Top Secret - covert operations, double agents, commando raids, botched missions, narrow escapes, black ops, intelligence failures & military blunders of World War 2.
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Wars can be won and lost in bed, and it was pillow talk that was the surprise starting point of a military operation vital in bringing World War II to an end.
It was early 1945 and, in northern Europe, the invading Allies were spilling over the Rhine into Nazi Germany, bent on victory. But, to the south, in Italy, there was a serious hold-up. Hitler’s forces were defying the British and the Americans in a string of seemingly impregnable fortifications known as the Gothic Line.
Mile upon mile of concrete bunkers, gun emplacements, tunnels, minefields and razor wire stretched from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic coast. Crack German forces were dug in and, for six months, British and U.S. armies had been battering away unsuccessfully (and with huge loss of life) to force a way through.
Behind enemy lines, Italian resistance fighters were doing what they could to disrupt the German defenders, aided and organized by undercover agents of Britain’s SOE, the Special Operations Executive much loved by Winston Churchill for its expertise in subterfuge and sabotage.
It was to one of these agents, Captain Mike Lees, that a beautiful, young Italian woman (charmingly described as ‘not averse to love’) brought some crucial information. While sleeping with an enemy officer, she had learned from him the whereabouts — until then unknown — of the German army communication and command headquarters.
The Gothic Line defenses she disclosed were masterminded from two villas in the remote village of Botteghe.
Lees, a larger-than-life figure known as ‘Wild Man’ and blessed with a can-do spirit, grasped the significance straight away: if he could take them out, the next Allied offensive would have a better chance of success.
And so the secret military plan known as Operation Tombola swung into action.
Lees set about pulling into shape the colorful characters who made up the chaotic partisan forces, bolstered by a 100-strong contingent of Russian prisoners of war who had escaped from German slave camps, some French Foreign Legionnaires and even some German deserters.
They all needed to be moulded into a disciplined fighting force.
But he knew it was a job they couldn’t handle alone, so he called in from Britain reinforcements: the SAS. Forty-two dropped in by parachute, led by the seasoned and already legendary Major Roy Farran.
Farran, though, wasn’t meant to be there. A valuable veteran, his wounds sustained in various clandestine operations in France had led his superiors to ban him from any more front-line ops. But the maverick in him wasn’t having that. He went along with his men on the Dakota aircraft, ostensibly just as an observer, and then ‘accidentally’ fell out — luckily, wearing a parachute.
It was blatant insubordination and, as it turned out, not the only one in this gripping story of daredevil courage.
Together in their mountain stronghold, Lees and Farran relentlessly drilled their ragtag army of irregulars, honoring them with shoulder flashes that read ‘Chi osera vincera’ — ‘Who dares wins’ in Italian.
What neither of them knew was that, back home, the politicians were getting cold feet about any operation involving the partisans. Too many were communists and not to be encouraged.
Lees and Farran carried on oblivious, revving up their makeshift battalion until they were armed and eager, just hours before kick-off. Then, out of the blue, the commanders received a new order: stand down your men; abort the mission. Disgusted at the instruction, both knew in their gut a crucial opportunity — a gamechanger in the war — would be missed.
So they turned a blind eye. They would claim the message hadn’t reached them. The attack was on and damn the consequences! They’d worry about the fall-out, should they come out alive, later.
