FILM SHEET

London, July 19, 1940

"And now set Europe ablaze." With these words, Prime Minister Winston Churchill authorized the creation of the Special Operations Executive, aimed at carrying out a series of activities prohibited by international treaty regulations. Three days later, Sir Hough Dalton, Minister of War Economics, officially established the SOE at a cabinet meeting. It was the beginning! Hundreds of special agents (men and women whose "mission life expectancy" was measured in a few weeks) were sent behind enemy lines to carry out sabotage missions (destroying roads, railways, and bridges) and provide support to local resistance groups (training guerrilla warfare, supplying weapons, explosives, and communications equipment). Hunted day and night by the Gestapo, these agents (also known as "Churchill's secret army") would continue their activity for years, from the Netherlands to Scandinavia, from France to Italy, from the former Yugoslavia to Greece.Over 850 of them would never return, most of them tortured before being killed. These events are part of the hidden history of the Second World War, having only surfaced in recent decades, when the British authorities began declassifying documents (a process that is not yet fully completed).

Rome, September 8, 1943, 7:42 PM

On the microphones of EIAR, the Prime Minister, Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio, announced the armistice signed with the Anglo-Americans. Two days later, at 4:00 PM on September 10, the Italian Navy corvette "Baionetta" docked in the port of Brindisi, and the protagonists of the shameful escape from Rome disembarked: King Victor Emmanuel III, Pietro Badoglio, several members of the Royal House, the government, and the military leadership...But with them also lands an unknown boy! For decades, no one will be able to explain that presence, nor give a name to that young man with Nordic appearance. Yet, he has just changed the course of the Second World War, completing a series of events that "if read in a novel, would be laughed at as implausible.” (Memoirs of General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces).

His name was Cecil Richard Mallaby

(said Dick)

THIS IS A TRUE STORY