Just before Christmas 1944 (and by now promoted to Sergeant) I was deployed to Brindisi in the “heel” of Italy which had only been recently liberated by the Allies. In the lead up to Christmas we were briefed for a mission which was to take place behind enemy lines in the North of Italy and on the 27th December 1944. I along with 32 other men from the 2nd SAS were to be parachuted into the Apennine Mountains into the valley of Rossano on what was code-named “Operation Galia”.
The weather conditions were atrocious. I remember it was freezing cold as we bailed out of the Dakota. We landed on the mountain slopes in deep snow. We didn’t have proper winter camouflage kit. We were met by the local Italians and partisans who gave us a friendly welcome and put us up in barns and other billets for the night. Our Guvnor (Captain Bob Walker Brown) split us up into groups of 5 or 6 (known as ‘sticks’) and my stick were assigned a young Italian partisan guide whose job it would be to lead us to our first target. Our main role was to try to create a diversion by shooting up the German lines of communication. By landing our force during daylight and with all the kit and weapons dropped at the same time, we hoped the Jerrys would think there was a major force attacking them from the rear.
My stick (Number 5) was led by Lt Shaughnessy, a tough no-nonsense Irishman and comprised of 6 men in total. I was the senior NCO among the group. We spent two days and nights crossing rivers and mountains to head south, towards the area of Aulla and Reggio. We followed our guide who was just a teenager. He knew the mountains like the back of his hand. Eventually we ended up in a mountain village and managed to find some shelter in an old barn a few hundred yards outside the village in the forest, to plan our lines of attack and to get some kip.
We always knew we would face problems knowing who to trust, not least because most of us couldn’t speak a word of Italian. We also knew there were people with fascist sympathies in the mountains. Unfortunately for us, we must have been betrayed. During the early hours of New Year’s Eve we found ourselves surrounded by a force of Brigata Nera (Italian fascist forces allied to the Germans).
We had no choice but to surrender. It was a bitter blow to have come all that way, do all that training and yet to be put in the bag before we had even had then chance to go into battle.
We were roughed up, blindfolded and had our hands tied behind our backs and we were tied us to each other so we couldn’t escape.
They must have spotted our young guide’s partisan badge. That was all the excuse they needed. They shot him on the spot as an example to anyone else in the village who may have had any thoughts of helping us. We thought we would be next for the high jump, but it soon became clear they had other plans and we were loaded on to trucks and taken to a jail in La Spezia.
I don’t recall much about that. It was a long time ago and being taken POW wasn’t something I was particularly proud of or wanted to remember. We were there to do a job but ended up ‘in the bag’ before we’d got going.