Churchill's Hellraisers. Damien Lewis
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his official SOE report Lees made clear he shared their enthusiasm. ‘The Partisans are always ready to take advice and grateful for encouragement or acknowledgement of their work . . . The morale of the Partisans is excellent. The Italians are particularly suited to this flamboyant type of work. They have great ingenuity and are very keen. They do not need encouragement to carry out demolitions.’
Lees urged greater ‘propaganda’ support for the partisans, and for the message of their successes to be more widely heard. ‘The Partisans should be encouraged by broadcast to mine all roads and attack German convoys and troops on the move. There are tremendous possibilities in this type of work.’ Such efforts to arm and support the partisans could significantly aid the breaking of the Gothic Line, he argued.
Long was interviewed on BBC radio, where he spoke in glowing terms about how the partisans ‘make the Germans’ life a hell. They snipe [at] them in the street. They ambush them wherever they move in small numbers . . . I don’t suppose the partisans kill more than ten Germans a week. They make for a constant nerve-racking hell for thousands every day though.’
Tellingly, Long concluded: ‘There is a faith in one thing, an indefinable fineness in human nature, a quality they believe will live again in this their country, given one condition – that not one man of the enemy’s [forces] will remain.’ Such a message must have been music to the partisans’ ears.
Morton echoed Long’s sentiments, speaking on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio. ‘Patriot guns are roaming all northern Italy. They are hitting the Germans and Fascists wherever they find them. They are controlling villages and towns, helping the poor and depressed, feeding the starving. And when the opposition against them grows too tough they creep back into their mountain strongholds, fighting as they go.’
In so speaking out, Morton and Long were fulfilling Churchill’s edict to win the information war by lauding the achievements of the resistance. They were also fulfilling their SOE brief, to ‘provide the Press an account of patriot activities and sabotage exploits’. Their daring escape and the intelligence – and white propaganda – they had furnished was another feather in Michael Lees’ cap, or so it should have been.
But it was now that a shadow began to cast its malevolent presence over the SOE’s Italian operations, one that would dog Mike Lees’ return to behind-the-lines operations. As Morton set about preparing a series of scintillating newspaper reports – which the British Army censor declared to be the most exciting that he had ever read on the Italian campaign – the winds of fortune were rapidly turning against him.
By the time Morton had polished off his stories, which were to be syndicated worldwide, he was called to Rome, to appear before the senior commanders of Canadian Army Public Relations. Having led a daring escape across the lines, bringing with him priceless intelligence and an American airman, plus the ‘white propaganda’ that he and Long had prepared, Morton was more than a little surprised at the reception he received.
With little ceremony, he was told that due to ‘inappropriate conduct’ and other ‘unspecified offences’, his accreditation as a Canadian war correspondent was being revoked. Further disciplinary action was pending. On the night before deploying to the field it was SOE tradition – long-standing, irrevocable – that agents would have a few stiff drinks. Indeed, a redoubtable SOE veteran, one Sergeant Carter, ran a bar beside the flight line for just such purposes.
Likewise, Lees and his party had enjoyed a good booze-up before they deployed on Operation Flap. Someone had challenged Morton’s martial credentials, for he was a reporter and no soldier. Morton had responded by pulling his pistol and shooting some holes in the bar. Fairly tame stuff, by the standards of SOE pre-departure high jinks. Supposedly, that was the ‘inappropriate conduct’ being cited as the reason for Morton’s accreditation being cancelled.
Far worse was to follow. When Morton contacted his employer, the Toronto Daily Star, he learned that only one of his reports – the first, ‘I live with patriots in Nazi lines’ – was to be published. It was too late to stop that. But all the rest – Morton’s eight subsequent stories, all of which had been cleared by the British Army censor – were to be cancelled.
Stubborn, dogged, undeterred, Morton sought other outlets for his stories, but after initial enthusiastic reactions doors kept slamming in his face. In short, he could find no publisher for those further articles, and the original plans for worldwide syndication withered and died. That this should all be due to some drunken high spirits immediately prior to mission departure made little sense.
In truth, the dark machinations now being orchestrated against the hapless reporter went far deeper. Morton had earned a reputation among the SOE as being a brave and talented reporter and a capable leader of men, so who had slid in the proverbial knife? Why the stab in the back for a man who should have won fulsome praise?
That autumn, the Political Warfare Executive had been transferred to the Foreign Office, the arm of the British state overseeing foreign affairs. Subsequently, it had been amalgamated with the equivalent American body, the new organisation being renamed the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD). PWD was to specialise in many forms of psychological operations. One of its favourite tactics was scattering ‘black propaganda’ leaflets over enemy lines from the air, or assaulting the enemy ranks with loud-speaker-born propaganda.
In the autumn and winter of 1944 the message emanating from the PWD – the mouthpiece of the secret British and American states – began to change markedly over Italy. At first, there were intimations that the role of the resistance should be given a little less prominence. Suggestions were made that the partisans, many of whom had avowedly communist leanings, should no longer receive such widespread Allied support, with a view to the new war that was coming – the Cold War.
By November 1944 this had crystallised into a specific set of directives, by which the Foreign Office sought to redefine Allied objectives. They identified the first and overriding policy in Italy as being the need to halt the spread of communism. Second was the need to create a stable nation following liberation, which would look to the Allies – and not Soviet Russia – in the post-war world. The third – and last – priority was to mobilise the partisans to aid in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
‘I am very much afraid that, if we are not careful, we shall be building up in northern Italy with arms and money a rival Italian government,’ the Foreign Office (FO) warned. The FO criticised the eagerness of Allied commanders to ‘make use of this Resistance Movement’, worrying that communist partisans would seize control. In November PWD issued a clear directive ordering the ‘playing down’ of the role of the partisans by all concerned.
Those at the helm of SOE Maryland railed against this volte face. They lobbied for the support of the partisans to continue. Time and again they argued that the communist partisans would come peacefully into line once the war in Italy was won. That same month General Alexander himself – Allied commander-in-chief in Italy – issued his ‘Winter Directive’, in which he continued to laud the achievements of the Italian resistance, working hand in glove with the SOE.
‘What do the partisans do?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘The toll of bridges blown, locomotives derailed . . . small garrisons liquidated, factories demolished, mounts week by week, and the German nerves are so strained, their unenviable administrative situation taxed so much further, that large bodies of . . . troops are constantly tied down . . . Almost any frontline troops could tell stories of Partisan assistance . . . Their fighting qualities and local knowledge are constantly proved invaluable.’
An increasingly bitter power struggle was in train over the fate of the Italian resistance. On one side was the military and the SOE; on the other, the Foreign Office and the PWD. It was no secret who wielded the darker power: the Psychological Warfare Division were past-masters. In the dying months of 1944 war reporter Paul Morton’s message – that the Italian partisans, communists included, were embroiled in a noble and heroic struggle deserving full Allied support – ran contrary to what they intended.
There was a rift developing between those determined to further military support for the partisans, in order to help vanquish the enemy, and those who believed the need to combat communism