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In late spring 1944, an American agent boarded a Halifax bomber, bound for southern Slovenia. His mission was on behalf of three intelligence agencies. MI9 had realized how useful the Slovenian Partisans and SOE were to rescuing POWs and downed airmen, known in the business as ‘escapers and evaders’ (E&Es). Undercover as ‘A Force’, MI9 cut deals with Tito and the SOE to allow their agents to be attached to SOE missions in Slovenia.1
The Americans had become interested in Slovenia too, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the American equivalent of SOE) cut a deal to join SOE missions. This culminated in OSS Major Franklin Lindsay being appointed to head an SOE-led joint mission with OSS and MI9 to Štajerska. Its codename was Cuckold.
Lindsay was an outsider to SOE, whose recruitment process had often consisted of hiring chaps met at a bar, with the old-school tie playing its part. Not infrequently candidates were capable individuals used to brutal privations, but also barking mad. Major William Jones had been recalled for just such eccentricities. As well as trying to convince escapees to fight, in a fit of revolutionary enthusiasm, he had donated all of his operational funds to the organization of Anti-Fascist Women of Slovenia, on behalf of the invented-on-the-spot ‘Anti-Fascist Women of Canada’.2 Lindsay, a tall, thin man with a radiant smile younger than his years, wasn’t without elite (or inside) connections himself: a twenty-eight-year-old Princeton engineering graduate, he was originally a supply officer with a desk job. He went then with US Army Engineers to Iran, working Anglo-American–Soviet supply lines. Lindsay craved adventure and talked his way first into OSS, and then onto the mission by exaggerating his skill in German and Russian.3 His second officer was OSS Lieutenant Gordon Bush, skinny and very short, with a fine moustache. They’d become a great double act. There was also an MI9 man aboard: Captain Jack Saggers, a polite and professional Brit. He was not going with Cuckold. Instead, he was to build an airfield and holding centre for E&Es in southern Slovenia.4 If successful, planes could land rather than parachute supplies, and take Partisan wounded and E&Es on the return journey.
As the Halifax reached the rendezvous late at night, an air of anxiety prevailed. This was their third attempt to parachute in. One attempt failed due to bad weather, the other due to Partisan failure to light the correct fire signals on the ground. Tonight, all was well. Sighting the correct light signal, the Halifax flung its cargo and passengers into the night. Parachuting down, Lindsay hit the ground with bruises but no broken bones. A Partisan officer emerged from the dark and embraced Lindsay like a brother. The agents were plied with spirits while Partisans gathered the supplies.
The agents had brought a few guns and munitions, but the most precious cargo was three large portable radios. One had shattered during the drop, along with Cuckold’s only bottle of Scotch. Their superiors at SOE’s ‘Force 399’ in Bari in Italy were going to drop an extra man with two more radios once the mission was in Štajerska.5
Cuckold had landed near Semič, a small town in southern Slovenia held by the Partisans. Nearby was Partisan HQ, while the OF’s political HQ was a day’s march away in Kočevje forest. Cuckold’s mission was simple. Contact the 14th Division, blow things up, and make life difficult for the Germans. In more detail: establish supply sites and get weapons and explosives to the Partisans. Lindsay also had responsibility for MI9 matters, to look after E&Es and gather intelligence from them.6
He could not begin his mission yet. A small German offensive was blocking the way north. While they waited, Commander Stane paid Lindsay a visit to offer advice on the realities of war in Štajerska. His advice was to travel light and always stay on the move. Lindsay promptly gave away much of his luggage, including all his spare clothes save a pair of socks. Soon the 14th Division had defeated the small offensive, and the way was clear. Cuckold would follow secret Partisan courier lines north, travelling only by night. The Kamnik-Zasavje Odred, the ‘Sava Navy’, was responsible for getting Cuckold across the Sava river in crude canoes made from rough planks, but one of their Partisans deserted, and likely reported their position to the enemy. Several days of pursuit ended in a safe house high on a hill south of the town of Gornji Grad. No one had been killed or injured, but one of the radios had been left behind. If the last one broke, all contact with SOE would be severed, along with any hope of supply.
Lindsay saw Štajerska by daylight for the first time while they were resting at the safe house. The whole region sprawled out beneath him, a kaleidoscope of colour. Fields and forests were a vibrant green, fed by spring rain. Red roofs were soaking up the sun under a rich blue sky. With the white peaks of the mountains and the purple bloom of crocus flowers, it looked like a peaceful paradise. He could see why the Partisans were fighting so hard for it.
He also got his first taste of MI9 duties, receiving a group of American airmen being rescued by the Partisans. They had little intelligence to pass on, except that their intended bombing target had been the Maribor railway yard.7 The Partisans sent them on south, where they hoped Saggers could assist them. Lindsay was then taken to Pohorje, where the 4th Zone HQ had encamped following the failed attempt to create a liberated area. The camp was rudimentary, but had all the typists, officers, and couriers needed to run an army. An honour guard ceremony greeted Lindsay. Slovenian and Yugoslav tricolours bearing red stars were unfurled, and HQ troops stood to attention. As each Partisan possessed different uniforms and weapons from each other, it was a peculiar sight. Then it was straight into conference with Partisan commanders.
4th Zone HQ had realized their poor planning and lack of heavy weapons needed urgent correction. They had two ambitious operations to execute. They still had to create a permanent ‘safe’ area, but first, they were ordered to destroy the enemy’s railway lines. Summer fighting was about to intensify on the Eastern Front, and Pohorje was the perfect staging ground for a sabotage operation: along every edge of the massif lay a railway line. East was the main route south from Vienna via Maribor and Celje. West was a secondary line south from Wolfsberg to Celje. North was the Maribor to Klagenfurt backline. South of Celje was the junction at Zidani Most. Two bridges there carried all the lines from Belgrade, Vienna, Zagreb, and Trieste.
Four targets were chosen: three bridges and a tunnel on the eastern, southern, and western lines. Lindsay’s task would be supply and explosives. Later, in order to take German garrisons and create a ‘safe area’, the Partisans would need more guns, ammunition, and portable artillery. For the railway sabotage they would need high explosives, and lots of them. If they could do this, they’d cripple German supply for the entire southern section of the Eastern Front. It would stop the Germans there from reinforcing against the Red Army. It could be a monumental contribution to the war at a critical moment.
Lindsay arranged a successful airdrop of high explosives, and the operation was a partial success. On 8 June 1944 the brigades fanned out to their four targets, though one operation had to be cancelled when the Partisans spotted a reinforced German garrison with flak defending the target. Lindsay was with the Zidanšek Brigade, tasked with blowing up a vast viaduct on the western line. He soon suspected that Partisan sappers, usually former mineworkers, might not be well qualified. They insisted on taking the bombs from Lindsay and almost caused a disaster by placing the charges in sequence around the campfire when they stopped for dinner – ‘They work better when heated up,’ one of the sappers assured Lindsay.8 By luck, they didn’t explode and kill the whole brigade. Reaching the bridge, they dug holes at the bases of three of the seven columns and laid their charges. As the charges were blown, a battalion of Partisans opened fire on a nearby enemy garrison, keeping the defenders penned in. Unfortunately, the explosions did no more than damage the pillars, leaving the bridge standing. Lindsay had a few hundred kilos of explosives left and little time. Knowing a German relief force could be heading up the railway, the sappers went back to digging. It took an hour to set the new explosives, the Partisans working as their comrades kept up their fire on the garrison. Drenched in sweat, Lindsay and the sappers laid and triggered the last of their explosives. This time the columns crumbled, and the railway with it. The Wolfsberg to Celje line had been completely destroyed. On the eastern line, a tunnel had been blown, knocking it out for a month, although the same sappers who successfully blew up the tunnel botched the charges on one of the target bridges and no damage was done.9 Still, it was a demonstration of strength that encouraged first hundreds, and later thousands, to join the Partisans.
Now, for Lindsay and the Partisans in Pohorje, weapons were the priority. They camped on Rogla, an isolated high-altitude grazing area, and received an airdrop there the night of 25 June. The cargo contained British guns – Lee Enfield rifles, Bren machine guns and Sten submachine guns – but, to Franklin’s dismay, no extra radios. An attempt the week before to supply another radio had failed because it had been dropped late, into German hands.10 This time SOE, or the Royal Air Force (RAF), refused to drop the radio, insisting that the first drop test the site’s safety, and a second drop a day or two later deliver the radios. This was against Lindsay’s specific instructions for single, large drops with no follow-up.11 Any drop would risk exposing their position to the Germans. The prudent response was to gather the supplies and immediately move elsewhere.
Lindsay was also learning how difficult it was to persuade SOE, the RAF, and the Partisans to coordinate. Paranoid over security, SOE would change fire signals with less than twenty-four hours’ notice, which led to the cancellation of all drops, because it took up to three days to pass the new signal codes to the drop sites by courier. Even if time, place, and cargo could be coordinated, the drop ultimately depended on the skill and nerve of the RAF pilots who were becoming more and more skittish about low flying in the mountainous terrain. Frequently blanketed in fog, they feared flying into a mountain. Stuff-ups were getting worse, and Lindsay’s rage would be clear from his messages to SOE: ‘Planes strewed chutes over a fifteen-mile area in mountains’ was a typical complaint, or: ‘You loaded Cuckold Mission supplies on plane to [incorrect drop site], most lost and some dropped to Huns. This is gross negligence.’ SOE also did not deliver Lindsay a new radio. Cuckold was always on the brink of falling out of contact, and no contact would mean no drops, no weapons, no ammunition.
While awaiting the follow-up on Rogla, Lindsay was joined by several escaped prisoners from Maribor, though not from 1046GW. Among them were Alfred Ashely and Owen Peterson.12 Maribor district was littered with Arbeitskommandos – and they’d escaped from one in western Maribor, probably bringing the information that Stalag XVIIID had been disbanded and its working camps subordinated to Stalag XVIIIA.
They probably also passed on the information that one camp commuted far out along the railway line but was based in the Maribor railway yard. Ralph and the crew, Lindsay realized, were living under an Allied bombing target. The prisoners were in mortal danger. He had no direct contact with the RAF, and SOE didn’t seem to be listening. To save the prisoners, Franklin had to act. He consulted 4th Zone and radioed MI9. With Partisan help, he planned to spring Arbeitskommando 1046GW.*13 It wasn’t even Lindsay’s primary job but, if successful, it’d be the biggest escape of the war.
More than that, Maribor was littered with Arbeitskommandos, and tens of thousands more POWs were over the mountains in Austria. Lindsay had his hands full with sabotage and supply, but if a dedicated agent could be brought in, MI9 and the Partisans could establish the most outrageous escape lines.
MI9 mounted a search for such an agent and found one of the finest His Majesty’s Secret Service had to offer: Major Andrew Anthony Vincent Losco. Hailing from a Maltese family in Egypt, Losco had been working for MI9 since early in the war. First, he had infiltrated enemy-occupied Corsica, with orders to create an escape line for POWs escaping camps in northern Italy. This proved unsuccessful, but he was evacuated and sent into Italy in December 1943 to retrieve POWs still at large after Italy’s surrender. Even as II SS-Panzer Corps secured the region, Losco located fifty escapees and made his coastal evacuation rendezvous. The transport never arrived and Losco was captured bearing arms but managed to convince his captors he was also a runaway. For taking up arms during escape, Losco was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in Macerata. Despite being in prison rather than a lightly guarded camp, Losco quickly masterminded a successful escape. Tracking the German and Italian guards’ routines, he rallied the other prisoners and overpowered the guards at an opportune moment. They liberated Italian political prisoners in the process, and Losco returned to Allied lines by boat in May 1944.14 Rested and briefed, now Losco would drop into Štajerska, under the cover name ‘Major Matthews’.15