First SEALs (30 page)

All in all the Bionda Mission was considered highly successful. “
During the time of the mission 339 cables concerning military
intelligence were sent to the Base for the Command of the Eighth Army. Furthermore, three groups of OSS agents, three Allied Fliers, and two Allied soldiers who had escaped from concentration camps were recovered” behind enemy lines. Garrone added, “During those days all Allied Commands praised us in any possible way for our excellent work.”

A
HALLMARK OF MODERN
American special operations forces involves killing or capturing high-value targets. On the Gina Mission, OSS agents from the Eighth Army Detachment, working closely with Italian partisans, managed to blow up a staff car and kill the commanding general of a German division on the Vergate front. OSS teams also destroyed a crucial supply depot, causing 60 million lire worth of damage to the enemy. They captured thousands of Germans and helped exfiltrate dozens of downed Allied airmen and former POWs.

Most importantly, the OSS agents also transmitted highly valuable information. They scoped out the defenses of the Gothic Line. In fact, the detailed data, plans, drawings, and photographs they obtained from the Gothic Line were considered “
the best piece of ground-intelligence work that has come out of Italy.” This team was also the first to employ a newly developed miniature box camera in the field, paving the way for the use of numerous such devices in the decades to come. Much of the intelligence the Eighth Army Detachment missions obtained helped the Allies track troop movements and identify supply lines and other targets for attack.

O
VER TIME, THE SIZE
of the Eighth Army Detachment grew significantly from the original single officer and four men to four officers and fifteen OSS men working with fifty-three agents and five members of the Italian air force. The detachment and Dick Kelly's Maritime Unit successfully conducted over a dozen missions in key
occupied areas of northern Italy, with as many as thirty-five agents behind enemy lines at one time. Their close cooperation with the Italians also meant that they had four airplanes to use. They were essential in resupplying teams behind enemy lines, especially when the moon was bright, precluding the use of boats. “
One cannot overstress the importance of having an airplane completely at one's disposal,” noted an operative. One plane, the
Savoia,
was particularly successful, even attempting missions in broad daylight while under heavy enemy fire. “
This was the only airplane in Italy which would attempt to drop in heavy flak area. The record proves that every time it went out, flak was encountered. It is a tribute to the skills of the pilots and to the crew as a whole that the airplane always returned safely.”

When the moon was dark the Eighth Army Detachment were able to employ their PT boats to ferry in supplies and personnel. “
In all, fifteen sea operations were attempted by this Detachment and nine proved successful. The PT boats always had on board members of the Detachment who personally went ashore every time to insure success and to talk to the people on shore.”

Throughout this period, the British Eighth Army leadership was so impressed with the work of the OSS and MU that they relied on the organization to handle all clandestine operations in the area instead of their own SOE, which was also in the theater. At one point the Brits even recommended that Thiele “
be incorporated into the Eighth Army G3 as Special Ops Officer.” Such accolades were largely unheard of. OSS records drily note, “
It is gratifying to note that [the British] preferred an American organization to their own.”

*
For over fifteen years the author has been friends with Monteleone, whom his daughter fondly calls “Uncle Frank.” Every day the author wears a very special gift from Monteleone: an eighty-five-year old scapula that the former OSS spy wore around his neck throughout all of his missions behind the lines in World War II. Monteleone sent the scapula to the author just before he accompanied the Marines of Lima Company 3/1 into the Battle of Fallujah. While in Fallujah, the author barely escaped death on several occasions; he remains convinced that the amulet played a powerful role in helping him survive.

23

STELLA

N
OT ALL OF THE MISSIONS CONDUCTED
by the MU or Eighth Army Detachment were a success; many were miserable failures. Infiltrating behind enemy lines was incredibly dangerous, and agents faced brutal torture and near-certain death if captured. One OSS operative, a macho Italian who improbably went by the code name “Stella,” recalled meeting a beautiful woman in a bar while on a mission in the Udine region deep in enemy-held northern Italy. The seductive, blue-eyed blond sat near him and struck up a conversation by asking for a match. She flirted openly with Agent Stella, eventually asking him, “Are you Roman?”

Stella confirmed that he was. The woman whispered to him that “she knew a very easy way to cross the line . . . ‘for a nominal fee.'” Stella erred on the side of caution, replying that “it wasn't my intention to put my life in jeopardy and I preferred to await developments.”

After leaving the bar, he soon met up with an undercover resistance officer named Captain Martellini, whom he decided to use as a shield. “I mentioned the fact that I had met a young lady there who could arrange for a person to cross the lines for a certain sum, and the captain begged me to introduce him to the young lady as one wanting to go to a certain city in ‘invaded Italy.'”

Stella met the young woman again a few days later and informed her that he had a friend who wished to cross the lines. Thereafter
Stella realized he was being followed, but “due to the bizarre layout of the city, it was not too difficult to elude his shadow.” However, within days Stella's shadow reappeared. Identifying himself as German police, he arrested Stella and dragged him into Gestapo headquarters for questioning. “We know who you are,” they began. The Gestapo inquisitors informed Stella he would only be freed if he answered their questions, saying, “We also know that you have asked to cross the front lines for your own personal reason.” The gorgeous Axis counterintelligence agent at the bar had done her job. Understanding the Germans didn't really know who he was at all but had merely taken the bait according to his plan, the OSS agent refuted their claims and added, “In regard to crossing the lines, it is necessary that I clarify the fact that not I, but the GNR Captain Martellini had expressed that desire.”

A quick telephone call brought Martellini to the office. The captain assured the questioners that he had, in fact, been the one interested in crossing the lines. Martellini went even further, saying that Stella had never made any anti-Fascist remarks and adding, “As far as I am concerned, this man is to be excluded from any suspicion whatsoever.”

Despite the officer's assertions, the Germans continued to interrogate Stella, repeatedly asking him where he lived. Knowing that he had a potentially damning letter in his room, Stella attempted to put them off. But the interrogators began their “sweet tortures.” After many rounds of brutality, Stella eventually passed out. They revived him with a bucket of cold water and carried him away to a temporary cell. Stella recounted what happened next:

The following afternoon a stinking-drunk sailor was thrown into the same room. He had scabs over his face, and on his front gums he had only three teeth. The lackey who accompanied him shoved him inside, saying (from what I could get), that I was a partisan. The drunken sailor grunted something, then threw himself at me, sinking those three lurid teeth into my neck; I fought him off with all my
strength, and a few moments later he fell asleep. I soaked up the blood and tied a handkerchief about my neck.

When Stella next went in for questioning, one of the Germans asked about the handkerchief. Stella “told him of the incident and that vampirish individual.” In response, the German grinned. “You are in a fine fix!” he exclaimed. “That man is venereally [
sic
] diseased. If you behave yourself we will see that you are taken care of and that you are given the first treatments to kill the bacilli.”

Faced with this new horror and knowing that his landlady—an Allied sympathizer—had likely destroyed the evidence in his room by this time, Stella told the Germans where he lived and agreed to take them there the next day. He remembered, “When we arrived, the landlady gave me a slight nod, and I understood that everything had been taken care of. My spirits rose.” Despite searching for several hours, the Germans found nothing incriminating. Stella began to hope that he would soon be released when disaster struck. An old friend saw him on the street and greeted him by name. Stella, who had been using a false name, couldn't explain the incident away. The Germans took him away for weeks of “indescribable torture.” Stella fell severely ill and remained imprisoned until the Allies liberated the city.

24

INDIANA JONES

“T
HIS COAST IS HOT
,” M
ORDE NOTED
.
“There are minefields all the way. A PT boat hit one two or three weeks ago and blew up, losing
ten men.”

Despite the treacherous nature of the Italian coast, Lieutenant Ted Morde, the archaeologist who found the Lost Temple of the Monkey God, traveled to Ravenna for the purpose of exploring what the OSS, MU of Company D in particular, could do to further support British actions on the northern Italian front. The Brits “
showed an appreciation” for MU's work, but it was difficult to see how the unit's boats could be brought into service in the area. MU and the Eighth Army Detachment in particular had been very effective on the eastern coast of Italy on the Adriatic Sea because that side of the country had a coastal road that was easy to access by water, providing plenty of targets for the frogmen. The northwestern shoreline, known as the Ligurian Coast, didn't have a similar coastal roadway. Instead, the roads in the area head “
inland, supplying the Germans in the mountains,” explained Morde. “Thus, with no coastal road at that point, meaning no culverts, bridges, tunnels, etc., there are no suitable targets for sabotage of the type Kelly's outfit, the San Marco group, pulled on the Adriatic side.” In addition, the Germans had excellent radar coverage of the Ligurian coastline extending as far as fifteen miles out to sea, as well as a fleet of warships in the region. And they had constructed an extensive minefield that covered
a similar range of the water and the beach as well. The mines came in “all types: magnetic, acoustic, contact, and a new kind of the ‘trip' variety, a mine from which extends snag lines on floats to catch any vessel that trips a line, these extending for as much as 100 to 300 meters. There are thousands of them.” The British believed it would be impossible to clear the mines, and Morde agreed: “For a one-time venture, no attempt could be made to clear the mines without costly losses. And not a damned thing, other than a seagull, could get over them, not even a canoe drawing three inches of water. Certainly not a PT, or our ARBs, or even a mattress, meaning electric surfboard.” The days of easy infiltrations were gone.