A fourth Quin was Emilio Salsilli. Another who had fought in Spain, Salsilli was consistently described in reports as a convinced communist, tough, brave, and ruthless. ‘Average intelligence, poor education, no moral standards,’ reads one assessment. ‘Courageous, strong-willed if convinced, average common sense. There is in the nature of this student a latent cruelty which could make him a dangerous killer … Could be extremely useful.’29
SOE sent a man to Scotland to select the best of the Quins. He picked the two Spain veterans but found the fifth trainee to be the most impressive: ‘a man of no political background who had been a waiter at the Savoy’. This man was Fortunato Picchi.
All were brave men, all three were ready to risk their lives, but it was when Picchi, white as a sheet, made his honest, moving speech of acceptance that I knew I had found the [best] man … [He] said that he would not be fighting against his country but to free it from an odious dictatorship, that Britain, where he had found hospitality and friendship, was fighting for her life, and that if he had to die, he could do so in no finer cause.30
From Scotland, Purisiol, Salsilli and Picchi – now known collectively and inauspiciously as ‘the Lambs’ – were sent to Ringway. It was there that the decision was taken that only one of them would be required for Keyes’s operation. The chosen Lamb was Fortunato Picchi.
In the province of Prato, a few miles west of Florence in hills rich in heritage and famous for their wine, there sits the little Tuscan town of Carmignano. It was here, in August 1896, that Fortunato Picchi was born, one of the seven children of Ferdinando Picchi and Jacopina Pazzi. His father was employed in a textile works in the nearby Bisenzio valley. In 1915 Picchi joined the Italian Army, serving in the ranks of the 64th Infantry Regiment and fighting for the Allies in Macedonia where he was apparently wounded and decorated for gallantry. Demobilised in 1919, he worked in Italy as a hotel porter, waiter and chef before leaving for England in November 1921.
Settling soon into simple lodgings in London, Picchi found work at the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge and then at the Ritz on Piccadilly. For a time he worked as head waiter at London’s Ambassadors Club, off Regent Street. He made a few return trips to New York as a restaurant waiter on the White Star Line’s RMS Majestic, the world’s largest ship at the time. Then in 1927 he moved to the luxury and glamour of the Savoy, on the Strand, to work as head waiter in banqueting. His boss was an explosive Italian called Zavattoni who was so pro-Fascist that he kept a black-shirt and dagger in his office. The Savoy’s press officer, Jean Nicol, would remember Picchi’s ‘round face’, ‘large brown eyes’ and ‘earnest, searching expression’, and how his ‘mild manner and soft voice’ were a welcome counterweight to ‘the robust solidarity’ of the volatile Zavattoni.31 Picchi would remain at the Savoy for the next twelve years.
All accounts paint Picchi as a quiet, intelligent man of culture and integrity. ‘He had no wish to become a waiter,’ remembered his friend and landlady in Sussex Gardens, Florence Lantieri, an Englishwoman in her sixties (her husband, Carlo, was a London-born cheese merchant). ‘He was by nature an artist, and his ambition was to be a sculptor; he was never happier than when he had a chisel and hammer and a piece of marble.’32 ‘[Waiting] was not a trade he would have chosen,’ agreed another member of London’s Italian colony, the exiled anarchist Silvio Corio, ‘but he grew to like it, especially, as he confessed, because it gave him free hours during the day, “when the sun is strong,” so that he could ramble in parks and fields. Give him a book to read under a sturdy tree, with a faithful dog at his feet, and he was content.’ The dog was an Alsatian called Billy and Picchi walked it most mornings. Another passion was watching Arsenal play on Saturday afternoons. In time Picchi became so anglicized that he liked to be called Wilfred, ‘but he had not become naturalized. He had grown so English in outlook that it did not enter his head that it was necessary for him to do so; the formality seemed well-nigh meaningless.’33 He last visited Italy in 1931. Among friends, the retiring Picchi was known for his kindness towards others. He was ‘wonderful’ with children, his landlady remembered: ‘They seemed to see in him someone who had always kept part of his childhood with him, and though grown up, thought and saw things in the same way as they did.’34
As for politics, ‘Picchi had been a lover of freedom from his youth, but politically he had matured rather slowly,’ Corio wrote:
From the days when Fascism began to show its ugliness without a mask, Picchi had become almost intolerant of political parties: he had arrived at the settled conclusion that programmes, speeches, protest resolutions were not enough, even useless, if not dangerous, because they dissipated energy. He believed action necessary but could not find an effective opening.
Added to this, Corio said, had been Picchi’s conviction that Italy would never ally with Germany against Britain, a course he was heard to describe as ‘unnatural’.35
In September 1939, Picchi lost his job at the Savoy. The hotel needed to reduce its staff and he was one of several who had to go. The following January he found fresh work as head waiter at Fleming’s. Then Italy declared war. Picchi, so Corio would write of him, was ‘astonished, dumbfounded’.36 ‘I was with him then,’ Florence Lantieri recalled, apparently. ‘And I remember him saying to me, “It’s incredible. Surely they can’t be such fools? Don’t they remember Garibaldi’s curse?”’ Thereafter ‘he had been like a man in a daze. He did not believe it to be possible; and to quieten his soul he had listened to his music for hour after hour.’ Days later the police came for him and he was en route to the Isle of Man. ‘I know he never expected to be interned, but he felt no bitterness at being taken away. He was only too well aware that many of his countrymen were disloyal … But when in internment he found himself living side by side with avowed Fascists he experienced great unhappiness.’37
For six months Picchi was held in Douglas in what was known as Palace Camp. A collection of thirty requisitioned hotels and boarding houses, it was surrounded by double rolls of barbed wire and patrolled by British soldiers with fixed bayonets. Back in London his landlady worried about his health. ‘He was a martyr to asthma, and I’ve known him sit for three days and nights on end, unable either to eat or drink, with hands clasped behind his head in an effort to get relief.’ From Douglas he wrote home,
and we could realize the struggle that was going on in his soul … He wanted to do something to help free his native country of her tyrants. Anything, anything that would be of service. Never once did he write of his own future; never once did he write of what he might get out of it all when the battle was won. He was a man who had stored within himself great courage, patience, loyalty, true affection, and utter selflessness.
Then, in December, looking ‘a little worn and a little sad’, he was suddenly home:
He said that he had been released from internment, but that he had to go away again at once, for he had some special work to do. I remember him filling the glasses from a bottle of sherry we opened for him. I asked him what the toast should be, and he, with his lovely smile, raising his glass high, said, ‘Let’s drink to the King!’38
Days later Picchi was off again, this time into training schools to be watched by men whose job was to scrutinise him closely and assess his motivations, strengths and weaknesses. None of these early observers were professional psychologists or psychiatrists. None had any knowledge or experience of the conditions an agent might face in wartime Italy. Many were young NCOs in the Intelligence Corps, selected principally for their language skills and knowledge of security, not all of whom were immune from the popular prejudices of the day. What is clear from assessments of Picchi, however, is that those who watched him through his training were impressed.
‘An idealist, apart from politics, who is in many ways more English than the English,’ reads one report. ‘An excellent worker and organiser who cannot allow failure. Wants, above all things, for everyone to be treated fairly, and according to their deserts. Is prepared
to share in all [of] England’s trials and has no desire to be treated in any way differently from the English soldier.’39 Another noted his ‘guts’ and ‘excellent English (with accent)’ and how he seemed ‘genuinely grateful for [the] opportunity given him here, and for his treatment during and after internment’.40 A third recorded that while interned he had tried to volunteer for minesweeping: Picchi was ‘anxious to serve in any capacity, however dangerous’.41 Positive reports continued when he was finally sent to Ringway and learned to parachute. ‘He carried out his day and night drops with the minimum of preparation, which in view of his age was a remarkable feat,’ it was noted. ‘[He] was quite obviously prepared to go anywhere and do anything required of him.’42
At Ringway Picchi was assigned to X Troop of the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, a precursor to the Parachute Regiment. This was the unit to which Sir Roger Keyes had allotted the impending operation. Issued with British battledress and identity discs, Picchi assumed the identity of a Free French soldier called Dupont, one of the party’s interpreters. ‘Uniform did not change him much,’ remembered one of X Troop’s officers, Lieutenant Tony Deane-Drummond. ‘He was still the suave and polite little man, with a bald top to his head and a slight middle-aged spread, who might be expected to be in charge of banquets at the Savoy.’43 Deane-Drummond and the others were handpicked volunteers and in charge was Major T. A. G. Pritchard. Thirty years old, Trevor Pritchard was a regular officer and a big man, a former Army boxing champion, whom the men called ‘Tag’ behind his back. Their target was to be a 100-metre stretch of modern aqueduct hidden in hills in southern Italy. Thirty or so miles inland from Salerno, it spanned the Tragino, a mountain stream that tumbled through a gorge into the narrow valley of the Ofanto River, and was part of the Acquedotto Pugliese, an extensive system of pipelines feeding water from the Apennines to the important naval ports of Brindisi, Taranto and Bari. Cutting the system at that point, it was hoped, might cause significant upset to the Italian war effort. That, at least, was the aim laid down in the orders and planning papers. More than one of the commandos who took part would suspect that the primary purpose of the raid was to test Britain’s fledgling airborne force and reap associated propaganda gains.
Codenamed ‘Colossus’, the operation called for eight twin-engined Whitley bombers to fly out from a forward base on British-controlled Malta and drop a raiding party of thirty-six men directly on to the target: the first-ever deployment of British parachute troops. Once the aqueduct had been destroyed, the party would then split into groups, march westwards to the coast, and be picked up by a submarine at a pre-arranged rendezvous. ‘The Chiefs of Staff have examined the project and consider that there are reasonable chances of success,’ Churchill was told when the outline plan was put before him in January 1941.44 ‘I approve,’ was all that he wrote on it.45
At dusk on 7 February, with X Troop aboard, the eight Whitley bombers took off from the RAF airfield at Mildenhall, Suffolk, bound for Malta.46 All eight reached the island the following morning. Next day, the crews repaired fabric holes damaged by enemy bombs dropped overnight (Malta, just sixty miles from Italy, was now under regular Italian air attack) while X Troop packed its parachute containers and Pritchard chatted with the commander of HMS Triumph, the Malta-based submarine that had been assigned the task of retrieving his party from the Italian coast once their job was done. On 10 February, each Whitley was serviced for the final time and loaded with the last of the containers. At four in the afternoon, the crews were briefed. By half-past four, the parachutists were ready. Tea was drunk and boiled eggs were eaten. Thirty minutes before take-off, Pritchard finally told the men exactly where they were going. Until that moment, most had thought they were bound for Italian-occupied Abyssinia. ‘Maps of East Africa had been left in offices and pictures of railway bridges near Addis Ababa examined,’ Deane-Drummond recalled. ‘All the troops cheered when they heard that it was going to be Italy.’47 Dressed in battledress, smocks, furlined helmets and gloves, X Troop clambered into the aircraft.
The first of the Whitleys left Malta at sunset. Six carried the Colossus team and their containers. Two, as a diversion, went to drop bombs on railways and Foggia airfield. Light flak and cloud were met over Sicily. Over the mainland the sky was empty and clear. Afterwards the crews reported that, apart from fog in the valleys, ‘the weather was absolutely perfect and visibility was comparable with early dusk on a fine day. Detail on the ground stood out, and the snow covered peaks, rocky valleys and clustered mountain towns and villages made a beautiful scene.’48 At half-past nine, five of the troop-carrying Whitleys arrived over the target and began twisting into the valley to drop their parties. There was little wind, the aircraft had no trouble with the tight manoeuvring required, and the ground seemed quiet and sound: ‘smooth, cultivated, mostly newly sown fields’.49 In the moonlight, as the aircraft ran in again to drop the containers, the crews could pick out parachutists beginning to move around.
Faulty container-release systems, however, prevented three Whitleys from dropping their full complement of stores, with the result that half of the party’s Bren guns, Tommy guns and ammunition, plus a lot of explosives, were brought back to Malta. But of more serious consequence was the loss of one of the Whitleys assigned to bomb Foggia. When the aircraft’s port engine failed, the pilot signalled back to base that he and his crew intended to bale out or crash-land. This emergency message, which was sent in a basic code liable to be intercepted and broken by the enemy, stated that the crew would attempt, after dark, to make for the mouth of the Sele River where they hoped someone might pick them up. This was the very spot from where Triumph was expecting to extract the Colossus party.
Among naval commanders watching events, news of this development immediately raised the possibility of the pick-up point becoming compromised. Instructions were dispatched to the submarine to proceed with care. Senior officers, however, remained very anxious. On 13 February, Sir Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord, suggested to his fellow Chiefs of Staff in London that, because ‘the enemy would now probably be aware of the rendezvous’, it would be unwise to ‘risk the probable loss of a valuable submarine and its crew against the possibility of bringing off a few survivors’.50 When the other Chiefs agreed, Triumph’s mission was cancelled. Hearing of this, a furious Sir Roger Keyes tried immediately to reverse the decision, telling the Prime Minister that ‘I consider our failure to make any effort to carry out the salvage arrangements, promised to the parachutists, a clear breach of faith.’51 But the Chiefs were unmoved, the decision stood, and the men of Colossus, oblivious to all of this since they had no radios and could not be informed, now had no means of escape. Later Keyes remarked with feeling: ‘it can only be hoped that no troops arrived at the beach to meet with disappointment’.52
In the days that followed, reports and rumours began to reach London of Colossus’ fate. On 14 February, three days after the drop, an Italian communiqué proudly announced the round-up in southern Italy of a party of British parachutists. ‘They were armed with machineguns, hand grenades and dynamite for the purpose of interrupting our communications and destroying hydro works,’ it read; all were captured ‘before they could carry out their plans’.53 But a concrete report of what had really happened would reach London only in 1942, after one of the raiders, Tony Deane-Drummond, having failed twice to escape from his Italian prison camp, successfully slipped out of a fourth-floor window in a Florence hospital and, five days later, made it over the border into neutral Switzerland.
On the night of 10–11 February 1941, Deane-Drummond had jumped from the first aircraft to drop and landed fifty yards from the aqueduct, spotting at once that the target was unguarded. Joined by the five men who had also dropped from his Whitley, who included Fortunato Picchi, he sent them off to clear some nearby farm buildings and seize any occupants found. They rounded up a couple of dozen, including one elderly man who, after addressing the British in English with a broad American accent, turned out to hav
e worked as a bellhop at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. By now more parachutists were arriving. Among them was Pritchard, who promptly issued orders. Covering parties took up their positions. The captive Italians were put under guard. Explosives were gathered. And Lieutenant George Paterson, in the absence of the demolitions expert, Captain Gerrard Daly, of whose party there was still no sight, began to prepare the target for sabotage.
Paterson, a young Canadian, was Daly’s assistant and knew what he had to do.54 But on breaking the surface of a supporting pillar with his chisel he found the aqueduct to be constructed of reinforced concrete. This was a much more formidable proposition than the masonry the party had been led to expect. With insufficient explosives to carry out a full demolition, Paterson decided to concentrate on bringing down an outer pier rather than the larger central one as originally proposed. Helping to shoulder the boxes of guncotton as he laid his charges against its base were some of the local Italians whom the British, with Picchi’s assistance, had asked to act as a carrying party. These locals ‘worked with a will’, Deane-Drummond recalled, ‘saying that it would give them something to talk about for the rest of their lives in a part of Italy where very little happened’. When finished, they were returned to the farm buildings ‘where two or three were trussed up to encourage the others, warned by the interpreter that the sentry outside the door would shoot to kill, and locked in with the women and children. No sentry was posted.’55 Half an hour after midnight, Paterson and Pritchard lit the fuses and ran for cover. The explosives detonated. The outer pier collapsed and the waterway broke in two.
Pritchard now split his party into three. Each group was placed under the command of an officer and would attempt independently to cover the fifty miles to the sea: all believed that the rendezvous with HMS Triumph was still set for five nights later. Weapons and equipment were reduced to a minimum: Brens and other large weapons were taken to pieces and pushed into the ploughed-up mud; each party was left with a single Thompson sub-machinegun; each soldier kept only his Colt pistol, a thirty-pound pack, and rations to last a week. Leaving behind one unfortunate parachutist who had broken his ankle in the drop, the parties bid farewell to each other and struck off in different directions.
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