I would not have been able to write this book without the help of a great many people, most notably the veterans and their families, who, without exception, gave their time freely and co-operated beyond what could be reasonably expected: Ines Righi Albano, Stanislaw Berkieta, Harry Bland, Sir Nicholas and Lady Nadine Bonsor, Sam Bradshaw, Dennis Bray, Kendall Brooke, Friedrich Bchner, Albert Burke, Ion Calvocoressi, Katherine Calvocoressi, Richard Calvocoressi, Generale Vittorio de Castiglioni, David Clark, Renato Cravedi, William Cremonini, Antonio Cucciati, Elena Curti, Anna del Conte, Petrus Dhlamini, Charles Dills, Eddie Dunhill, Clara and Cedric Gordon, Ray Ellis, Sue Fellowes, Gareth Fonteneau, Lyall Fricker, Ernest Gearing, Tini Glover, Ian Harris, Reg Harris, Sir Stephen Hastings, D. F. Hinsby, Willi Holtfreter, Professor Sir Michael Howard, Pat Ives, Howard and Pam Jackson, Joseph Klein, Bill Konze, Hans Kumberg, Wolf von Kumberg, Kurt Langelddecke, Christopher Lee, Jay and Bee Lowrey; Carlo Lucini, Franz Maassen, Bernard Martin, Leo Mateucci, Cecil Maudesley, Len Meerholz, Iader Miserocchi, Glauco Monducci, Nainabahadur Pun, Peter Moore, Ken Neill, Nigel Nicolson, Helmut Ortschiedt, Cornelia Paselli, Professor Tomasz Piesakowski, Francesco Pirini, Aldo Prati, Heinz Puschmann, Italo Quadrelli, George Ramsay, Gianni Rossi, Teresa and Wladek Rubnikowicz, Ray Saidel, Giuseppe Schiavi, Toby Sewell, Gastone Sgargi, George Underwood, George Vaughan, Carlo Venturi, Professor Roberto Vivarelli, Ernest Wall, Bucky Walters and Ted Wyke-Smith.
I would also like to thank the staffs of the various archives who helped with guidance and advice. In particular, I would like to thank: Dr Peter Liddell and Cathy Pugh of the Second World War Experience Centre, Horsforth, Leeds; Dr Christopher Dowling, Richard Hughes, RoderickSuddaby, Suzanne Bardgett, Sarah Batsford and the team at the Imperial War Museum; Arturo Conti, Signor Minucci and Enrico Persiani at the Istituto Storico RSI; Antonio Cioci and all the former Giovani Fascisti at Piccola Caprera; Giampietro Lippi, ANPI of Bologna, Forl and Piacenza; Anna Salerno at the Consorzio di Gestione Parco Storico di Monte Sole in Marzabotto; Major Gray at the Green Jackets Museum in Winchester; Professor Monty Soutar of the History Group at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in New Zealand; Mandeep Singh Bajwa in India; Eric Marenga, Hamish Paterson and Rowena Wilkinson at the South African National Museum of Military History; the archivists at the Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks; Arthur Blake in South Africa; Susan Robbins Watson at National Headquarters American Red Cross; Jane Yates at The Citadel, South Carolina; Kim Sherwin at the JSCSC Library at Shrivenham.
Thanks are also due to Peter Caddick-Adams and Robert Boyle for their military expertise and advice; to Professor Jeremy Black, James Petrie, and my father, Martin Holland, for reading the manuscript. I would also like to thank Charles Cardozo, Lycia Parker, Margaret Byers, Giles Bourne, James Owen, Peter Riddlington, Jane Martens, John Musgrave, Steve Carter, Caroline Moorehead, James Walker, Guy and Giovanna Waley, Rowland White, Guy Walters, and, in South Carolina, Bill and Marie Pierce.
For this book I owe, as ever, enormous thanks to Lalla Hitchings and her son Mark who have tirelessly transcribed all my interviews. I would also not have been able to research or write it without the enormous help of Roddy Bassett, who interpreted my first interviews in Italy and Sarah Rivire, who helped organise interviews in Germany, subsequently interpreted and helped translate them, and especially for her work on the Hans Golda manuscript. I would also like to thank Sarah and her husband, Michael, for putting me up several times in Berlin. Finally, I am especially indebted to Julia Waley for her considerable input and help, accompanying me on many trips around Italy, and translating and transcribing interviews, texts and archival documents, and for her proof reading.
My thanks also go to Trevor Dolby, and at HarperCollins to Arabella Pike, Richard Johnson, Essie Cousins, John Bond, Sarah OReilly, Alice Massey, Melanie Haselden, Geraldine Beare, Helen Ellis and Peter Wilkinson; to Kate Johnson for her expert copy-editing, and to everyone else involved in the publication of this book. Thank you also to JakeSmith-Bosanquet, Clare Conville and everyone at Conville and Walsh, but particularly to Patrick Walsh.
Finally, I would like to thank Rachel and Ned for always being there for me.
Notes have not been made for quotation from any of the people privately interviewed for the research of this book.
TNA WO206/4622
Lt-General W. Anders, An Army in Exile , p. 163.
Ibid.
Mark Clark Diary, 5/5/1944, Clark Papers, CIT.
IWM 80/5/1.
Robert Landon Wiggans, The Hazardous Trail: Journeys of an Ithaca Boy, MHI.
Clark Diary, 11/5/1944.
Letter to wife, 10/5/1944, Leese Papers, IWM.
Joseph Klein, German Parachute Engineer Battalion and the Italian War 1943/45, unpublished memoir.
BA-MA MSG1/2817.
Wiggans, op. cit.
TNA CAB 120/603.
BA-MA MSG2/4335.
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. V, p. 529.
J. M. A. Gwyer and J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy , Vol. III, p. 669.
Cited in Michael Howard, History of the Second World War: Grand Strategy , Vol. IV, p. xvii.
Cited in ibid., p. 208.
Cited in John Ehrman, History of the Second World War: Grand Strategy, Vol. V, p. 116.
Cited in Howard, op. cit., p. 503.
Alexander Papers, TNA.
MHI MS C-095b.
Ibid.
Cited in Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitlers Headquarters , p. 344.
Cited in Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936 1945 Nemesis, p. 599.
Albert Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring, p. 171.
Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, Mediterranean War, Part V, MHI.
Omar Bradley, A Soldiers Story , p. 307.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe , p. 231.
IWM.
TNA WO214, Alexander Papers.
Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939 1945 , p. 499.
TNA CAB 106/707.
Eugenio Corti, The Last Soldiers of the King: Wartime Italy , 1943 1945, p. 40.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid., p. 113.
Pietro Badoglio, Italy in the Second World War, p. 81.
Cosimo Arrichiello, Italian Heartbreak , p. 273.
Cited in Richard Lamb, War in Italy , p. 132.
Cited in Caroline Moorehead, Iris Origo , p. 1.
Iris Origo, War in Val d Orcia: An Italian War Diary , 9/9/1943.
Ibid.
Ibid., 5/5/1944.
Arrichiello, op. cit., p. 295.
Sir John Slessor, The Central Blue , p. 558.
Cited in Vincent Orange, Slessor : Bomber Champion, p. 130.
Hugh Dundas, Flying Start , p. 178.
Slessor, op. cit., p. 569.
Cited in ibid., pp. 570 77.
Clark Papers, CIT.
Kesselring, Memoirs , p. 200.
BA-MA MSG2/4335.
Ibid.
Clark Papers.
BA-MA MSG2/4335.