Episode 1 - Gela (Part 1) 🇬🇧

Today’s podcast is going to talk about the mission called “Gela”, started from Bari’s aerodrome and parachuted on Asiago upland (western Veneto region), on the night of August 31st 1944. Three people took part into the mission: Captain Brietsche (head of the mission), Captain Orr-Ewing (second in command) and Corporal Ball (telegraphist).

All of them had unique personalities, since they were very far from the stereotype of British soldiers, believed to be impassive, self-disciplined and hungry for ram meat and beer. Few people from the Special Operation Executive (SOE - secret service in charge of the sabotage on the nazi-fascist Europe) were close to this stereotype. Many of them were adventurous, faithful to the myth of legendary war characters such as Lawrence of Arabia.

Brietsche was not an exception: while he was living in the southern Rhodesia he happened to be both a farmer and a gold digger; he later took part into the East Africa campaign at the beginning of the war, helping also during the liberation of Ethiopia. Only few months later he joined the SOE and was trained in Palestine and Syria, before moving to Italy, in Monopoli, at the SOE headquarter “Maryland”.

Orr-Ewing, instead, was the youngest among them and at the beginning of the war was a student in Cambridge. After he was enlisted in the Highlander regiment, he was moved to the SOE and was trained in Palestine like Brietsche.

Corporal Ball, 22-years-old welshman, used to work as a butcher’s shop boy and as a crane driver.

On the night of August 31st 1944 Captain Brietsche flew off from Bari with his party and Major Tillman’s party (mission “Simia”). They were dropped on the Asiago upland where Major Wilkinson, “Freccia”, head of the “Ruina” mission, had arranged their reception.

Ever since the beginning, the “Gela” mission was characterized by many accidents. Tillman’s group was airdropped without difficulties, but as soon as Brietsche jumped off the airplane, a group of clouds made impossible to them to be parachuted.

Brietsche, Orr-Ewing and Ball got lost on a wide area; those who were waiting for them on the ground were able to find the three men after many hours. In the end they were found an brought by Wilkinson on the landing field. In that moment, they found Major Tillman lied down, under a cow, drinking milk. When Brietsche told about their exciting airdrop, Wilkinson just shrugged, saying: “I had told to the headquarter that this field was not suitable for the arrival of soldiers”.

The days after that were particularly busy because of the preparations required. Wilkinson assigned to the mission the area of Mount Grappa, where the British knew partisans were present but they did not know how many they were, nor how well-armed they were and nor to which party they belonged to. The mission, thus, left on the 3 September 1944 to reach the Grappa. They traversed the Marcesina area, the Brenta valley and finally, after two days of march, arrived at the basis of the Grappa massif. Once there, they established their HQ in an hotel that had been put at their disposal. Brietsche then began the standard protocol of all missions: to contact as many partisan bands as possible in the area. The principal goal of the liaison missions was, in fact, to coordinate the action of the partisans and to supply them with resources. This allowed for the creation of a proper link between the partisans and the Allied forces, and prevented wasting both supplies and human lives.

The Grappa was rife with partisans, we know this thanks to Italian sources, produced by the partisans themselves. And, in a short time, Brietsche realised this too. He estimated that their equipment was “decent” but he also noted a worrying lack of military training. This was something that, in the end, could be expected. Nonetheless, Brietsche felt reassured by their numbers, reaching roughly 1200 men, and was convinced that only a massive push from the enemy could dislodge the partisans from their positions. He also managed to make the various bands agree on a name for the post of “comandante unico”, unified commander, which was a key step in order to better coordinate the various bands as a single fighting force. The commander’s name was “Bruno”, who should be the commander of the Gramsci brigade, Paride Brunetti. They also agreed on the name of a vice-commander, “Longo”, Angelo Pasini, commander of the Matteotti brigade. At this point, Brietsche started signalling to the base to get some airdrops. The partisans were, in fact, armed lightly: Bren and Sten machine-guns, some rifles, some handgrenades. Part of this equipment had been scavenged from the area and dated back to WW1. Airdrops, however, never arrived and the mission had to manage with what little equipment the partisans had. The problem of the military supplies is a leitmotiv common to all the

SOE's missions in Italy. All the missions, indeed, could count on a constant increase of delivered material, but in most of the cases the minimum threshold, necessary in order to army the partisans, was not reached. Obviously, this created many issues, since the plans were formulated on wrong assumptions and it was destined to failure.

In the meantime, at least, the mission could gain the service of two new members, Norton and Moorcroft, both of the South African expeditionary force. There were, in fact, many former prisoners of war among the partisans, in Veneto and elsewhere, who had escaped their prison camps after September 1943. Norton possessed the crucial ability of being an Italian-speaker, even though we have no idea on his ability to speak the local dialect. Moorcroft instead had no particular skill, however, he was described as an energetic and resourceful man, and became the mission’s factotum.

Only a few days later, however, things began to go sour. September 18th, Brietsche was informed about enemy’s movements at the basis of the mountain. However, he decided to ignore them. He was still convinced of his earlier evaluation of the partisans’ strength.

Three days later, on the 21, the Germans launched their attack and it was clear soon enough that it would have been a big “rastrellamento” (mop-up); one of the largest in the history of the Resistance, in fact. The "rastrellamenti" were operations by the military police, made by the Germans and the fascists, in order to eliminate the partisans from a specific area. Generally speaking, they proceeded attacking the partisans and military occupying the area for many days. After the occupation they used to do terrible things, killing people, destroying properties, confiscating food and so on. That "rastrellamento" was called by the Germans the "Piave operation".

What happened in the following day is unclear. Defeats, as they say, have no fathers, and such a ruinous defeat cannot be an exception. We can say that the initial underestimation of the enemy by Brietsche played a pivotal role. Even when the attack begun the captain was sure of the partisans’ strength, declaring he would turn the Grappa into a “second Verdun” for the Germans, referring to the WW1 battle that costed thousands of lives to the German army. Partisan troops, however, were not trained, nor equipped, like the Anglo-French army of 1917. It would be, however, unfair to accuse Brietsche to be the sole responsible for the situation.

First, Brietsche planned his strategy on faulty assumptions. Brietsche, in fact, and the partisan leaders, and many other missions who found themselves in similar situations, acted assuming the fact the airdrops from the South, like ammunitions, clothes, medicines... would not only be constant but also steadily increased in volume.

However, this did not happen because of a variety of reasons, tied to the context in which the Allied forces e waged war in Europe. The problem was that nobody was warned of the changes in the war context, moreover, partisans and missions, who operated on the field an thus received only fragmented news on the overall picture of the war, surely could not have those information. Therefore, when airdrops failed to materialize, these plans already based upon an overestimation, in the end, of the partisan forces and an underestimation of the Germans, went downhill even faster and even more spectacularly.

Moreover, there is also the matter that Bruno himself, or so it seems, was quite in favor of resisting the attack on the Grappa and he wanted to turn the mountain into some kind of fortress. Later on, when he will be in a similar situation, helped by another mission, he will also be a proponent of the idea that the partisans and to fight the Germans to the death. Therefore, we should not point our finger at Brietsche as a scapegoat, but rather we should contextualise this massive defeat in the frame of the partisan war in Italy, and in the frame of the difficult relations that the Resistance had with Allied airdrops.

In the early morning of the 21 September Brietsche was woken by Longo (Bruno’ second in command), who informed him that the Germans had surrounded the mountain, blocked all the villages and were placing down mobile artillery. At dawn, the enemy started shelling the partisans’ positions. Things started going downhill incredibly fast. A messenger came, bringing the news that the whole of the Italia Libera brigade, commanded by Maj. Pirotti, had deserted, leaving their arms behind, which left the South-East and East flank exposed.

Brietsche and Longo decided to send a small party composed of British ex-pow, some ex-Carabinieri and some partisans to hold the line. The group should have been necessarily composed by tough people, since it was basically a suicidal mission. The group fought heroically and managed to repel five enemy attacks during the day, before falling back at night.

Meanwhile, Brietsche returned to his HQ only to find it under fire from German mortars. Led by the partisans, the mission found refuge in the nearby tunnels that were built by Italian troops during the First World War. Those tunnels are still there. Anyone who has some familiarity with the Alps, from the Garda Lake to the Venezia-Giulia knows that the land is marked by those huge scars, the trenches, the tunnels and the craters left by the bombs. Even the odd bunker survives and is still visible. Thanks to this legacy of the great war, the mission was able to find shelter and to save, at least, the radio kit.

And, thanks to the radio kit, Brietsche tried multiple times to get a supply drop from the Commands.

However, his requests were never answered, even if his tone became more and more enraged as time passed.

Under the enemy’s pressure, Brietsche decided to move West, towards the Val di Seren, where the Garibaldi brigade was desperately trying to hold the front.

They arrived there only to find more bad news: the garibaldini were about to break, morale was incredibly low and the Matteotti Brigade had collapsed. At this point, the enemy launched a thrust attack into the Val di Seren while also mounting an attack up the mountain from the Brenta Valley. The garibaldini, disheartened, started to run. In a last-ditch effort Brietsche signalled base for air support against the German artillery. They never came.

The enemy, numbering about 14000 men, proceeded in the rastrellamento with ruthless efficiency, abandoning itself to atrocities which culminated with the Bassano massacre on the 26 September 1944. At nightfall, with only only a few garibaldini still fighting, the mission moved to a position overlooking the village of Schievenin.

The situation became more and more desperate. The following morning, 22 September, enemy troops begun another push and the garibaldini broke. Brietsche ordered to bury the radio kid and, together with his four men, they followed the partisans into the woods.

The following days were spent hiding from enemy troops. The enemy placed sentries at watering holes and blocked the roads to all villages, while isolated “malghe” (wooden cabins) had been burnt. All roads to and from Monte Grappa were similarly blocked. The mission survived eating nuts and managed to find an unburnt hut on the Monte Tomatico (part of the Grappa massif). Unfortunately, the enemy traced them there and they had to escape. At this point, the 2 October 1944, the enemy finally stopped its pursuit.

Hopeful to be able to get some help from the South, Brietsche retrieved the radio kit to send a message to the base. The battery was dead and they had to use a car battery instead. The Command replied with eight messages, that Brietsche described as “worthless” in his final report. Moreover, the battery died again, leaving the mission stranded. They run into three partisans who promised to find another one for them, but they were captured and hanged by the Germans. Brietsche tried to get in contact with the local partisan leaders, but this effort was fruitless. He even sent Moorcroft to find Longo but the South African never came back. The partisans were all either dead, they had run away, or were too scared to act. During this period the mission survived only thanks to the generosity of a farmer named Lino who, despite the danger, hid them in a malga on the Mount Tomatico and gave them food. As a final nail, Capt. Brietsche learned that the enemy had managed to spread the rumour that the mission was, in reality, a German operation and that he and his men were double-agents. This meant that the chances to make contact with local partisans were now zero.

On the 13 October, things got complicated again. The mission spotted a large German patrol coming up the path to the malga they were hiding in, lead by an Italian in plain clothes. Quickly, the four bolted away, leaving behind their weapons and equipment. While he was leaving the malga Brietsche met the eyes of the Italian guide. However, the man just grinned, winked and said nothing. The malga was burned, but the mission was safe. However, the Germans found the radio kit and thus they launched another man hunt to find the mission.

Brietsche, exhausted, decided it was time to leave for good. During the night the group crossed the Piave River and reached the village of Caorera. The plan was to continue marching East to reach the operative zone of either Major Tilman or Major Nicholson. Luckily, they run into a partisan patrol who provided them with a guide to cross the Cansiglio Woods. There, in the heart of the forest, they run into Major Tilman on the 20 October. Tilman was there visiting the headquarter of the Nanetti division. We are not told by the report how the meeting went, but we can easily imagine how big of a relief was for Brietsche and his men to see Tilman’s face and to hear his voice again.

We have now reach the end, thus, of this first episode of 'Tales from the hideout', which leaves things a bit up in the air, to give a little bit of narrative tension, so to speak, to the whole tale. Brietsche is surely a man whose morale is very low at the moment: he failed as a mission chief, he failed as a military consultant, he failed on pretty much everything.

It is also easy to imagine what his mental state was, or his views on the partisans.

However, his adventure is long from over and I will wait for you all to join me in the next episode, to continue it!