The Vatican Pimpernel (11 page)

In the next few weeks Derry got to know other helpers of O'Flaherty's including the Pestalozza family, Prince Caracciolo, the Irish Br Humilis, a Franciscan monk at St Isidore's, and another valiant priest from New Zealand, Fr Flanagan. Br Humilis was bursar to his community and, over the years, had become expert in turning the operation of the black market to their advantage. He now brought this expertise to the O'Flaherty organisation, buying food and provisions for the various escapees in large amounts. He quickly located a farmer with a false-bottomed cart who helped to effect deliveries, and was in charge of the expenditure of significant amounts of money, running into millions of lire in the next few years. Derry was brought to most of these billets by Monsignor O'Flaherty and he recalls those events:

He was lost in admiration for what had been achieved already by O'Flaherty and his colleagues.

As well as Princess Nini, the organisation now had another expert in producing counterfeit documents, a mysterious German lady, known only as Mrs K, who concentrated on producing bread coupons which enabled the organisation to purchase directly from the bakeries at prices cheaper than the going rate on the black market. A Madam Bruccoleri was a widow working in the Red Cross organisation in Rome. Letters which arrived in Italy from families of British prisoners of war, whether they were still incarcerated or in hiding, would come to the Red Cross in Rome. Mrs Bruccoleri was kept up to date by O'Flaherty on all those whom the organisation was catering for, so when she came across a letter regarding one of them she would slip it into her clothing and her daughter Josette would deliver it to O'Flaherty the next day. This way, those in hiding within the city and outside were kept in touch with home.

The Major also met some of the French diplomatic representatives. As we have seen, the Ambassador, Bérard, had no sympathy with the Allied cause. By contrast, the First and Second Secretaries, Jean de Blesson – who had lost all his family property to the Germans – and François de Vial were very much supporters of the Free French movement and de Gaulle. A similar situation existed in the Irish Embassy where the Irish Minister Thomas Kiernan was obliged to follow the Irish Government policy of strict neutrality while his wife, the noted singer Delia Murphy, and their daughter Blon, were free agents and very much active supporters of O'Flaherty.

It was quite natural that Kiernan's wife, Delia Murphy, and Monsignor O'Flaherty would become friends shortly after her arrival in Rome. They were two of a kind: gregarious, outgoing and sociable. It was because of Hugh of ‘the twinkling eyes', she explains, that she began to get involved in helping the escapees:

A very intriguing incident which involved Delia was the case of a German soldier whom an Italian had found exhausted near one of the bridges across the Tiber. This German soldier claimed to be a priest and explained he was fasting in the hope that he would be able to say Mass if he found someone who was in a position to assist him. Delia Murphy brought the German to Monsignor O'Flaherty and as soon as they were satisfied that his claim was genuine they arranged for him to say Mass. As Delia observed:

Another well-known episode involving Delia Murphy was the case of the disappearing boots. Aside from money and food, the most pressing need of those who were on the run was proper footwear. Many of them were travelling long distances by foot, moving from place to place outside of Rome. In his usual way, John May identified a likely source. He discovered that a building which backed on to the garden of the Irish Legation had been taken over by the Germans and was turned into a depot where they repaired boots for their personnel. The boot depot was not guarded at night. Presumably the authorities did not anticipate trouble. For a number of weeks, boots began to disappear and were thrown over the wall into the back garden of the Irish Legation where they were subsequently gathered and passed on to O'Flaherty. Delia Murphy was certainly involved in this, by her own account, and most probably was assisted by her daughter Blon. Br Humilis comments on Delia Murphy's motivation and indeed, his own, in helping O'Flaherty.

During all of this time, of course, her husband was attending to his routine diplomatic duties. In November 1942 he wrote to John Charles McQuaid, the then Archbishop of Dublin, assuring him that the authorities were respecting Vatican property in the appropriate manner. He addressed this issue again in November 1943 when he reported back to the authorities in the Department of External Affairs.

D'Arcy Osborne assigned to Major Derry some military personnel who had already secured sanctuary in the Vatican to support him administratively, most particularly a Captain Henry (Barney) Byrnes of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. Derry and Byrnes immediately set up a record-keeping system. Derry anticipated that as the organisation was beginning to spend significant amounts of British Government money, it was likely, at some stage, that he would be asked to account for it. Byrnes kept these records and buried them each night in the Vatican Gardens. Money continued to be supplied by O'Flaherty's traditional supporters among the nobility and the wealthier citizens of Rome, but more and more funds were now coming from the US and British Governments through Tittmann and D'Arcy Osborne.

Inevitably because of the military involvement, the work of the organisation strayed into espionage. Derry took careful steps to make sure that O'Flaherty was not involved, for fairly obvious reasons. However, in this aspect of the ongoing work, the Monsignor's contacts throughout Rome usually meant that he had a fair idea of what was going on. British espionage agents working in the south of Italy were unaware of developments in Rome and the arrangements which had been put in place to support escapees, so they decided to send one of their agents north with money to help any he might meet there. This agent was an Italian, Peter Tumiati, who when he arrived in Rome immediately sought out O'Flaherty, like so many others seeking help on reaching the city. O'Flaherty introduced him to Derry who was rather nervous, not knowing Tumiati's background. Derry was always on the lookout for agents from the German side who might be trying to penetrate the organisation. When Derry expressed these concerns to the Monsignor the reply he received was, ‘why me boy, I know him well.'
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Not only did O'Flaherty know Tumiati but he knew precisely what his role was. Tumiati brought back to his authorities in the south of Italy a list of all those ex-prisoners whom O'Flaherty's organisation now knew to be at large, amounting to 2,000 or so. For security reasons, the list was in the form of microfilm, organised by John May, which was secreted in a small loaf. One night a couple of weeks later, Derry was able to hear on a BBC broadcast a coded phrase that confirmed to him that Tumiati had got through with the list. This enabled the British authorities to notify the families of the 2,000 that they were ‘missing - known to be safe'.

By now, finances were well organised and regular supplies of significant amounts were coming through D'Arcy Osborne, with lesser amounts from Harold Tittmann and others. A hundred thousand lire a week (approximately €15,000 in current terms) was now going through the organisation to those in hiding. In order to support the organisation, D'Arcy Osborne needed to have large sums of money available to him. The Foreign Office in London gave the Vatican bank a guarantee that it would cover any borrowings he made up to a maximum of three million lire. Major Derry had also ensured that the people involved in the work of the organisation became more security conscious. At that stage in Rome, phone calls were routinely monitored by the authorities. As we have seen, O'Flaherty had a fairly casual approach to these matters, using only the code word ‘golf clubs' to refer to escapees and ‘breviary' to refer to accommodation. Derry changed all that, assigning code names to the main participants including O'Flaherty himself (Golf), Derry (Patrick), Fr Claffey (Eyerish), Fr Lenan (Uncle Tom), Fr Musters (Dutchpa), Mrs Chevalier (Mrs M) and Br Robert Pace (Whitebows - referring to the two white ribbons worn by members of the De la Salle teaching order). Fr Aurelius Borg was known as ‘Grobb', Fr Sneddon as ‘Horace', Fr Madden as ‘Edmund', Fr Galea as ‘Sailor', Renzo Lucidi as ‘Rinso' (then a brand name for a washing-up powder). For some unfortunate reason Count Salazar was assigned the nickname ‘Emma' and Fr Flanagan, ‘Fanny'. Fr John Buckley already had the nickname ‘Spike' which referred to his prowess as an athlete in his younger days, when he used spiked running shoes. Other code names were given to John May (Giovanni), D'Arcy Osborne (Mount), Secundo Constantini in the Swiss Legation (Sek) and Hugh Montgomery who worked as Secretary to D'Arcy Osborne was known as Till. In the case of the locals their Christian name usually sufficed as a codename with the exception of Fernando Giustini who was known as the ‘Schoolmaster' and Giuseppe Gonzi whose codename was ‘Mr Bishop'.

At that stage, however, Derry's main security concern was O'Flaherty himself.

The Monsignor continued to take enormous risks with his own personal safety going through the streets of Rome and visiting, of all places, the notorious Regina Coeli prison. In an interview carried out in 1994 by Frank Lewis for Radio Kerry, Sam Derry recalled the problems created for him in trying to ensure the Monsignor's safety.

He also continued to take at face value anyone who came seeking assistance which was obviously of concern to the more security-minded Major. On 8 December 1943, the Monsignor arrived at his room where Derry was staying and announced ‘another new arrival for you Patrick'. This was a face from the past for Derry (whose codename was Patrick), a Czechoslovakian Jew by the name of Joe Pollak. When Derry was in the Chieti prisoner-of-war camp, there had been a leak of information to the authorities there. The escape committee had tried to identify the source without success. Derry's own suspicion fell on a prisoner named Joe Pollak though he had no hard and fast information. So now, when the Monsignor introduced Pollak to him again, he was quite surprised but more particularly he was concerned for the safety of everyone in the escape organisation. Derry entered into this conversation with great caution. Pollak explained that he had made for Rome, having escaped from captivity with six others. He began to name this group, mentioning first two Lieutenants, John Furman and Bill Simpson, who both had been very close friends of Derry's when they were in the prisoner-of-war camp together. These were two men whom the Major knew he could trust. More importantly he was willing to back their judgement and so he began to accept Pollak as being genuine and risk free. It was arranged that Pollak would bring Furman to meet Derry. When they met the next day, Derry managed to get Furman on his own and check out the reliability of Joe Pollak. Furman's response was ‘Joe Pollak is one of the most terrific chaps I have ever met.' Furman went on to describe what Pollak had done for the escapees in the countryside, making links with anti-Fascist families who were willing to house them. Pollak's knowledge of the language had been a crucial advantage. Having heard the full story, Derry went to Pollak, whom he had left in the Monsignor's room, and made his apologies for having doubted his reliability.