Donovan's Devils

by Albert Lulushi

  They left Palermo on August 3, 1943, headed toward Messina and reached the no-man’s land in the morning of August 7. On the way, they hired two local guides with mules and bought civilian clothes, which they put over the uniforms. They separated into three groups to be less conspicuous to enemy patrols. The first group of two soldiers and a guide crossed the lines without incident. After forty-five minutes the second group of Colonel Panteleoni, Private Anthony Ribarich, Sergeant Serafin Buta, and a guide headed down the trail. They walked for a half hour when Ribarich stepped on a land mine. Somehow, he received only a minor scratch in the back of his neck, so they decided to press ahead. Two hours later, they came across a German patrol, which ordered them to surrender. A firefight ensued, during which the Americans tried to get rid of the civilian clothes they had put over the uniforms. After twenty minutes Buta was gravely wounded with a bullet in his spine and Panteleoni was wounded in the leg. Any further resistance was useless, so Panteleoni decided to surrender. In his post-action report, Ribarich described his actions:

  Disobeying the order, though wounded in several places, I rolled down the hillside chewing part of the communications code that I was carrying. While running away I exploded another land mine, I heard for the last time the colonel’s voice as he was saying to the enemy that his group included Sergeant Buta and Sergeant Ribarich, thus promoting me under battle conditions. I had barely time to hide our civilian clothing and money. After about an hour, surrounded by enemy troops, and without possibility of escape, I gave myself up.

  The Germans summarily executed the two local guides and took Panteleoni away immediately after his capture. German and Italian army officers interrogated Ribarich first to gather tactical intelligence. They searched him thoroughly and took away all his personal belongings, including his dog tags. When they found the transmitting key and earpieces of the radio, they turned him over to an Abwehr lieutenant for a more thorough interrogation. In the evening, the Germans began withdrawing towards Randazzo. They left Buta, mortally wounded, on a stretcher by the side of the road for the American troops advancing their way. The Abwehr lieutenant ordered Ribarich in his car. For the next twenty-four hours, the Germans alternately retreated and stopped to mine the road and the trees on the side of the road. At about 2200 hours on Sunday, August 8, the somnolent Abwehr lieutenant sent the driver to find out what was to be done with Ribarich. Ribarich recalled later what happened next:

  When the driver had disappeared and the only thing I could hear was the slight snoring of the lieutenant, I slowly felt for my penknife, and when I was certain, with a rapid movement, I pressed the spring that released the blade and in a moment sliced his throat. I jumped out of the car and fled as fast as my legs would carry me, despite the pain from my wounds, as I knew what would happen to me if they recaptured me.

  Ribarich walked back toward the American lines for two days and two nights and was finally able to make contact with US Army units on August 10. His determination, alertness, resolution to find a way out of captivity, and skills had saved him from the fate that other OSS personnel captured behind the lines suffered in the months to come. Citing his example to OSS trainees in the United States, Donovan called Ribarich “a good kind of man to have … and unless we had man of that kind there is no use of our being in this business, and it is important for you gentlemen to keep that in mind when you are thinking about a patrol.”11

  * * *

  The dismal performance of the Italian troops in the Sicilian campaign brought to an end Mussolini’s rule in Italy. In a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism on the night of July 24–25, an overwhelming majority of the Fascist hierarchs turned against Il Duce and passed a motion of no confidence against him. On the twenty-fifth, Mussolini appeared before King Victor Emanuel III, who did not mince words, “Dear Duce, things don’t work anymore. Italy has gone to pieces…. In this moment you are the most hated man in Italy…. Il gioco e finito—the game is over, Mussolini … you’ll have to go.”12 At the end of the audience with the king, the Carabinieri—the Italian military police—took Mussolini into custody and drove him to a secret location in a Red Cross ambulance. The king entrusted the formation of a non-political government to Marshal Pietro Badoglio, former chief of staff of the Italian armed forces, who tried to assure the Germans by declaring in his first proclamation that the war continued and that Italy would honor its commitments. Yet it was an open secret that Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III intended to leave the Axis and seek an armistice with the Allies. “They say they’ll fight but that’s treachery! We must be quite clear: it is pure treachery!” fumed Hitler.13

  As the fighting in Sicily drew to a close, it was clear that Italy would be the Allies’ next target. The Germans began the evacuation of their troops across the Straits of Messina in early August. By the time the withdrawal was complete on August 17, they had extricated nearly 55,000 battle-hardened troops, almost 10,000 vehicles, over 50 tanks, and 163 guns, all of which they positioned to counter the Allies’ next move.14 Fresh troops poured in from the Alpine passes in the north to reinforce the troops retreating from Sicily and to capture strategic positions around Rome and other key Italian cities.

  Taking advantage of the lull in fighting, Badoglio sent General Giuseppe Castellano to Madrid and then to Lisbon to establish contacts with the Allies and to negotiate the surrender of Italy. On August 19, 1943, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, and British Brigadier Kenneth D. Strong arrived in Lisbon and handed Castellano a list of 121 standard military terms of surrender, including cessation of hostilities, return of Allied prisoners, surrender of the fleet and air force, and the establishment of an Allied military government. They would become known later as the Short Terms of surrender.15 The Badoglio government mulled over the terms for a couple of weeks without reaching a decision. Their indecision ended in the early morning hours of September 3, when a massive artillery barrage against the coast of Calabria signaled the opening of the Italian campaign. Montgomery’s British Eighth Army crossed the Straits of Messina, landed in Taranto, and began its advance north. That same afternoon, Castellano accepted the Short Terms and signed the agreement on behalf of Badoglio at Cassibile, near Siracusa, Sicily.

  Bedell Smith signed the agreement for Eisenhower and immediately handed Castellano an additional set of conditions. They became known as the Long Terms and essentially spelled out the unconditional surrender of the Italian government. To maximize the element of surprise for the Germans, the surrender would be announced on September 8, on the eve of General Mark Clark’s American Fifth Army landing on the beaches along the Gulf of Salerno, south of Naples. At the same time, the 82nd Airborne Division of Major General Mathew B. Ridgway would parachute outside Rome, link with four Italian divisions, and seize the capital, thus forcing the Germans to retreat to the north.16

  Eisenhower dispatched Brigadier General Maxwell D. Taylor, 82nd Division’s artillery commander, and Colonel William T. Gardiner of the Troop Carrier Command on a secret mission to Rome to make the final arrangements with the Italians for their surrender. They would also evaluate the situation on the ground and determine whether the 82nd would be able to make the airdrop near Rome and secure the Italian capital at the moment of surrender. As soon as they arrived in Rome, Taylor and Gardiner learned that the Italians were wavering again. Taylor informed Marshal Badoglio in the early hours of September 8 that the airdrop and the main invasion would take place the next day and that the Allies expected the Italian government to announce the armistice beforehand. Badoglio reacted by sending a message to General Eisenhower repudiating the surrender. Taylor, in turn, used his radio to flash the code word “innocuous,” signaling the cancellation of the airdrop.17

  Eisenhower’s response to Badoglio was an angry and unequivocal warning that if the Italians reneged on the agreement, the consequences would be grave. “No future action of yours,” he radioed, “could then restore any confidence whatsoever in your good faith and cons
equently the dissolution of your government and your nation would ensue.” Without waiting for Badoglio’s reply, Eisenhower proceeded to broadcast the official Allied announcement of the Italian surrender at 1830 hours on September 8, 1943. The announcement came when the Italian Cabinet was in conference with King Victor Emanuel III on how to respond to Eisenhower’s ultimatum. Faced now with the choice of confirming the surrender or having to fight both the Germans and the Allies, the Italians bowed to the inevitable. At 1945 hours, Badoglio announced the surrender of his nation, officially ensuring that Italian forces would not resist the Allied landings at Salerno the following day. He and the king fled that same evening by boat to Brindisi, a city in the Allied-controlled southern Italy.18

  * * *

  One of the operations that preceded Operation Avalanche, the landings at Salerno, was the capture of the island of Ventotene located in the Mediterranean, east of Naples, about thirty miles from the Italian mainland. The Germans operated a powerful radar station on the island, which had the capability to detect the invasion force and alert the coast. In addition, the island was ideally suited for a directional beacon that would guide the aircraft carrying the 82nd Airborne to Rome. The Allied Forces Headquarters assigned the capture of Ventotene to a naval task force commanded by Captain C. L. Andrews, Jr., US Navy. It included the destroyer Knight and an assortment of American patrol boats, British motor torpedo boats, submarine chasers, gunboats, and air rescue boats. The bulk of the fighting force was a group of forty-six paratroopers of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, commanded by Captain Charles W. Howland. The task force included a dozen OSS agents of the Italian Secret Intelligence branch, led by Captain Frank J. Tarallo and Lieutenant Henry R. North. Their assignment was to supplement the Navy intelligence staff and serve as interpreters on the island. Also along for the ride was John Steinbeck, who was in the Mediterranean at the time as a war correspondent.19

  The task force departed Palermo in the afternoon of September 8 headed north for the 180-mile journey across the Tyrrhenian Sea. Around five o’clock in the afternoon, it sighted the Allied invasion armada sailing slowly toward Salerno. At 2100 hours, the task force received a message from the armada that Badoglio’s government had signed the armistice with the Allies. There was relief because now they would not have to fight the Italian garrison in Ventotene. Shortly after midnight, the flotilla was two to three miles off the coast of the island. The smaller boats began a deception routine in the darkness simulating the preparations of a large landing force. Using the voice amplifying system of one of the air rescue boats, one of the OSS Italian agents broadcast a message to the island garrison demanding its surrender. “Italians,” he said, “you must now surrender. We have come in force. Your German ally has deserted you. You have fifteen minutes to surrender. Display three white lights to surrender. At the end of fifteen minutes, we will open fire. This will be repeated once more.”20 Ten minutes went by, then twelve, then thirteen. As the deadline was about to expire, three white flares went up from the port. Then, for good measure, the Italian garrison launched another three flares.

  Andrews, Tarallo, and three OSS men boarded the dinghy and headed for the entrance of the port. It was pitch dark, a thick haze hung low over the water, and it was impossible to distinguish the narrow entrance of the port that the Romans had carved out of the volcanic island. The dinghy struck shore about three hundred yards off the mark. Tarallo and another man jumped on the rocks and directed the dinghy into the port. As the dinghy was preparing to dock, a loud explosion blew up a supply boat nearby. The Germans on the island had decided to scuttle the boat and retreat up the steep hills to the semaphore station west of the port where they set up strong defensive positions. As they retreated, the Germans blew up military and other facilities on the island.

  There were some tense moments as the five Americans that had come ashore waited for the group of paratroopers to arrive from the destroyer. When they finally were there, Howland spread them in positions around the port and on rooftops to provide security. Captain Andrews, the commander of the task force, Captain Tarallo of the OSS, and Captain Howland of the 82nd paratroop detachment met to discuss next steps. Andrews had received orders to take the Knight and the bulk of the task force toward the mainland to carry out diversionary actions in support of the landings at Salerno. They decided that the OSS detachment under Tarallo and the paratroopers under Howland would remain on the island, secure the port, hold it against possible attacks from the Germans, and wait for the return of the Knight to engage the Germans.

  When Andrews left, the OSS men and the paratroopers searched the port, rounded up about eighty Italian military personnel, and confined them to their barracks. From the prisoners, they learned that the German contingent included three officers and eighty-five men, most of them radar specialists responsible for a radar installation that covered the Tyrrhenian coast. The paratroopers set up defensive positions around the port to protect from a surprise attack from the larger German force. PT boats off the coast laid a barrage of rocket fire on the heights where the Germans had set up their positions to keep them pinned down.

  At dawn Tarallo, North, and Howland conferred again and Tarallo proposed to go uphill and bluff the Germans into surrendering. North and four members of the OSS detachment remained at the port guarding the Italian prisoners. Howland and his paratroopers took positions, ready to go into action if needed. Tarallo, two OSS men, and two freed Italian political prisoners headed toward the semaphore station where the Germans had their command post. One of the Italians led the way carrying a flag of truce, a white bath towel on a stick, while the other, who spoke German, would act as an interpreter. The small group climbed slowly and carefully up a steep stonewalled road that led to the semaphore station watching out for booby traps and explosive devices that the Germans might have led behind. They could see abandoned machine gun nests and ammo boxes on both sides of the road.

  When they arrived near the crest of the hill, the flag bearer and the interpreter went forward to the German position. Tarallo and the two men took up position and waited. After a long half-hour wait, the two Italians returned and reported that the German commanding officer was ready to receive them. Tarallo and his party went forward into the command post where they met Lieutenant Eingler, the commanding officer of the Luftwaffe detachment that manned the radar installations on the island. Eingler spoke English and Tarallo told him, “The colonel’s compliments sir. I am ordered to demand your surrender. At the end of twenty minutes, the cruisers will move up and open fire unless ordered otherwise following your surrender.” The German lieutenant hesitated and Tarallo pressed on. “We’ve got six hundred men ashore and the cruisers are aching to take a shot at you,” he said. “What’s the good of it? You’d kill some of us and we’d kill all of you. Why don’t you just stack your arms and come in?” The German asked what kind of treatment they would get. “Prisoners of war under the Convention of The Hague,” said Tarallo.21 After further hesitation, the German said, “It is no dishonor to surrender to superior forces.” Then, he signed the following document:

  I, the undersigned, Commanding Officer of the Axis Armed Forces on the Islands of Ventotene and San Stefano, do hereby surrender unconditionally all men, arms, equipment, and possession of said Islands of Ventotene and San Stefano to the Allied Forces, acting herein by and through Frank J. Tarallo, Captain AUS, and Henry R. North, LT (j.g.) USNR, under direction of Commander Task Group 80.4, Captain C. L. Andrews, Jr., USN on order of Commander Western Naval Task Force and of General D. D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of Allied Forces, North African Theater of Operations.22

  As soon as Eingler signed the agreement, Tarallo instructed the Germans to pile up all their weapons in a clearing. One by one, eighty-seven of them deposited their rifles, machine guns, and even their pistols and began marching down the path to the port. Howland had observed the whole scene with his binoculars from the bottom of the hill. He ordered thirty paratroopers t
o move up and secure the road the Germans were using to come to the port. Because there were not enough paratroopers to cover the entire way, Howland had them secure the first part of the road and, as the prisoner column marched by them, move downhill and take their place at the end of the line, and so on until the Germans were brought into the city hall. There, the Germans were confined in three large cells with the officers put in a fourth. Howland posted guards with tommy guns at the doors of the cells.23

  Soon, the situation became tense. The German officers could see from the barred windows of their cell the deserted streets of the town and the port below. Lieutenant Eingler demanded to see the colonel in command but got only Captain Howland. With a harsh and disappointed voice he said, “I don’t think you have more than six hundred men. I think you have only a few more than thirty men.” Howland said, “We’ve mined the building. If there is any trouble—any trouble at all—we’ll blow the whole mess of you to hell.”24 In the meanwhile, Tarallo radioed Captain Andrews who was off the coast of Salerno aboard the Knight protecting the southern flank of the landing craft. The Knight returned at full speed to Ventotene and in the morning of September 10, 1943, all the Germans were secured and moved off the island. They were the first German unit to surrender to the Allied forces and became the first prisoners of war of Operation Avalanche.

  * * *

  With the armistice an accomplished fact, the Germans moved swiftly to seize and disarm the Italians to avoid having to fight them. In Italy proper, in France, Russia, and the Balkans, the Germans took into custody over six hundred thousand Italians and shipped them to internment camps in Germany. Thousands who resisted, especially officers, were shot. Thousands more escaped, determined to join the fight against the Germans, either under the Allies or as partisans. The Germans failed to get their hands on the Italian Navy. Complying with the Short Terms of surrender, columns of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and smaller craft steamed from their bases on Italy’s west and east coasts toward Allied ports at Malta and in North Africa.25