by Damien Lewis
Since his capture, Stirling had been held at various Italian POW camps, and his time in captivity had clearly been hard on him. That, followed by the months spent hidden in the mountains, had aged him well beyond his years: though his vibrant blue eyes still sparkled with boyish charm, his hair had turned entirely white.
He explained how, when the armistice had been signed between the Allies and the Italians, he had joined a group of high-ranking officers who were determined not to allow themselves to be recaptured. They had headed into the Apennines, seeking sanctuary with the resistance. Hughes listened with amazement as he revealed which other senior Allied commanders were concealed among the mountainside villages.
There were four generals, an air vice-marshal, an English lord and an American consul, Hughes noted, plus a number of other VIPs, all of whom were ‘awaiting the day of their deliverance’.
According to Stirling, that day was close at hand now. Recently, they had been contacted by A-Force, a clandestine Allied unit formed in August 1943, dedicated to bringing Allied escapees out of Italy. With a network of helpers inserted behind enemy lines and furnished with cash and equipment, A-Force had found itself frantically busy bringing escapees home. Official War Office documentation noted that of the estimated 50,000 Allied POWs who had slipped the enemy’s clutches in Italy, some 2,000 had exfiltrated to the Allied lines, and ‘2,000 more had reached Switzerland’, but that left tens of thousands still at large.
According to Stirling, the A-Force agents had already smuggled a number of his party south, and arrangements were underway for the imminent departure of the remainder. Hughes had arrived at just the right moment, for they were about to make their bid for freedom, and it stood to reason that he should join them. The first stage of the escape would involve assuming ‘Italian’ identities, using counterfeit papers provided by SOE and smuggled to Stirling and his fellows using a back channel at the Vatican. Arrangements would need to be made to procure a ‘remarkably convincing identity card’ for Hughes, the newest member of their party. Then they would split into smaller groups in order to move less conspicuously, and head for a rendezvous point on the coast some 150 miles to the south-east. There, A-Force had arranged that a Royal Navy Motor Torpedo Boat would be waiting to speed them back to friendly lines.
The march south would be tough, Stirling explained, as many of the top brass were not in the best of health. Like him, they had suffered at the hands of their captors. Nevertheless, these men were still some of Britain’s most highly decorated and experienced military commanders, and Hughes felt fortunate to have fallen into step with such men as Stirling and his ilk. Though he held the rank of a brigadier and Hughes was only a lieutenant, in due course the two were to become ‘very close friends’.
That seemingly unlikely friendship embodied one of the SAS’s founding principles – a disregard for rigid adherence to rank. Rather than those who would blindly follow orders, the regiment sought individuals who could think for themselves and operate outside the strict military hierarchy, with a special status all of their own. With his innate charm and keen, tactical mind, Hughes had flourished in such an environment, and he and Brigadier Pip Stirling would develop a lasting trust and companionship.
After long deliberation, Hughes decided not to tell his two fellow escapees, Taylor and Bradburn, of the A-Force plan. He agonised over the decision. Arguably, they were still too badly injured to manage the long trek to the coast, but in truth, he also had far less altruistic motives for leaving them. ‘The truth is . . . we had grown tired of each other’s company,’ Hughes would remark. He also felt that Taylor and Bradburn would stand better chances when fully recovered, and in any case, he was fully occupied with helping arrange for the VIPs’ mass escape attempt.
While Hughes worried that he did not ‘come out of this in a very good light’ – deserting his fellow escapees – he knew well the SAS had never indulged much sentimentality when forced to leave comrades behind. Theirs was a wholly pragmatic approach driven by necessity. ‘You can’t sit around thinking about casualties,’ remarked Reg Seekings, one of the SAS’s founding members. Losing men was a risk you had to accept as a member of such an elite fighting force, and was only as it should be.
On 30 March 1944, Hughes, Brigadier Stirling and a handful of other Allied escapees met the A-Force agent who would act as their guide. War Office reports promised that all A-Force operatives would be ‘handpicked and as far as we can make certain . . . reliable’. Hughes and Stirling felt confident that their A-Force agent could be trusted. Indeed, he was putting his own life and liberty on the line by facilitating their rescue.
Together with their A-Force guide, Hughes and his new-found escape party set off moving south through the Apennine Mountains. Though they were leaving the comparative safety of the partisans’ stronghold, Hughes felt reasonably optimistic: ‘I had congenial companions . . . reliable guides to show me the way,’ plus the weather was improving. Yet from the off, the party was plagued by ill fortune. The mild, spring conditions rapidly gave way to unseasonable snow flurries, which slowed the progress of the elderly officers. Without the shelter offered by Italian farmsteads along the way, they were sure to have perished. Even so, time was growing short to make it to the coastal rendezvous, and behind them the enemy was closing in.
As they pushed on through the mountains, they received word from Strabatenza that the Germans had somehow got wind of the planned SOE drop of weaponry – the one that Hughes had helped prepare. German patrols had begun combing the area, searching for the drop zone, determined to crush the rebels once and for all. If any partisans had been captured and forced to talk, the enemy were sure to be hot on the heels of the escaping British officers.
More bad news reached the fugitives, which Hughes found particularly disheartening. German forces ‘had taken the village’ – Strabatenza – seizing the partisans’ makeshift hospital and ‘killing those who remained’. Taylor and Bradburn had almost certainly been shot or, if not, recaptured by the enemy. Hughes felt consumed by guilt for leaving them, and to add to his torment he had begun to suffer from a severe fever. Even so, there was little he could do but press on, blanking his mind to the worry and the growing delirium.
Over the next few days he dragged himself along, his world reduced to an agonising haze of undecipherable shapes and sounds. They climbed towards the summit of Monte Nerone, a hulking limestone edifice over 5,000 feet high that lay in their path. Just before they reached the summit, Hughes’ fever broke, which lifted his spirits a little. It was a feeling that was intensified when he crested the peak and saw what lay before them: in the near distance was the ancient town of Cagli, the white stucco buildings and terracotta roofs glittering in the sun. Beyond that a plain stretched towards Italy’s eastern coastline, where their rendezvous with the Royal Navy ship surely beckoned.
Official advice from the A-Force planners had noted that ‘all reports show it is NOT dangerous for them’ – the party of POWs – ‘as long as they keep moving and do not spend more than one night in the same place’. The key to escape lay in constantly keeping on the move. But barely had they begun to descend the mountain path when they were met by a poliziotto – an Italian policeman – coming the other way and armed with a mean-looking carbine. Appearing instantly suspicious, he demanded the party present their identity papers.
Brigadier Stirling gathered Hughes’ and the others’ forged documents and handed them over. After what felt like a lifetime, the policeman passed the documents back with a few muttered words, before continuing on his way. Once the man was out of earshot, Stirling told Hughes what the poliziotto had said.
‘He said it was painfully obvious that we were British escapees,’ Stirling explained, seeming utterly unperturbed that their cover story had proved so thin. Fortunately, the policeman’s loyalties rested with the mountain partisans, and not with ‘the Fascists . . . or the Germans . . . We were lucky this time,’ noted H
ughes.
After a dash across the lowlands, Hughes, Stirling and their party made it to the rendezvous on 14 April 1944, two weeks after they had set out. They gathered near the coastal village of Torre di Palme, a resistance stronghold lying in the Tenna Valley, situated some eighty miles north of the Allied frontline. But things seemed fraught with danger. The party of escapees was split up and kept constantly on the move by their A-Force minders, in an effort to prevent them all from being captured.
Stirling and Hughes fell under the guidance of another A-Force agent, codenamed ‘Leo’, who brought news of their planned rendezvous. Apparently, the Royal Naval ship would be positioned at the mouth of the River Tenna that very night. Come dusk they hurried to the designated spot, a broad river estuary, and settled down to wait, the smell of sea foam – and freedom – heady in their nostrils. Sure enough, they detected the rumble of a ship’s engines echoing across the dark waters. They began to flash their torch in that direction, using the prearranged signal pattern, but the response they received in return made little sense: it was not the combination they had been expecting.
Whoever was crewing that mystery craft, it did not appear to be any Royal Navy rescue party. With sinking spirits, they heard the rhythmic throb of the ship’s engine fade into nothing, as the vessel continued on its course. Agent Leo reported later that the ‘motor boat’ was ‘probably German’, which explained why it had answered their signal in a way that made no sense at the time. That was how close Hughes, Stirling and the others had come to getting recaptured.
They returned to the beach on the following two evenings, yet ‘no boats appeared’, agent Leo noted. In fact, the repeated failures were due to a miscommunication between A-Force, the Royal Navy and SOE, all of whom were trying to coordinate the pick up of the stranded escapees. While the A-Force agents persisted in trying to organise a successful rescue, by 3 May – more than two weeks after their initial rendezvous had been scheduled – the escapees were beginning to lose hope.
With ‘the weather conditions becoming worse’ and the ‘loss of the April dark moon period’ – both essential prerequisites for a successful Royal Naval operation – Leo and the other agents decided ‘to change our plans and try to find some sailing boats’. That way, the escapees could make their way to Allied lines under their own steam. Accordingly, a pair of thirty-foot-long local craft, equipped with no engines but with oars, were acquired from a family in nearby Torre di Palme.
The escape party was split between the two vessels. Hughes and Stirling were to go in agent Leo’s boat, together with eight other escapees. They were to be accompanied by two experienced Italian fishermen, to whom ‘a reward would be paid for each person safely landed’ in Allied territory. The second vessel would carry the remaining escapees, plus another A-Force agent and a pair of local seamen. It was decided by A-Force that both groups should cast off on the first night that offered favourable weather conditions.
It was the night of 9 May – almost four months since Hughes had first parachuted into Italy – when his party headed for the beach and their breakout. They were laden with the boat’s mast, oars and sail, a barrel of fresh drinking water, a large white sheet upon which they had daubed the letters ‘POW’, plus ‘one white rabbit to bring good luck’. Rabbits are often reputed to bring bad luck for seafaring journeys, but as Stirling had explained, while he had been interned at Campo PG 12 he ‘was given the task of looking after the camp’s rabbits’, which were one of the POWs’ ‘main sources of food’ – hence the rabbit becoming a symbol of good luck.
As Hughes and his fellow escapees neared the beach, their anxiety levels mounted. In addition to the danger of the coming voyage, the sound of their heavily laden footfalls crunching upon the stones seemed deafening. Hughes feared the noise would echo along the shoreline, broadcasting their escape attempt to every German sentry for miles around.
Having made it to the boat seemingly undetected, they raised the mast and sail under the whispered instructions of their two fishermen guides. At 2300 hours, with supplies and rabbit safely aboard, they lifted the heavy craft, swung her around in an arc so she was prow-on to the waves and began walking her towards the water. Hughes noted that while the sea was calm, ‘a heavy swell threw breakers on the beach’. The night was cold and the men of the escape party were keen to avoid getting soaked, for that would mean long hours in wet clothes in the biting sea wind.
Unfortunately, they leapt aboard too soon and the prow of the boat, caught in the breakers, swung around, leaving her wallowing in the shallows and lying parallel to the beach. Before the crew could steer her seaward again, a wave broke over them, swamping the vessel and filling her with water. Every man jumped out and began hauling the boat into deeper water. When they were out of their depth and could walk no more, they dragged their soaking bodies aboard, set the oars in the rowlocks and heaved for the open sea.
By the time they had drawn away from the pull of the waves and began to drift south on the tide, all were soaked to the skin and ready to collapse with exertion. But there was no time to rest or recuperate. Instead of floating buoyantly on the waves, the water level inside the boast was almost ‘as high as that of the sea outside’. It looked as if the hull wasn’t watertight. If they couldn’t bail her out the flooded craft would sink.
The escapees began jettisoning anything they could – including the precious barrel of water – and bailing frantically with whatever came to hand, mostly their hats. With the boat in such a perilous state, at first they tried to stick relatively close to the shoreline, so they could swim to the beach should they need to. But with sunrise, they would be visible to any German guard posts. That was too much to risk. So they hoisted the sail and headed further out to sea, each man silently choosing death by drowning over recapture by the enemy.
When they were ‘about 50 miles from the coast’, they turned the boat to starboard and set a course south towards freedom. After a few hours they were able to cease bailing. The overlapping wooden planks of the hull had swollen with the seawater and were now mostly watertight. A brisk breeze filled their solitary sail and they began to progress at a tidy pace over the choppy water. They huddled together – thirteen men and one rabbit – freezing and soaked, yet praying that their luck would hold and hopeful for what the morning might bring.
Some hours before dawn Hughes and party were jolted out of a frozen semi-slumber by the sudden violent crack of splintering wood. The pressure of wind in the sail had proven too much for the old mast. It had broken in half, sending their primary means of propulsion tumbling overboard. Casting it aside, they took up the oars, summoning what remaining strength they had and pulling as hard as they could for salvation.
With the horizon to the east beginning to brighten, the strengthening light revealed that the current had carried them back towards the coastline. Among the nearest peaks and foothills they could make out flashes of gunfire, while the crackle of shots echoed across the water. There seemed to be fighting underway, but surely that wasn’t possible, Hughes reasoned, for the frontline lay some eighty nautical miles from their point of departure. Surely, they couldn’t have sailed that far in the one night.
Before departing Torre di Palme, Agent Leo had been given a sketch of the eastern Italian coastline to help aid their navigation. It showed the mountain ranges as seen from the sea. He and Hughes consulted it and it appeared to confirm that they were abreast of the frontlines. The peak they could see was unmistakable – it was the Gran Sasso d’Italia, the highest point in the Apennines, rising dramatically from the Abruzzo region. It was there that the Allies were locked in fierce combat with the Germans manning their well-prepared positions along the Gustav Line. Somehow, wind, tide and sheer human grunt – oar-power – had combined to transport the escapees to the very fringes of enemy-occupied territory.
Hughes and crew heard the distinctive rumble of an aircraft high in the heavens. Weary limbs scrabbled to unfurl
their POW signal sheet. As they pulled it taut, Hughes hoped the pilot was friendly and that he would spot the message and radio their location to Allied headquarters, or at the very least refrain from attacking their boat. Yet the pilot progressed on his way without seeming to notice them at all.
With the sun now fully up, Hughes and crew were parched from the lack of drinking water. Then they spotted a ‘little fishing fleet’ coming out from the shore. The escapees pulled on their oars with renewed vigour, for this didn’t have the appearance of any hostile force. By 1600 hrs on 10 May they felt the reassuring crunch of their boat’s prow making contact with the white sand of a beach, as local fishermen guided them in. They made landfall on a ‘stretch of friendly beach’ at San Vito Chietino, a coastal village just six miles south of the strategic port of Ortona, which had been wrested from enemy control in December the previous year. The second boat soon followed them into the shore, and all the escapees were greeted by members of the British Army and given mugs of hot, sweet tea.
Hughes’ escape had taken him over sixteen weeks, during which time his independent mind, his stamina and his ability to build alliances across nationality, rank and even fiercely held loyalties had won him safe return. He went on to receive the Military Cross and bar, first for his heroic actions on Operation Pomegranate, the two-man raid on the enemy airbase, and second for his die-hard escape and evasion. His citation recorded how ‘Hughes displayed throughout high courage, determination and devotion to duty.’ Typically, he felt somewhat embarrassed by such recognition. ‘I was grossly over decorated,’ he would remark later.
