Churchill's Italian Angels: The women engaged by the Special Operations Executive in Italy during the Second World War

By Bernard O'Connor

According to recently declassified documents in the British National Archives, twenty-four Italian women were engaged to provide assistance to officers of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) working clandestinely in Italy during the Second World War.
The oldest was 64 and the youngest was 21. The average age was 32, older than might have been expected. Of those who provided details of their occupation, five were students, three had office jobs and two were housewives. Others were a shopkeeper, teacher, dressmaker, designer and a novelist. Four were married, two were widows, two were separated and the rest were single. Two of the older women had daughters living at home who were also engaged to help SOE as couriers and escorts. Fourteen described their work as a courier but most provided other services as well, for example, providing food and accommodation for the organiser and sometimes the wireless operator; hiding supplies like explosives and arms for the partisans and providing military intelligence. One prepared sabotage material. One took photographs of sabotaged targets and another was a propagandist for the BBC.
Bernard O'Connor's documentary history tells their stories, most for the first time, using personnel files, mission reports, autobiographies, biographies, history books and websites.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447840794

Book preview

Churchill’s

Italian Angels:

The women engaged by the Special Operations Executive in Italy during the Second World War

Bernard O’Connor

Copyright Bernard O’Connor @ 2023

All rights reserved.

Attempts have been made to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright holders of quotes and illustrations used in this work. They have all been credited within the text and/or in the bibliography. Much appreciation is given to those who have agreed that we include their work. Any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged, get in touch so that  any necessary corrections can be made.

  Small parts of this book may be reproduced in similar academic works providing due acknowledgement is given in the introduction and within the text. Any errors or suggested additions can be forwarded to the author for future editions. 

ISBN: 978-1-4478-4079-4

And, of course, we are naturally drawn more to our own experience than those of others – we see this every day in the way we cover news from around the world.  Consequently, Anglophone historians have tended to examine the war in Italy in exactly the same way they would, say, the North African campaign, with its vast areas of desert and sparse population. The fact that Italy is a western European country full of millions of people makes no difference to the way in which historians examine the campaign.  The thousands of Italian villages and towns that were utterly destroyed, and the many millions of civilians that were displaced, killed or wounded, barely register a mention.  It is as though they did not exist at all. (https://www.griffonmerlin.com/2006/12/18/the-war-in-italy-1944-1945-a-reappraisal/)

The statues and plaques and other assorted monuments in honour of the women partisans of Italy can tend – like statues, etc. of anything else – towards the abstract. It’s one thing to look at a bronze or ceramic figure or street sign and try to imagine who it symbolizes. But the 100,000 or so women in Italy who fought against the Nazis and Fascists were anything but symbolic.

A factor that wasn’t much acknowledged up until the Sixties, more or less, was that many were also fighting against the social and familial dictatorship of mores and customs and taboos which had changed little since the 1800s. the partisan women were, in many respects, proto-feminists… (Zwingle, Erla, The Garden of Forgotten Venetians: The Partisan (Parts 2: The Women); https://iamnotmakingthisup.net/tag/ paola-del-din/)

Women were to have been the cornerstone of the fascist regime, ensuring social cohesion and building consensus. When the fascists went to war, they became its weak link. During the occupation, they gradually left the private sphere and a hidden everyday life to take on responsibilities that made them more visible and public, making choices that were increasingly aware of the risks and objectives involved. On a global level they were essential protagonists of the mass rejection of the occupation that prevented the Nazis from exercising full control over the population of Rome, whom they wanted to totally subjugate and restrain.

Many were captured and taken to via Tasso [prison in Rome]. Museum documentation has ascertained the presence of more than 200 women, but it is likely there were at least twice as many. (https://www.museoliberazione.it/en/museum/cells/womens-cell/)

Contents Page

Foreword

The Special Operations Executive

Anna Vishovitch

Fausta Terni

Maria Ciofalo

Anna Maria Cialvi

Anna Danti

Enrica Filippina Lara

Augusta Langha

Olga Molinatti

Leda Santi

Maddalena Madureri

Elda Pandini

Carla Boattini

Anna Irgher

Anna Sabbadini

Mary Arnaldi

Ida Serafino Bastianello

Ines Pasquarelli

Elide Galloni

Maria Rigeli

Paola Del Din

Emma Bocchi

Conclusion

Bibliography

Foreword

I used to live near RAF Tempsford, a deserted Second World War airfield about 80 km north of London and about half way between Cambridge and Bedford. I researched its history and discovered that it was used by two RAF Special Duties Squadrons to parachute supplies to resistance movements in German-occupied Western Europe. They also parachuted secret agents behind the enemy lines and landed them with their luggage by Lysanders, small planes, in remote fields and picked up returning agents and people the Allies wanted bringing back to Britain. The planning behind the top secret operations was carried out by the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

When the Allies invaded North Africa in November 1942, SOE set up a base near Algiers from where other Special Duties Squadrons were able to parachute supplies to resistance movements in Southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy, Greece and the Balkans. They were also able to infiltrate and exfiltrate agents by planes, boats and submarines.

Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in July and August 1943, SOE sent a mission first to Sicily where Italian-speaking agents were recruited for undercover operations in Sothern Italy. Although the Italian Government signed the Armistice in September, the Germans took control of the North. SOE began arming the partisans using parachute drops and sending in liaison officers and wireless operators to collect military and other intelligence; report back to headquarters; organise sabotage and other attacks on Fascist and German targets and co-ordinate action against lines of communication to hamper the Germans northward retreat following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

Documents show that at least 25 Italian women were recruited. Not all have personnel files in the National Archives in Kew, but the majority of the officers identified as having recruited them do. These shed light on the characters of those employed by the British to liaise with Italian partisans and help supply and organise resistance against the Fascists and Germans. There are also mission reports which shed light on the circumstances in which the women were working.

Other primary sources accessed include autobiographies.

Secondary sources include biographies history books, articles in academic journals, newspaper articles and numerous websites.  What follows is a documentary history, telling the reader what I have found about the women’s wartime experiences, in most cases for the first time.

I need to acknowledge the staff at the National Archives and SOE historians Fred Judge and Steven Kippax for their help in identifying the women and accessing not just their personnel files but also those of their organisers and their mission reports. Trevor Baker provided invaluable help in locating relevant documents. I have also appreciated the research undertaken by authors Roderick Bailey, Malcolm Munthe, David Stafford and Gavin Wiggington. Nicoletta Maggi very kindly provided help with background information and translation queries.

The stories of women in wartime have received little coverage in history books and this work attempts to show the various ways in which Italian women helped not just the SOE but also those fighting to liberate their country from Fascism and Nazism.

Check whether any of the SOE women are mentioned in this site;

AIDMEN Associazione Italiana Documentazione Marittima e Navale

The Special Operations Executive (SOE)

In 1938, fearing the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, would bomb military and intelligence targets in London, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, SIS purchased Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, a large, secluded mansion with extensive grounds about an hour’s drive northwest of London. This was to be their agent training school. SIS, commonly known as MI6, Military Intelligence Section 6, was responsible for the security of Britain’s dominions and overseas interests. MI5, Military Intelligence Section 5, was responsible for Britain’s domestic security.

Military attachés, air attachés, naval attachés and press attachés in British embassies and consulates were able to collect and pass on information to the Foreign Office. SIS officers, often posing as Passport Control officers, also collected military, economic and political intelligence which was stored and  evaluated to be used to provide reports for the Foreign Office to inform the British government and the War Office. Some intelligence was easily available from newspapers, journals, wireless and television broadcasts; some was obtained from speaking with foreign diplomats, government officials and local people; some was provided by paid informers and some was obtained by clandestine means like intercepting post, listening to telephone and telegraph messages or breaking and entering buildings, photographing and stealing documents. 

When the Germans invaded Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France in May 1940, the British diplomatic staff were evacuated. The Foreign Office and importantly the War Office, lost contact with their intelligence sources in occupied Western Europe. Agents with foreign language skills were needed to be trained and infiltrated behind enemy lines to re-establish contact with SIS’s sources, establish new ones, collect relevant intelligence and report back. The early agents were often dropped behind enemy lines with two pigeons The first was released when they landed and flew back to Bletchley Park to let SIS know their agent had arrived safely/ The second was released later with a message inserted in a container attached to its leg which gave location details, date and times for a moonlit pick up from an isolated field.

SIS’s plans for Bletchley Park had to change when the Government chose it for their Codes and Cypher Section. Another building with extensive grounds was requisitioned, Brickendonbury Manor, near Hertford, about an hour’s drive northeast of London. Agents were provided with physical training, lessons in Morse, wireless telegraphy, codes and cyphers, weapons, fieldcraft, espionage and sabotage. The early agents were Spanish Republicans, Norwegian and Belgians.  A nearby airfield was chosen as the base for the RAF Special Duties Squadron whose mission was to either parachute Brickendonbury- trained agents or land them and later pick them up.

When the British Expeditionary Forces were forced to evacuate from Norway, Belgium and France at the end of May 1940, the War Office feared that Hitler’s next move was to invade Britain, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar. Almost 120 Spanish Republicans and thirty British officers were trained for stay-behind operation in Iberia.

Another subversive and clandestine organisation was needed. Winston Churchill agreed to the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) with an instruction ‘to set Europe ablaze by sabotage.’ When SOE was set up in July 1940, it took over agent training from SIS. Preliminary training, paramilitary training, parachute training and clandestine warfare training took place in requisitioned country houses.

Its Headquarters were on the upper floors of Marks and Spencers’ office building at 64 Baker Street, Marylebone, London.  Like the SIS, SOE had country sections which were provided with offices in nearby buildings. SOE’s Italian Section, headed by Lt Col Cecil Roseberry with the symbol J, covered Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta and Switzerland. He got permission to recruit  members of the British Army who could speak Italian. These J Section officers collected geographical, military and economic intelligence on the countries they were involved with, information on key personnel, especially in the resistance. also currency, identity papers, ration books and military papers. They also recruited and trained agents for missions behind enemy lines. Details of SOE’s operations in Fascist Italy can be found in Roderick Bailey’s Target Italy. (Bailey, Roderick, Target Italy: The Secret War Against Mussolini 1940-1943, Faber and Faber, 2014)

SOE staff collected clothing and personal effects from refugees in exchange for British clothing and personal effects. They were stored according to country in rooms in a requisitioned hotel on the outskirts of London. Agents measurements were taken and clothes were selected for them. Tailors and seamstresses were at hand to make modifications. SOE ensured, as best they could, that their agents had nothing to indicate they had been infiltrated by the British. They kept files on all their agents, prepared missions for them, arranged supplies, liaised with the RAF or the Royal Navy for their infiltration. They created cover stories and had conducting officers who were attached to agents to help them memorise them. They provided them with fake identity papers and money and briefed them for their mission. Should they managed to return after their mission, they were debriefed, interrogated about the successes and failures. 

As the British were engaged in fighting the German and Italian armies in North Africa, SOE created a Middle East Section with its headquarters in the Rustum Buildings, near the British Embassy in the Garden City area of Cairo, Egypt. Paramilitary training schools were opened in Mishmar HaEmek, Megiddo and Mount Carmel, near Haifa in Palestine, a weapons training school in Atlit, Palestine, and parachute training schools in Kabrit, Egypt and Ramat David, near Haifa. Trained agents were infiltrated by sea and air into Italy and Southeast Europe.

After several years of fighting Axis troops in the North African deserts of Egypt and Libya, in November 1942 the Allies launched Operation TORCH, the successful invasion of Morocco and Algeria. SOE then established a headquarters in requisitioned villas in the holiday camp of Club des Pines, about 22 kms west  of Algiers. Paramilitary and parachute training schools were started.

Lt. Col. Arthur Dodds-Parker, one of SOE’s Baker Street officers was transferred to Algiers to run what he called MASSINGHAM. Accompanying him were many young women. In a speech he gave in 1987 at Bologna University to a conference on No 1 Special Force and the Italian Resistance, he stated,

SOE was not created. It just happened. At a certain time, for an immediate need; to be disbanded as soon as the Second World War was ended with the defeat by the use of the A-bomb.

It was never popular with many. It had no regular professional groups to support it. Politicians, diplomats and military came to believe that it had usurped their proper responsibilities, which it had, as circumstances came to lead it from a small clandestine group to become at the end of the war a worldwide association with links and the goodwill, lasting to the present, among many of the political and commercial classes throughout the former occupied land. […]

SOE was a big organisation, needing alertness, dedication and accuracy to ensure the correct agents, containers and their contents, pilots, briefs and ground signals were given to those concerned. The [administrative] work was mainly carried out by girls, the FANYs [First Aid Nursing Yeomanry – the only women’s regiment allowed to carry guns] and the Women’s Royal Air Force and the WRENS [Women’s Royal Naval Service]. (Dodds-Parker, Arthur, ‘No. 1 Special Force and Italian resistance’, Paper read at Bologna University, 1987, p.6)

Employing women and girls as secret agents was not new. SIS employed female intelligence agents but SOE began training women in late-1942 following the German introduction of legislation requiring men in occupied countries aged between 18 and 40 to be sent to work in German factories, mines and farms. German men were needed to support the Wehrmacht (German Army), Kriegsmarine (Navy) and Luftwaffe (Air Force).  As there were less civilian men on the streets, female agents would  be less conspicuous. Male agents, should they be stopped and questioned, would need excellent cover stories to explain why they had not been sent to Germany.

SOE recruited women of many nationalities as potential organisers, wireless operators, couriers, weapons and sabotage instructors and saboteurs. When the SOE organisers were in the field, the term for enemy occupied territory, they also recruited women to assist in their missions, providing accommodation and food, as couriers, escorts and intelligence gathering. 

A person in a military uniform Description automatically generated

Arthur Dodds-Parker, Commander of SOE MASSINGHAM (Magdalene College, Oxford, P2/4/IP/4 https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/blog/an-englishman-at-war-sir-douglas-dodds-parker-and-the-soe-1940-5/)

In Dodds-Parker’s talk on No. I Special Force in the  Mediterranean and their arrival in Italy he stated that,

In November 1942 there were two SOE missions in Algiers. The first, codenamed Brandon, was instructed to move to Tunis in support of the British First Army. This they moved quickly to do, but not for the last  time. SOE and others were anticipated by the Germans. This mission therefore continued its major efforts until May 1943 when final victory in North Africa was achieved.

The second mission, codenamed Massingham, was instructed to recruit agents for infiltration into Corsica and the former non-occupied zone of France. There were many different nationalities at the time in North Africa, many anxious to return to Europe, many in contact with the enemy. Sorting them out took time. […] Massingham had set about organising itself for such a future [the landing of American and French troops in Southern France]. (Dodds-Parker, Arthur, op.cit.p.12)

The Allied success in capturing Tunis in May 1943 was followed by Operation HUSKY, the landing their  forces in Sicily in July. SOE officer Malcolm Munthe commanded a small force which was amongst the first to land. 

A person in a military uniform Description automatically generated

SOE Major Malcom Munthe recruited agents for operations in Italy (https://www.wimbledonguardian.co.uk/news/ 11083589.heritage-the-truth-about-southside-house-and-major-malcolm-munthe/)

According to his wartime memoirs, Munthe had worked as an espionage agent and saboteur for SOE in Norway and Sweden where he established a network of 'Friends' which he called the Red Horse, in imitation of the Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel.

The rucksacks his party carried with them when the drove the 15-cwt Bedford truck onto the beach from their landing craft contained ten Italian pistols with ammunition, twelve Gammon grenades, wire cutters, torches, luminous discs, thin Japanese silk for writing secret messages to be sewn into people’s garments and a box of paints, brushes and pens to make fake identity papers. Wrapped in waterproof paper were