The outstanding Second World War M.M. group of seven awarded to Sergeant W. A. “Bill” Pickering, an S.O.E. wireless operator who was parachuted into Northern Italy in February 1945, where, notwithstanding the death of two of his officers, he saw out the War with the partisans, an epic chapter of clandestine warfare recounted in his compelling wartime memoir The Bandits of Cisterna - given that he lived throughout under the threat of immediate execution if captured, it is not altogether surprising that he was originally recommended for an immediate D.C.M.

Military Medal, G.VI.R. (3973906 Sjt. W. A. Pickering, R. Signals); 1939-45 Star: Africa Star, clasp, 1st Army; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Cadet Forces Long Service, E.II.R. (Capt. W. A. Pickering, M.M.), mounted court-style as worn, contact marks and somewhat polished, otherwise generally very fine (7) £20000-30000

Awards to S.O.E. personnel are exceedingly rare on the market, far more so than those to members of the wartime S.A.S.

M.M. London Gazette 4 October 1945. The original recommendation - for an immediate D.C.M. states:

‘Sergrant Pickering was parachuted into the South Piedmont on 4 February 1945, in company with the senior British representative to C.L.N.A.I. After about ten days in the Langhe area, during which he was continually chased by German troops, Sergeant Pickering, in company with one of the officers of this mission, set out in an attempt to reach the neighbourhood of Brusasco. They moved constantly through enemy infested country until they reached the area of Montafia, when they were again subjected to an enemy drive. On 8 March 1945, they were forced to hide with a small partisan party on a hill in this area. Here they were attacked by the enemy in force and in the course of the action the officer with Sergeant Pickering was killed, together with four partisans, and the rest of the party was forced to withdraw. Sergeant Pickering risked his own life by continuing to carry the W.T. set which he succeeded in saving from falling into enemy hands. Sergeant Pickering remained in the area until he could recover the body of his officer and arrange for its burial. After that he made his way back through enemy infested country to join up with another British mission at Cisterna.

Sergeant Pickering remained with this mission until 17 April 1945, when the O.C. was accidentally killed and he took over command of the mission until the arrival of an officer from a neighbouring mission.

Throughout his period in the Field this N.C.O. has shown outstanding qualities of courage, determination, and resourcefulness. He has covered many miles in enemy infested territory and during two periods after his two officers were killed, he continued to carry out the mission’s activities under circumstances of great danger with exceptional efficiency. In view of his outstanding performance, he is most strongly recommended for the award of the immediate D.C.M.’

William Arthur “Bill” Pickering, who was born in Oldham in September 1923 and educated at Manchester Central High School, was working as a clerk at the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. Gaining an appointment in the Royal Engineers’ Cadet Corps in Manchester, and subsequently enlisting in the Local Defence Corps, he was still underage for military service by the summer of 1940, but, by means of forging his birth certificate, he managed to enlist in the Welch Regiment just after his 17th birthday.

Subsequently transferring to the Royal Corps of Signals, he qualified as a wireless operator and volunteered for ‘especially dangerous duties’, an ambition fulfilled when he was ordered to attend a parachute course at Chesterfield in 1942, followed by an S.O.E. training course at Fawley Court at Henley-on-Thames.

With S.O.E. in Sicily, Salerno and Anzio

Ordered to the Middle East at the year’s end, he served in Algeria, where he transmitted radio messages from our agents in southern France, Italy, Corsica and Sardinia, and thence in Algiers itself, where he helped establish the main radio relay station back to London and met Major Malcolm Munthe, an S.O.E. agent who recruited Pickering for a special mission to Sicily in the summer of 1943 - ‘our group was well supplied with jeeps, communications equipment and personal weapons. I was assigned to work with Captains Charles Mackintosh and Gilbert Randall as their radio operator. This time it was my job to put messages into code, so for the first time in the war I actually knew what was going on.’

Moving on to Syracuse and then to Palermo, his sojourn in Sicily ended with the Salerno landings, when he was embarked for mainland Italy. Then in January 1944 he was taken by M.T.B. to the island of Ischia, ‘the main jumping-off point for running agents to and from the west coast of Italy’, and where he taught agents in explosives and radio transmission, prior to joining the opening wave of the Anzio landings in a small team of S.O.E. men headed-up by his old boss, Major Munthe, and Captain Malcolm Gubbins, the son of the Head of S.O.E.:

‘Artillery and mortar shells were falling all over the place as we drove along the occasionally cratered road. I could see no pattern to the shelling. The enemy seemed to be sending their stuff in our general direction and the Allies were doing the same back. Munthe overshot our front line and headed for a farmhouse in No-Man’s-Land. Mulvey followed. We dashed indoors and I reported our position from the front room. By now the Germans seemed to be concentrating their fire on us, but this failed to impress Munthe. He strolled round the farmyard wearing his Gordon Highlanders kilt and seemed completely oblivious to the shells which were raining down all around him. Captain Gubbins, in the predominantly red tartan on the Cameron Highlanders, was equally unmoved by the mayhem.

Perhaps it is the public school upbringing which prevents an English gentleman from flinching in the face of the enemy. But I did not share their enthusiasm for the job in hand when Munthe urged, ‘Come along now, Pickering. There must be a frying pan lying around somewhere.’

I could not believe this was happening to me. We were risking life and limb for a cooked breakfast. Munthe did not appear to recognize the danger. As we wandered in and out of the farm buildings, he pointed to a group of Allied soldiers crawling on their bellies along the trench lines behind us. ‘What on earth are they doing?’ he asked with genuine incredulity.

In my younger days I might have been inclined to reply, ‘Acting sensibly, unlike us,’ but I held my tongue. On this occasion fortune favoured the brave and we led charmed lives. But we never did find that elusive frying pan.’

The gallant Munthe was seriously wounded a few days later, and Gubbins was killed in action, the sad duty of signalling Sir Colin Gubbins about his son’s death falling to Pickering. Indeed the latter was relieved to be pulled out of the carnage at Anzio, but, a few months later, having attended the battle training school at San Vito, near Monopoli, he was ‘like a coiled spring again’: this was fortuitous, for on a crisp moonlit morning on 4 February 1945, he was parachuted with four other S.O.E. operatives into the Piedmont province of Italy, 100 miles behind enemy lines.

Operation “Chariton” and the Bandits of Cisterna

The mission’s main duty was to liaise with elements of the Liberation Committee for Occupied Italy and to arrange for supply drops and training for the partisans, by any standards a menacing looking bunch:

‘Some wore old Italian army jackets, others wore Nazi trousers. Some combined both. They might have been to a end of war jumble sale. With their baggy trousers, long boots and ammunition belts. plus an assortment of machine-guns, rifles and pistols, they gave the appearance of a chorus of brigands from some Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Their main distinguishing feature was their blue neckerchiefs, tied rakishly at the front with a large knot at the throat, but falling to a point at the back of their necks like overgrown boy scouts. yet their disorderly outfits were in contrast to their obedience and discipline ... ’

Pickering aside, the team comprised Lieutenant-Colonel Max Salvadori, D.S.O., M.C., his aide Captain John Keany, Major Adrian Hope, and his wireless operator, Corporal “Busty” Millard; the sixth man be to parachuted that night, Giovanni, was on a separate mission for the O.S.S. And of this cast of colourful and undoubtedly gallant characters, Pickering was to pass most of his time in the company of John Keany, who ‘was courageous to a fault, wanting to fight and engage the enemy at every opportunity. He had a terrific sense of humour and was the life and soul of our party.’

As for subsequent events, so many of them of the hair-raising kind, it would be impossible to do justice to them within the confines of the current project, but the following extracts from The Bandits of Cisterna offer a glimpse of the gallant Pickering at work:

Arrival by parachute:

‘The red light came on and the six of us lined up. We were all wearing the Irvine Statachutes which opened automatically (or so we were assured).

Hope, Keany, Giovanni, Millard and Salvadori went ahead of me at one-second intervals, giving me longer that them to reflect on my stupidity for finding myself in such a situation. I stepped out into space and felt the icy blast of the cold night air on my exposed face.

Before I had time to think further my parachute had opened and I felt the welcoming tug of the harness on my shoulders. That slight pain produced a surge of relief as I realised I was not about to become a ‘Roman Candle’.

As I floated down I had thirty seconds to consider my situation. I was about to land 100 miles behind enemy lines and the Germans had already lit a fire to welcome us. I looked up longingly at the disappearing Dakota ... ’

Reception:

‘I was impressed by the speed and efficiency with which we were spirited into the surrounding countryside. Captain Keany and I were hidden by a farmer and his wife just outside the village of Monesiglio and only about 400 metres from the occupying German troops ... We slept in the house overnight and everyday just as dawn was breaking we would move into a small wooden shed about 200 metres above the house, where the farmer’s wife would cover us with dry leaves. She would come up twice a day to bring us food, almost in sight of the German garrison, taking terrible risks to make sure that we were well looked after.

Every evening after dark we would we would come down to the house and operate the radio from the attic, transmitting messages to our base in southern Italy. Many of the neighbours had their houses burnt down and their menfolk killed for such acts, but this did not deter our hosts in any way from helping us.

Meanwhile, Max Salvadori had left to make his way to Milan. The German troops seemed to be everywhere and were carrying out a rastrellamento [’a raking in’ operation]. After lying low for a few nights we commenced our journey to Cisterna d’Asti ... ’

An intercepted radio transmission:

‘Eventually after a two-hour journey, we arrived at a small farm building which was to be our transmission site. One of our guides went 400 yards along the dirt track beyond the farmhouse. The other waited 400 yards short of our destination. There was no sign of the farmer, who had vacated the premises after the leading Partisan had a word in his ear.

As usual I jammed a stone into a loop at the end of 50 feet of copper wire. This was my radio aerial. Then I threw it as high as I could up a tree to maximise the signal strength. The wire was connected to my radio inside the farmhouse and I was in business. I told Bari I was safe and well with Keany and we were ready for any messages. After I had taken down coded gobbledegook for 15 minutes, I handed the pad for Keany to translate into sense. Meanwhile I sent his coded messages back to Bari.

We had been transmitting for another 15 minutes when the balloon went up. Our excitable partisan friend came running up the road like an Olympic sprinter with his backside on fire. I did not need to be a keen student of the Italian language and its colourful dialects to get the drift of what he was gabbling at 300 words a minute. He had spotted a German direction-finding vehicle and it was heading straight for us. It would be arriving any minute.

Keany grabbed the batteries. I sent another QUG signal, disconnected the aerial and put the set in my back-pack. We dashed outside, but when I tried to pull the aerial out of the tree, it snagged on one of the branches. The harder I pulled the firmer it became stuck. By now I was sweating, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. Our guide had gone ahead to tell his comrade to run for it. The courageous Keany stayed to cover me. Every second seemed like an eternity and I could feel a wave of mild hysteria starting to grip me. But I managed to pull myself together with the most supreme mental effort. To leave the tell-tale wire behind would spell almost certain death for the farmer and his family. It would also show the Germans they were hot on our heels. So, after regaining my shattered nerves and patching them together, I became cool and detached again for a few vital seconds. I tried to flick the wire upwards away from the branch which was snagging. At the second attempt the wire freed itself and fell at my feet. I grabbed it and ran round the side of the farmhouse just as the German lorry’s spluttering exhaust came into earshot.

Keany and I darted into an orchard as I continued to stuff the awkward wire into the pocket of my battledress. We just reached the cover of the first trees in time to look back and see an armoured car halt outside the farm building 100 yards away. A swivel machine gun was mounted on top, attended by a soldier who was scouring the area, using the gun like a searchlight to seek out his quarry. A second armoured car arrived along with the radio direction-finding lorry.

We waited until they were occupied with a search of the building before we made our way through the orchard, hopping from tree to tree. One of our Partisan friends found himself sharing our hide and seek ordeal. I neither knew nor cared at this stage of the operation what had become of our other Italian comrade. I simply assumed that he was making his own arrangements to get the hell out of there.

Each time the German machine gunner on the armoured car turned away from us, we set off deeper into the orchard. Little by little we made our way out of sight. Just before we disappeared from view I saw the Germans questioning the farmer, who had returned to the scene to face the music. He was looking suitably perplexed by the Germans’ interrogation and I hoped that we had not compromised him in any way. I felt sure that as long as he kept his nerve there was nothing to fear. Easier said than done, perhaps ... ’

An enemy ambush:

‘Renato left Keany to tell his men what had been decided and I walked over to my comrade to express my fears.

‘I don’t like this one little bit,’ I said with as much urgency as I could muster. ‘It’s those Germans down there. I haven’t seen sight or sound of them since they went into that building.’

‘You worry too much,’ said the ever-confident Keany. ‘They don’t enjoy scouring the countryside looking for Partisans and wondering when they might get ambushed. They’re probably just skiving off and keeping out of harm’s way for a while.’

I remained unconvinced. ‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ I insisted. ‘During the past two hours I’ve seen about sixty Germans go in that building in threes and fours. I haven’t seen one come out. If you ask me they’ve spotted us and they’re creeping up to attack us.’


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.

Sold with a quantity of of original photographs (some 30 images), from wartime vintage to coverage of the recipient’s post-war trips to Italy; his membership card of the Association Mondiale des Anciens Combattants Parachutistes; a video of a presentation made by Pickering on his S.O.E. exploits in April 2002, and three cassette recordings of his interviews with the Department of Sound Records at the Imperial War Museum; a quantity of newspaper cuttings, letters, and other printed matter, and copies of the recipient’s memoirs, The Bandits of Cisterna, English and Italian editions, together with S.O.E. in Italy 1940-45, by Malcolm Tudor, and Forgotten Voices of the Secret War, by Roderick Bailey, these last two with frequent mention of the recipient