There was little point trying to voice any objections, or of urging the driver to a greater degree of caution: the speed and the noise were so all-consuming, all they could do was hang on for dear life and mouth their prayers. Finally, miraculously, the truck gave a last series of death-defying lurches, before grinding to an uncertain halt in the village square. The driver practically fell out of the cabin door and lay on the ground, staring at the heavens.
He glanced at his sickly, pallid passengers. ‘No petrol.’ He shrugged, then guffawed. ‘No brakes!’
Whether the story about the German hunter force was true or not, or just a smoke screen to disguise the perilous nature of their conveyance, no one was entirely certain. But of one thing they could be sure: even now that they had reached Pigna village, there seemed little hope for their onwards journey. The leader of the partisans declared that any attempt to push further south towards the Gothic Line would be akin to suicide.
He had no contact with the Allied forces positioned on the far side, the commander explained, so no way to warn them that a friendly force was coming through. The front line kept shifting as the battle ebbed and flowed, making any close reconnaissance impossible. Moreover, the ground ahead was broken, impassable country, so Lees and his men would be forced to move on well-trodden paths and roads, all which would be closely guarded by the enemy.
Behind the front ran a main road, he warned, slicing through the mountains in a knife-cut cleft. It was heavily patrolled, and if Lees and his force tried to cross it they were bound to be seen. After much heated discussion, Lees finally managed to secure the offer of a guide who would take his party south as far as that road. After that, they would be on their own.
As Lees was painfully aware, it would be suicide to press on with his full party. As far as he could ascertain, the enemy fortifications stretched for miles either side of the Gothic Line. All of that terrain would have to be crossed by stealth and ideally under cover of darkness. He would need to lead a small, fit, fighting patrol, one able to travel fast and silently and primed to avoid contact with the enemy, or to fight ferociously should the need arise.
It was better to slip a few good men through successfully, than to get them all killed. The two Italian resistance leaders were in excellent physical shape, so would stand the march well. But the war artist, Long, was unfit to move, at least until he’d recovered from his fall. Lees and the reporter, Morton, had had their differences high on the mountain, and he reckoned Morton was best left behind. If Lees could establish an escape route, all the more chance that the both of them might make it through with their stories.
Lees decided to take two others only. The first was an escaped British POW called Fred Dobson, a fit and capable soldier who was keen as mustard to press on. The other was an Italian called Secondo Balestri, who had been serving with Temple’s partisans for some time. Balestri had one of the most incredible war stories that Lees had ever heard.
A former Italian Navy wireless operator turned partisan, he had been captured by the Germans. Under Gestapo torture he’d acted as if he had broken, professing his willingness to transmit false intelligence to the Allies. Instead, Balestri, who was gifted with an extraordinary mathematical memory, had altered a coded signal which read ‘I am in good hands’, to ‘I am in German hands’. He’d also managed to insert further warnings into the radio messages the Gestapo forced him to send. Because he could do so ‘live’ – during the process of encoding the signal – the Gestapo had never suspected what he was up to.
Balestri had subsequently escaped from the enemy and made it back to partisan lines. He, like Fred Dobson, was keen to continue despite the dangers. That, Lees decided, would make up his escape party. He’d leave William McClelland, the Royal Scots private turned piratical raider, to shepherd the remaining men through – but only once they had received word from Lees of what was the best route, or, conversely, that he and his party had failed.
It was some twenty-four hours after reaching Pigna that Lees called his party together. Once he had outlined his intentions to split them into two groups, neither Morton nor Long appeared particularly upset. On the contrary, they could see the sense – not to mention the sheer courage – in Lees trying to forge a path for the rest to follow.
‘He was twenty-one, tough, brave as the British are brave; born, as they say, to command,’ Morton would write of Lees. In that there was perhaps a tacit admission that he had been wrong to rebel against Lees’ orders, high on the snow-swept mountain. As for Lees, he’d realised by now that the Canadian press man had a certain grit and spirit: indeed, enough of each to place him in formal command of those left behind.
Lees eyed the reporter, searchingly. ‘You, Morton, seem to think everything is a big joke . . . You fraternise too easily with the Commos; with everyone for that matter.’ By ‘the Commos’ Lees meant the communists, for a good proportion of the Italian partisans professed to communist leanings. ‘Still, I’m putting you in charge.’
Morton, amply assisted by McClelland, would lead the second escape party, Lees explained. ‘You’re loaded down with money. That’s better than guns or brains in a situation like this. Use the money to get the rest of this crowd through to France . . . And Morton, that’s an order.’
‘He never called me Paul whenever he was giving orders,’ Morton reflected wryly of Lees, ‘and he seemed, mostly, to be giving orders.’ Morton – like Lees – had parachuted in on the present mission carrying a slush-fund provided by the SOE: cash, with which to oil the wheels of guerrilla warfare. Now, he was to use that money to buy their way out again.
Lees shook hands with all, speaking a few last words to the Canadian reporter and the South African war artist. ‘Well, goodbye. We’ll tell the Americans you’re coming through. Perhaps they’ll polish their bayonets, so you give them a good write up.’
Morton snorted. ‘That’ll be the day. They might be a million miles away, for all the use they are at the moment.’
‘You’ll get through all right,’ Lees reassured him.
‘Well, thank God I’m not going today,’ Morton confessed. ‘I couldn’t walk another step.’
‘That’s the worst of you correspondents,’ Lees needled him. ‘You don’t do enough PT.’
Morton laughed. ‘Oh, shut up and push off, you bloody thug.’
With those final words ringing in his ears, Lees and his fellows departed Pigna, mounting up the death trap of the partisan truck for the initial stage of the journey. It would take them as far as the first major obstacle, a road bridge that the partisans had blown up to prevent the Germans from raiding their valley stronghold, not far beyond which lay the first of the massive defences of the Gothic Line.
The Gotenstellung – the Gothic Line – was Nazi Germany’s last line of defence in northern Italy, running coast to coast in essentially an east – west direction. Positioned on the slopes of the Apennine mountains, it consisted of a series of massive fortifications strung between the natural defences of the high ridges and snowbound peaks. Concerned about whether the Gotenstellung would hold, Hitler had ordered 15,000 slave labourers shipped in, to extend the defences in strength and depth. Working under the Todt Organisation – Nazi Germany’s forced labour ministry – they consisted of prisoners of war, concentration camp internees, plus conscripted Italian civilians.
Those slave labourers had constructed hundreds of reinforced-concrete gun pits, deep trenches, 2,376 machine-gun nests boasting interlocking arcs of fire, 479 anti-tank, mortar and artillery positions, plus observation posts with interconnecting tunnels burrowed deep beneath the ground. Miles of anti-tank barriers had been dug, plus 130,000 yards of barbed