Target

by Roderick Bailey

Roseberry’s report, 1;

  opinion of ‘irregular formations’, 1

  The Washington Post, 1

  ‘Washleather’, Operation, 1

  Wavell, General Sir Archibald, 1, 2, 3

  Webb, Seaman, 1

  Went the Day Well, 1

  West, Air Commodore Freddie, 1

  Whitley bombers, 1

  ‘Why Not’, Operation, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Williams, Emmett (pseudonym), see Salvadori

  Wolff, General Karl, 1

  Wolves, the, 1, 2

  Woodruff, Douglas, 1

  Woods, Christopher, 1, 2

  Wordsworth, William, 1

  X Section, 1

  X Troop, 1, 2

  Yak Mission, 1, 2, 3

  Yugoslav students, 1, 2

  Yugoslavia, 1, 2, 3

  ‘Z’ organisation, 1, 2

  Zaccaria, Amaury (MI6 agent), 1, 2

  Zaccaria, Egon (MI6 agent), 1, 2

  Zamboni, Anteo, 1

  Zaniboni, Tito, 1, 2

  Zanussi, General Giacomo, 1

  Zappalà, Emilio (MI6 agent): background, 1, 2; recommends Mazzotta, 1;

  report on Di Giunta, 1, 2;

  Sicilian mission, 1, 2, 3, 4;

  capture, 1, 2;

  interrogation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;

  death, 1, 2;

  news of death, 1

  Zavattoni (Savoy employee), 1

  Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist leader, on the balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia in 1938.

  Anti-British propaganda produced in Italy in 1940 implying, somewhat unsubtly, British intolerance of fledgling nations.

  Fortunato Picchi photographed after his capture in 1941. A former waiter at the Savoy, he was the first SOE recruit to be sent into Italy.

  A young Fortunato Picchi in a photograph seized by Italian investigators in 1941.

  The spot inside Forte Bravetta, Rome, where Picchi and other captured agents were executed. Victims would be sat astride a chair and shot in the back.

  Emilio Lussu, politician, patriot and revolutionary, who sought SOE’s help with raising an anti-Fascist revolt in Sardinia.

  Mazzini Society membership card for Andrew Ingrao, a troublesome Italian volunteer dispatched to Britain from the United States.

  SOE’s half of the 1-lire note used for contacts with Ulisse La Terza who used the other half to identify himself. An Italian doctor who proposed to establish a wireless set in Rome, he also claimed to be an agent of the OVRA.

  HMS Una, the Royal Navy submarine that landed Antonio Gallo and Emilio Zappalà on the Sicilian coast in October 1942. Weeks earlier, Una had put ashore Eric Newby’s ‘Why Not’ party.

  The Arco della Pace in Milan. In February 1942, SOE sent its first suitcase of explosives and devices to a secret rendezvous here from neutral Switzerland.

  The first suitcase and its carefully wrapped contents, including a box containing fake fog signals wrapped in a copy of the Daily Telegraph, photographed after their interception by Italian counter-intelligence officers.

  SOE agent Antonio Gallo photographed and fingerprinted by his Italian captors. He was executed shortly afterwards at Forte Bravetta.

  Gabor Adler (left) and Salvatore Serra (right) who went into Sardinia in January 1943.

  SOE radio operator Branko Nekić, caught and killed in Sicily in August 1943.

  SOE radio operator Giacomino Sarfatti, unwitting pawn in an Italian deception plan.

  Max Salvadori in a photograph pasted onto a false Italian identity card that he carried in Sicily in August 1943. His fair hair has been dyed brown.

  ‘This is the approx. scene of my drop on Lake Como.’ A post-war photograph annotated by Dick Mallaby.

  Mallaby after his extraordinary exploits in Italy in 1943. Sewn on his shirt is the ribbon of his Military Cross.

  In a tent in Sicily on 8 September 1943, Major General Walter Bedell Smith countersigns the Italian Armistice. Italian General Giuseppe Castellano, wearing a black civilian suit, looks on, with Franco Montanari, his interpreter, to his left. Bedell Smith’s interpreter, SOE’s Teddy de Haan, stands in the centre.

  Inscription on a cell wall of the Gestapo prison in Via Tasso, Rome. The writer, Arrigo Paladini, escaped execution and was liberated from the prison on the same morning in June 1944 that Gabor Adler was shot.

  About the Author

  Roderick Bailey is a historian at the University of Oxford and a specialist in the study of resistance and clandestine warfare. His first book, The Wildest Province, based on his PhD, was an acclaimed account of SOE exploits in the Axis-occupied Balkans. A graduate of Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities and former Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, he has also served in Afghanistan with the British Army.

  By the Same Author

  THE WILDEST PROVINCE: SOE IN THE LAND OF THE EAGLE

  Copyright

  First published in 2014

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Roderick Bailey, 2014

  The right of Roderick Bailey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–29920–1