The Vatican Pimpernel (7 page)

The man-servant had a particular talent in using the black market, which was to prove invaluable in the months ahead. He also had a range of contacts which kept him very well informed in relation to events on the ground. There are even suggestions that he used bribery, from time to time, to great effect in his ongoing work with O'Flaherty. It became clear when May and the Monsignor had this conversation that the Englishman was already well informed of O'Flaherty's activities. He strongly impressed on the Monsignor the need to share the burden:

As a direct result of this discussion, a Council of Three was established, consisting of O'Flaherty, May and Count Sarsfield Salazar of the Swiss Legation. Because of his position as a diplomat from a neutral country, Salazar was in an ideal position to contribute to the work of the group. Many of those who came to Rome seeking help approached the Swiss Legation. The British Embassy at this stage had been closed since the staff had moved into the Vatican but the building was under the care of Secundo Constantini, another Swiss with whom Salazar had close links. Aside from passing on information to O'Flaherty about those who were seeking assistance, Salazar's main role was to ensure that money and other resources such as food and clothing reached those hidden in the countryside around Rome. Captain Leonardo Trippi was another strong supporter at the Swiss Legation where he worked as Military Attaché issuing Red Cross parcels and generally supporting those who came seeking assistance. There was not much about prisoners and prisoners of war that he did not know as he had spent a lot of time visiting Italian camps on behalf of his own Government which was the neutral power under the Geneva Convention. As well as the Red Cross parcels he supplied money to escapees for which they would sign and which the Swiss authorities charged up to the British Government.

Early clients of the group were French soldiers who arrived at the British Embassy where they were met by Constantini. He in turn contacted O'Flaherty who went to seek accommodation for them. By chance, on the street he met an acquaintance of his, a Maltese priest, Fr Borg, who suggested that a countrywoman of his, Henrietta Chevalier, might be able to help. This episode was the first of many involving the Maltese woman. Indeed her contribution to the work of the Council of Three for the remainder of the War was quite extraordinary.

Mrs Chevalier was a young widow with six daughters and two sons. Her eldest son was imprisoned as soon as Italy entered the War because, being Maltese, he was a British subject. Her second son, Paul, was a clerical officer with the Swiss Legation and so his diplomatic papers protected his freedom. He also lived at the Legation. The youngest daughter, aged nine, was sent to live with Maltese nuns in Rome because of the dangerous situation in the city. This left Mrs Chevalier, her mother and her five remaining daughters, ranging in age from twenty-one to thirteen, living in a small third-floor apartment on the Via dell Impero.

Paul rang home at about lunchtime and spoke to his sister Rosie and asked her to ‘tell Mama that I am bringing home two books'. Neither his sister nor his mother understood what the message meant. However, later in the afternoon, he turned up with two French soldiers whom, he told his mother, he had brought to her at the request of Fr Borg and she should expect a visit from a Monsignor friend of the Maltese priest that evening. O'Flaherty, when he arrived, explained the dangers involved for the Chevaliers if they were to hide the Frenchmen. Similar warnings were given by the Monsignor to Mrs Chevalier on many occasions in succeeding months, all to no avail. The apartment in which her family lived consisted of two bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a box room, a bathroom with toilet, another toilet on the back balcony and a large larder. To cater for the visitors the dining room became a bedroom at night. Mattresses were laid on the floor each night and this practice continued for much of the remainder of the War as the house had innumerable guests. On one occasion there were nine overnight guests in addition to Mrs Chevalier, her mother and her five daughters. Throughout all of this time, O'Flaherty was aware of the grave dangers for Mrs Chevalier and her family as it was certain they would be executed if their activities became known. On this first occasion, he just asked that the Frenchmen be kept for a day or two as an emergency measure until he could find a more suitable location.

Mrs Chevalier and her family were involved in this work for almost all of the rest of the War. She tended to stay at home to look after her ‘boys', as she called them, while her daughters went out to shop for the necessities. As soon as false papers were provided for the escapees, they were able to go out with the daughters onto the streets of Rome without arousing suspicion. However, security became of huge importance and the girls no longer brought their own friends to the house. Inevitably, in a confined block of apartments, neighbours must have known or at least suspected what was going on, but they kept their counsel. Over and above that, the caretaker of the apartment block, Egidio, and his wife, Elvira, were of great support in alerting Mrs Chevalier to any imminent danger.

Understandably, there were few locals, if any, who were willing to undertake the same level of risk as the remarkable Maltese widow. Aside from any other consideration, the dangers were obvious with an automatic death penalty awaiting anyone who assisted escapees, so O'Flaherty's next move on behalf of the Council of Three was to rent a flat on the Via Firenze. It surely delighted his sense of mischief that the apartment block backed onto a hotel used as the Gestapo Headquarters. Of all the accommodations used during this period, this was O'Flaherty's favourite. ‘Faith,' he chortled, ‘they'll not look under their noses.'
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He subsequently rented another one about a mile away on the Via Domenico Chelini.

One of the early guests in the Via Firenze apartment was a British officer in the Royal Artillery by the name of Wilson whose role had been as a saboteur behind enemy lines. Wilson found himself unable to connect with a submarine that he was to meet after one such mission and so headed for Rome and the Vatican. Unfortunately for him, the Swiss Guard were now implementing the ‘no admittance for escapees' policy. It seems that Wilson did not take their instructions in this regard too well and eventually they dumped him outside the Vatican boundary. He stayed there all night. Early the next morning, having been alerted by the Swiss Guard, O'Flaherty made contact with him in the Square and took him to the Via Firenze apartment where he met those already in hiding there, including some other British soldiers, a couple of Yugoslav girls and one Yugoslavian Communist, Bruno Buchner. The first thing Wilson did was sit down and write a letter to the Pope complaining about his treatment at the hands of the Swiss Guard. O'Flaherty was delighted to hand this over and equally amused some days later to deliver a reply from the Secretariat inviting Wilson to visit the Vatican at a more convenient time.

Keeping these two apartments running – paying the rent and providing food for the guests there – together with contributing to food for others who were in hiding elsewhere, began to cost significant amounts of money from the Monsignor's own resources and from other funds made available through D'Arcy Osborne, including the British Minister's own personal funds and, at this stage, Government money also. Another source of finance was Prince Filippo Doria Pamphilj, the head of one of the ancient Roman noble families, who had been a friend of O'Flaherty since before the War. The Prince was half-English and had attended university at Cambridge. During his time there he became ill and was hospitalised. One of the nurses he met was Glaswegian and he subsequently married her. Both of them had been publicly anti-Fascist from the beginning. As often happened with O'Flaherty offers of help came in just when they were needed. The Prince contacted O'Flaherty and, having discussed with the Monsignor the work of the Council of Three, gave him 150,000 lire. Between September 1943 and June 1944 the value of the lira depreciated by 500 per cent. This, the first of many donations which the Prince and his family gave, was worth about £2,000 at that time (the equivalent of approximately €100,000 in current terms). Sr Noreen Dennehy a young Kerrywoman, became an unwitting transporter of these donations.

Mother Superior had decided not to tell the young nun that she was in fact transporting cash for fear that she might become nervous and attract attention. These donations continued even when the Prince and his family had themselves to go into hiding in Rome.

Another who found himself some time later as an unwitting transporter of cash was Fr Seán Quinlan (later Monsignor). The Quinlan family had been neighbours of the O'Flahertys in Mangerton View in Killarney and Seán remembered being carried as a child on Hugh's shoulders on many occasions. He arrived in Rome in 1938 and renewed the acquaintance. He recalls being in the Monsignor's office one day and being handed a large envelope which he was asked to bring to a particular address about a mile along the Tiber away from the Vatican. His instruction was ‘to hand it over to Giovanni' and he did so. Later that evening he met Monsignor O'Flaherty who casually told him that the envelope contained one million lire. Many years later Fr Quinlan remarked that on that day he was very close to being either a millionaire or dead.

These various contributions enabled the Council to increase greatly the number of localities they could use because they were now in a position to support financially those who were accommodating the escapees. Inevitably, however, as they became more successful, the number of requests grew. This, in turn, increased the risks to O'Flaherty and his colleagues as more and more people became aware of their work. The Monsignor spent countless hours visiting the various locations in which escapees were lodged and bringing escapees to them, often ignoring curfew regulations. During the course of this work he had some narrow escapes. Indeed we will never know all the details because of his self-effacing attitude towards his work.

As time went by, the authorities gradually became aware of his activities and Kappler, the Head of the Gestapo in Rome, arranged for a watch to be kept on the houses of known associates of his, including that of Prince Doria. One day in the early autumn of 1943, O'Flaherty visited the Palazzo on the Via delle Corso where the Prince lived, to collect a contribution. The watching Gestapo officers immediately alerted Kappler who arrived with a large force minutes later. From an upstairs window in the room where the Prince and the Monsignor were talking, the Prince's secretary noticed the commotion and raised the alarm. This gave O'Flaherty a few minutes' warning of the impending search. The Monsignor immediately took his leave of the Prince, not forgetting to take the donation of funds. He had no particular plan in mind but he was aware that the Palazzo was a huge building and so presumably thought he had some chance of escape. Instinctively he went down to the basement of the house. Meanwhile the Prince's servants delayed the admission of the Gestapo for as long as they could. On arriving in the basement, the Monsignor noticed that a patch of light was shining in and quickly realised that a coal delivery was under way. The coal was being delivered from outside the house through a trapdoor directly into the cellar. Having been distracted by the activities of the Germans, the coalmen had paused in their delivery, enabling the Monsignor to climb up the pile of coal and carefully look out to assess the situation. He saw that the two coalmen were standing by the lorry and approximately two dozen of the Gestapo were about to enter the Palazzo. He managed to pull in an empty coal sack that was lying on the ground and he slid back down onto the floor. He took off his clerical outer garments, stripped down to his trousers and vest and covered himself in coal dust. Just then, one of the German officers shouted to the coalmen to complete the delivery. As one of the coalmen approached the trapdoor, the Monsignor decided to gamble on his goodwill and, attracting his attention, advised him that he was a priest who was being followed by the Gestapo. Luckily for him, the coalman agreed to assist and came down into the cellar, allowing O'Flaherty to make the return journey towards the lorry in his place. The Monsignor had on his back a coal sack containing his outer clerical garments. Presumably any SS man looking at the situation assumed he was the coalman bringing back empty sacks to the lorry. O'Flaherty managed to walk past the Gestapo, go to the lorry and then beyond and make his escape. The sacristan of a nearby church was surprised when a coalman arrived, announcing himself as a priest. However, he quickly accepted this as genuine. O'Flaherty cleaned himself up, changed into his normal clothing and headed back to the Vatican. His extensive knowledge of the back streets of Rome, which later enabled him to write a guide to the Eternal City, surely came to his assistance. We can assume that the walk which normally would take about thirty minutes was completed in far less time. Several hours later, the Prince's phone rang and he was surprised to hear the Monsignor at the other end.