had been somehow so symbolic: a gateway into another world, one wherein all the normal rules of warfare were to be torn up and burned to a cinder. They’d dropped into a world where anything goes.

By contrast, there was something curiously flat and unemotional about climbing aboard a purpose-built aircraft like the Dakota and settling into a relatively comfortable seat. As the aircraft roared into the skies, Lees had to remind himself just what he was flying into here: he was going in to wage total war. Their destination lay less than 200 kilometres north, and he had to focus and get into the zone.

With a flight of powerful P-51 Mustang fighters as escort, the Dakotas crossed the coast before turning north. Faint flashes from a coastal hill battery revealed that they had crossed into enemy territory. The shells burst harmlessly far below their 20,000 feet cruise altitude. In perfect arrow-shaped formation the three-aircraft rumbled on towards the high mountains, as a pair of Mustangs broke off and dived to strafe the enemy gunners.