The Vatican Pimpernel

by Brian Fleming

  It emerged subsequently that Bill Simpson had indeed rung the bell but while he was waiting for an answer the porter had signalled to him frantically from her room not to go upstairs. He was actually out of sight on the first floor landing when the flat door was opened and he saw the German soldier trying the bell. The two men who had been located in the basement had indeed managed to escape and made their way to the Swiss Legation to pass on the details of the ambush. They then left the Legation but were picked up again by a police check shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, an army Major called D’Arcy Mander, who was due to stay at the flat that night, returned and was also arrested. He, however, managed to make his escape and was never recaptured.

  It must have been about 3.30 p. m. on a fine afternoon in early January that I walked down the Via Chelini … waited for the coast to clear before going in … gave the signal on the bell. The door opened … Nobody was visible because nobody was there except for two figures in uniform in the hall, one of whom held a rifle pointed at my stomach and the other, who said in German: what do you want? I would like to say I put on an act and pretended to be frightened but let us say it wasn’t very difficult!8

  Eventually the two soldiers decided that Mander would have to wait until the captain arrived to question him.

  The soldiers indicated a bench in an unfurnished front room which led from the hall through an archway and the shutters of which were, like the others, kept permanently closed as these windows gave onto Via D. Chelini and told me to wait there. They sat on a bench outside … I crept mouse-like to the window, slowly pulled the shutter strap and silently lifted the shutter a little. There, looking up at me from the pavement below was Cesare Coen, the fiancé of our nice Jewish girl who had lived in the basement part of the flat and who had cooked, washed and rendered for us there. I put my finger to my lips, enjoining silence, put my legs to the sill like a high jumper on the bar and dropped down to the pavement about ten–twelve feet below and ran. There was no pursuit, no shots, all was quiet. My absence had not been spotted, and I am sure, that when the Capitano arrived, the guards agreed to say that nobody had called at the flat rather than admit that anyone had got away.9

  Mander went on to spend the remainder of his time in Rome as an undercover agent for the advancing forces. While he sought O’Flaherty’s help from time to time for people he came across, he, like others, specifically avoided involving the Monsignor in any of the espionage in which he was engaged or in supporting it in any way, financially or otherwise.

  Meanwhile Simpson hurried to get word back to the Monsignor.

  Half an hour later at St Peter’s I ran all the way up to the now familiar room, where I found Sam and the Monsignor. ‘Chelini’s had it! and John along with it’, I blurted out. Their faces fell. I filled in the sparse details I knew.10

  This breach of security in the escape organisation caused great concern to Derry and O’Flaherty.

  ‘Bruno and Herta’ll get a rough time,’ murmured Sam, almost to himself. ‘If they make them talk.’ ‘Well, at least they don’t know who Mrs M is, but Bruno knows about us here, Monsignor. They would give their eye teeth to know what is going on. If they feel they have got a case, there is nothing to stop them from raiding.’ ‘Just let ’em try it!’ interrupted the Monsignor, with a grim expression. ‘If any of these scoundrels ever dare to come near this room, I will beat the …’11

  ‘His vehemence surprised me; but he was deadly serious,’ Simpson recalled later. There was, of course, always the danger that the Germans would raid the Monsignor’s accommodation. It was only extra-territorial, and so was not, strictly speaking, part of the Vatican. From the street outside there was no obstacle to anyone wishing to carry out a raid. He had always refused to keep firearms. He did, however, keep a coil of rope under his bed. In the event of a raid, his hope was that he would be able to escape through the window down into the courtyard.

  On the way by lorry to the Regina Coeli prison, using a blanket on his lap as cover, Furman managed to tear his identity documents and his notebook with coded addresses and telephone numbers of the organisation into tiny fragments and pushed the bits, a few at a time, out of the lorry. In the prison, Furman learned that the cook had also led the Germans to the Via Firenze apartment where three South Africans were arrested.

  It was now of the utmost importance to establish whether other locations had been raided or not. O’Flaherty sat down at his desk and, working the telephone for a number of hours, contacted every one of his priests and clerical students to warn them of the position and also asked them to check on the billets insofar as they could. In general, the billets were with private families and a visit from a priest would not be suspicious. Even if the billet had been detected by the Germans, a visiting priest would not necessarily be compromised. There was a worry that, if a large number of the billets were under observation, and they were all visited by priests during the course of one day, eventually the German intelligence work would point clearly to O’Flaherty. So all the priests were warned that they should not enter any billet unless they were reasonably sure it was not being watched. Those of O’Flaherty’s helpers who had Vatican passes, which allowed them to bypass the curfew, worked through the night walking swiftly from home to home and being very careful to keep an eye out for SS or Koch’s men. At dawn, more went into action. The most dangerous task was assigned to Fr Owen Sneddon, the New Zealander, as he had to check out the Via Firenze apartment which was felt to be the one most at risk. He approached it very slowly, taking good care to observe everything around him. As luck would have it, just as he reached the property, he managed to see the Italian porter whose face clearly conveyed to him that there was a problem and so he passed the apartment entrance and continued to walk down the street. The porter eventually caught up with him and explained that the Via Firenze apartment had been raided. In the succeeding hours and days however, it became clear that this was the limit of the breach of the organisation’s security as all the priests reported back that the other locations were safe.

  New security arrangements were immediately put in place by Derry. Escapees were moved to different billets and a strict limit was put on the amount of knowledge available to those who were assisting the groups. The total picture was known only to O’Flaherty, Simpson and Derry. Clearly, however, Kappler, Koch and their associates knew what was going on in general terms. Intimation of this came in the form of an invitation to O’Flaherty to attend a reception at the Hungarian Embassy. This particular Embassy was one that the Germans often chose for informal diplomatic activities. Accepting this invitation would involve O’Flaherty leaving the sanctuary of his accommodation and there was a suspicion it might be a trap, given recent developments. However, in typical fashion, he decided to attend. As it turned out, there were not many guests but the German Ambassador was one of them. Towards the end of the evening, von Weizsaecker asked the Monsignor for a quiet word. The Ambassador explained to the Monsignor that they knew precisely the activities he was involved in so, while the Ambassador would guarantee him safe conduct back to the Vatican that night, he added, ‘If you ever step outside Vatican territory again, on whatever pretext, you will be arrested at once. Despite the consequences one could foresee, that decision has been agreed in your case and I cannot alter it. Now will you please think about what I have said?’12

  O’Flaherty smiled down at the Ambassador and in a cheerful voice, which he raised so others in the room could hear, replied, ‘Your Excellency is too considerate. I will certainly think about what you have said … sometimes.’13

  At that time also O’Flaherty was summoned to a meeting with Monsignor Montini. This presumably arose as a result of a complaint from the German authorities and maybe critics of O’Flaherty’s activities within the Vatican.

  Apart from the representations made by von Weizsacker, O’Flaherty’s definite unpopularity with some of the Italians in the Vatican Civil Service made matters worse for him. Foreigners of any nationality have neve
r been welcomed in the Vatican service and O’Flaherty’s unique rise to office in the Urban College, his career in the Diplomatic Service and his appointment to the Holy Office had all been viewed with envious distaste by many Italians.14

  As we have seen, the population of the Vatican is usually in the order of 500. It is reasonable to assume that, at this stage, everyone living in the Vatican had a fair degree of knowledge of what the Monsignor was doing. Certainly Montini knew, and obviously given the potential consequences if these activities became known, one can be certain he discussed this matter with the Pope, prior to meeting with O’Flaherty. We do not know the details of what transpired between Montini and the Monsignor but presumably the Irishman was instructed to curtail his activities. It seems fairly certain that if he were given a firm instruction to stop completely he would have followed it, out of a sense of loyalty to his Church. In any event if, having received such an instruction, he disobeyed it, there were many options open to the Vatican authorities to deal with the situation. It would have been a simple matter to transfer him either to the diocese in South Africa to which he was attached or indeed home to Ireland to take up other duties. Years later, the only clarification that O’Flaherty would offer was that ‘I had my knuckles rapped pretty hard.’15

  Derry noted that subsequently O’Flaherty greatly reduced his trips outside the Vatican, so it can be presumed that this was the directive he received from Montini.

  Another development at that time related to Derry, who was still living in O’Flaherty’s accommodation in the German College. The German Rector along with all the others in the College must have been aware for quite some time as to what exactly was going on. Presumably acting on complaints from the German authorities via the Vatican, he had decided he had to ask Derry to leave.

  The Monsignor entered the office, looking unfamiliarly grave. ‘It is more trouble we are in,’ he sighed. ‘This time it’s marching orders for you, me boy.’‘You mean I have to leave here?’ ‘Aye, that’s about the size of it. Would you believe it now, the rector has just informed me that he has reason to believe that the gentleman who is a guest in my room is not a neutral Irishman at all, and he would be very much obliged if the gentleman would leave at once.’16

  Both Derry and the Monsignor knew that the Rector, who was a German, was not a Nazi sympathiser so they concluded that he must have received some sort of warning from either the German or the Vatican authorities. Derry’s immediate reaction was that he would have to seek accommodation in one of the billets used by escapees. However, at that stage it was quite clear that the Germans were well aware of Derry’s activities as much as O’Flaherty’s and so if he went anywhere in the city, it was only a matter of time before he would be picked up. The only alternative was to move him into D’Arcy Osborne’s accommodation within the Vatican and so, donning the Monsignor’s clerical garb once more, the British army Major moved, on 12 January 1944, to the accommodation in which he was to remain until the Allies took over Rome.

  9

  Warning Shots

  Once he had settled into his new accommodation, Derry’s first task was to see how those who had been captured were getting on. He asked D’Arcy Osborne to arrange for the Swiss diplomatic staff to visit the prison and see what could be done for Furman and the others, but this proved to be a bad idea. Many of the prisoners were held under false names and indeed in some cases the Germans did not even know who they were. However, if the Swiss went into the prison and visited these men, the Germans would immediately want to know how the Swiss were aware of their existence, which in turn would almost definitely lead back to the British Legation and O’Flaherty. This would have the effect of totally compromising the Vatican and creating huge difficulties. Of those who had been taken, the Germans particularly targeted the Yugoslav, Bruno Buchner, and some days later the Monsignor reported to his colleagues:

  ‘We had sad news today, I had a note from Bruno. You remember we were worried about him after the raids on the flats? I have heard the Germans gave him a terrible time … he wrote me a note yesterday and somehow got it out. He said he was going to be shot this morning. He wanted me to know that he never opened his mouth once. Well, I got a message an hour ago. Bruno’s dead. They shot him this morning.’1

  Herta had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and was sent back to Austria to serve it. At the end of the War, she was released and returned to Rome to settle there.

  Aside from any commitment he may have given to Montini, clearly, from now on O’Flaherty had to be more cautious about his visits outside the Vatican. Apart from the danger of arrest to himself personally, any such event would almost certainly constitute grave embarrassment for the Vatican authorities. He had to rely more on the help of others than previously. With Furman and Pollak out of commission, a lot of the delivery work had been falling on Simpson. He reflected on what he had got himself involved in:

  So what if I had become part of this quasi-military but still amateur underground? After all, it had few rules, was led by a self-effacing, albeit magnetically strong Irish priest and Sam Derry, a Major, an energetic leader, and backed by the British Minister, but an escaper just like the rest and now involuntarily holed up in the Vatican. We were running by the seat of our pants. I was just an escaper, like the hundreds of others hidden across the city, like the five irrepressible American and British Officers in the French Seminary, the four British other ranks in Mrs M’s where I was headed. After all, once you escaped, it was every man for himself, with a duty of trying to re-join Allied lines.2

  Eventually, after debating this with himself, he realised his primary duty was to stay and help.

  One of the groups O’Flaherty had contact with was the Greek underground movement. The leader of this movement, Evangelo Averoff, afterwards a Foreign Minister of Greece, visited O’Flaherty early in December with a colleague, Meletiou. They astounded O’Flaherty and Derry by telling them they had located a band of British escapees, about 120 miles from Rome and it was quite a distinguished group including a number of senior officers. Meletiou had departed with the instruction to bring back one of the officers which he did on 13 January, returning with Major General Gambier-Parry and Mrs Mary Boyd, an Englishwoman who had helped escapees in the Arezzo area. Gambier-Parry, who had been captured by the Germans in North Africa during 1942, but had managed to escaped, was at this stage the senior Allied officer on the run in Rome. The request was to get the General into the Vatican. This was a completely new situation for Derry because now he was dealing with an officer far senior in rank to himself so he felt he needed to discuss the situation with D’Arcy Osborne. Meanwhile he asked the Monsignor if he could arrange for a billet for Gambier-Parry and obviously they were seeking one of more than average security in order to ensure that the Germans did not capture him. In military terms, he would have been a valuable prize. The Monsignor had just such a place in mind in the home of a Signora Di Rienzo in Via Reggero Bonghi. She was English by birth. On the fourth floor of her accommodation, an end room had been walled up and from inside the house there was no indication that the room existed at all. The only entrance was through the window and even that was fairly precarious because it could only be reached when a plank was extended from another window. The plank linking the two rooms was approximately 40 feet above ground level. It was a perfect hiding place and the Major General was located there, nobody knowing where he was other than Derry, O’Flaherty and Br Pace who had guided him there. Subsequently the General had a note conveyed to Derry highlighting the suitability of the hiding place and the generosity of his hostess and her family. However, he expressed a desire to meet Derry as soon as he could, to try and assist with the work ‘instead of sitting here in comfort and complete idleness’. Gambier-Parry was also anxious to discover more about the organisation and in particular, the chain of command and he asked Derry to clarify this for him.

  In fact, the General’s letter brought home to me – I think, for the first time – the
strangeness of this organisation, in which soldiers and priests, diplomats and communists, noblemen and humble working-folk, were all operating in concord with a single aim, yet without any clearly defined pyramid of authority.3

  In his response, which was delivered by Br Robert, Derry described the arrangements as follows:

  Regarding ‘chain of command’, although I have tried to keep the show on military lines for the ex PW (on the whole discipline has been good, although one or two of the boys have gone a little wild from time to time) we have no real chain of command between ‘Golf’ and his party and myself. We all work for the same end, I personally owe it all to ‘Golf’. Consequently, ‘Golf’ sent me your letter to read and he will see your letter to me. He sends me daily an account of his activities and I keep him informed of everything I do.4

  Eventually the General’s frustration at his lack of involvement reached a level where he asked O’Flaherty for assistance and, without telling Derry, the Monsignor sent Br Robert to collect the General one evening. They took a tram to the Vatican where they met O’Flaherty and a group of his friends. As O’Flaherty, dressed in his full robes, brought the group across the Piazza to the Vatican and the papal apartments, he introduced the General, dressed in the best Donegal tweeds that could be found, to the saluting Swiss Guards:‘This is an Irish doctor friend of mine,’ he said, ‘He’s been invited to His Holiness’ reception also.’5

  The Monsignor led us around the rear of St Peter’s. Climbing a long enclosed staircase, we emerged in the sunlight on a broad crowded balcony which overlooked the packed piazza some two hundred feet below … ‘We are standing in the diplomatic enclosure’, murmured the Monsignor, as he halted us in a clear space to the rear.6