GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY
There was not a sound or a sight to back up my claim, just a sixth sense which told me we were in mortal danger. I was naturally more pessimistic than the courageous Keany, but on this occasion there was an extra intangible ingredient to my wariness.
Keany said, ‘Don’t be silly Bill. They couldn’t creep up a hill like this without us seeing or hearing them.’
To the best of my recollection, those were Keany’s last words. I had been standing by his side as we spoke, with my radio transmitter in a pack on my back and my Marlin slung over my shoulder. For no reason I could ever explain I suddenly felt frightened, vulnerable and exposed. I moved two or three paces away from Keany’s left side, back towards the Calabrian and another Partisan called Tony. As I did so the German sub-machine guns opened up. I flung myself to the ground and saw Keany’s chest neatly stitched with a row of bullets. He was flung backwards without making a sound, at least no sound which could be heard above the noise of gunfire.
Four other Partisans had been cut down by the initial burst from another sub-machine gun to our right. The rest of us hurled ourselves full length on to our stomachs as the bullets whistled inches overhead.
When Keany was hit I felt the draught from at least three rounds as they zipped past my right ear. At this point all that tedious discipline came into action as army training tool over from sheer blind terror and panic. Everything that happened next did so without any conscious pause for thought or consideration. First I loosed off several rounds from my Marlin in the general direction of the enemy guns. I did not expect to hit anybody, but I knew instinctively that a soldier under fire does not aim as accurately as a man whose life is in no danger.
The Calabrian, Tony, and another Partisan named Gino on my left followed my example and we sent a hail of bullets into the hillside below us. Then I motioned for the Calabrian to fire a burst while I scampered round on my hands and knees to get behind him. I fired a burst and he crawled at top speed to the other side of Tony. Then the Calabrian gave covering fire while Tony dashed to the far side of Gino.
In this way, by keeping the Germans’ heads down and running like hell, we retreated off the hill. We were reminded to watch our right flank by the sight of the bodies of our lifeless comrades who had been taken in the first burst of fire.
As we fell back, the German bullets were getting higher over our heads, so we judged they were taking more time to move up to the crest of the hill than we were taking to scamper away from it. Whether it was our fear or our geographical advantage which benefited us most was hard to tell, but as we escaped from the immediate danger, we ran into more trouble from an attack on our left flank. Germans with sub-machine guns were hiding behind trees as we ran down the slope. They were 200 yards away but well within firing
range.Tony was the first to draw their fire as he ran around Gino. The earth at his feet seemed to leap into life as bullets ripped into it. Immediately, our attention turned from the threat ahead of us and to our right flank to the left side as we pulled back. For a few agonising moments we were pinned down. We knew it was impossible to stay flat on our faces behind what little cover was available. In a few more seconds the Germans ahead of us would have reached the top of the ridge. Then they could pour bullets into us from the other direction.
In the cowboy movies I had watched as a child, this was the time when the 7th Cavalry arrived on the scene with bugles blaring and sabres flashing. On this occasion it was Renato who came to the rescue without any fanfare of trumpets, just his usual calm efficiency.
Although we were pinned down, we could see where our problem lay. A platoon of German soldiers with sub-machine guns and rifles were in a small copse on our left flank 200 yards away. They were firing from behind the cover of the trees.
Renato and his men had got across to the shelter of some trees on our hill a minute or two before us, running at full pelt as soon as the first shots were fired. They had either reached cover before the Germans were in position, or they had run past the danger point with unexpected speed. In either event they were now our saviours as they poured a hail of withering fire into the trees where the Germans were hiding ... ’
The next day they returned to the scene of the ambush:
‘I found Keany lying as I had last seen him on his back. A neat row of six bullet holes had been stitched diagonally across his chest. We checked for booby traps on Keany and the other Partisans, but they were all clear. However, the Germans had emptied their pockets of any money or valuables, and taken their weapons. I knew Keany had been carrying £2,500 worth of Italian lira – a small fortune in those days – in his back pack. This was to pay for food, ammunition, petrol and information. But the money and the hand generator he had been toting for my radio batteries were missing.
Additionally, the one-time pads containing my code, and the quartz crystals with set wavelengths, had been seen by the enemy, but they had not been removed from his back pack and the chances were that the Germans had failed to appreciate their significance in the search for tangible loot. Nevertheless, I was later told to change both my code and my wavelengths because our situation could have been compromised if the Germans had copied the information.
Seeing Keany and the four Partisans lying there dead on that hillside had an emotionally numbing effect upon me. In the past 24 hours I had become something of a fatalist. Tears do not come easily to me, and I shed none for the courageous Captain, even though I sadly mourned his passing. Whether the British stiff upper lip is a natural inherent phenomenon, or whether we are trained from birth to keep up that image, I do not know. I can only confess that my sorrow at my friend’s death was mingled with selfish thanks that I was not lying there in his place. In that situation our cynical thoughts were on the lines: ‘Here’s to the next man who dies. Let’s hope it isn’t me.’
My Partisan colleagues seemed to feel the same about their fallen comrades. We all knew that death was lurking just around the corner for any of us. When it came, so suddenly, it was a shock to remind us of the peril we were facing constantly ... ’
Following Keany’s death, Pickering joined up with Major Hope’s mission, sharing the duties of radio operator with Corporal Millard and, when not attending to such duties, he fought alongside the partisans, among whom he became known as Inglese Billy or il biondino. And with supply drops now being made on a regular basis, the partisans were well equipped to continually harass the German and Italian Republican troops - thus a flurry of ambushes and attacks on large targets such as railway stations, one such operation leading to Major Hope’s death. By April, Pickering noted, the partisans were a force unto themselves, declining to accept a British directive about the liberation of cities, and he was present, under highly dangerous circumstances, at the liberation of Turin - ‘rifles and machine guns were rattling as fierce street fighting took place and bodies were lying around.’
Allied forces reached Turin a day or so later, thereby bringing Pickering’s gallant mission to an end. He was awarded the M.M. and, on New Year’s Eve, met a young signorina, Rossana Reboli, at a dance held in the Sergeant’s Mess in Florence. They were married in Cheadle in 1947 after he had been demobilised.
Post-war Pickering retained his links with military life by way of a commission in the Army Cadet Force, in which capacity he served for many years and attained the rank of Major. Otherwise he ran a series of grocery businesses in the Manchester area and became an Area Manager for Oxfam until his retirement in 1988, following which he found time to publish his wartime memoir and represent the Special Forces Club at the unveiling of a memorial to captain Keany at Cinaglio. In November 2006, Pickering returned once more to Italy and was made an honorary citizen of Cisterna d’Asti, and the Municipal Council made arrangements to have is memoir The Bandits of Cisterna published in Italian.
www.dnw.co.uk
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