Churchill's Hellraisers

June 15, 2020
Military historian Lewis (Smoky the Brave) delivers an action-packed account of special operations missions against Nazi forces in Northern Italy during WWII. By the winter of 1944, Lewis writes, the Allied invasion of Italy had been held up at the Gothic Line, “a string of formidable defenses” running from coast to coast across the Apennine mountains. Lewis follows a guerilla force of British soldiers and Italian partisans tasked with sabotaging German supply lines and communications. In an early mission, British SOE agent Michael “Wild Man” Lees, under the command of Maj. Neville Lawrence Darewski, smuggled two senior members of the Italian resistance and a group of escaped POWs across the Gothic Line into Allied territory. After Darewski’s death in a subsequent German raid, Lees parachuted back into Northern Italy and led SOE missions to “foment havoc” at the point where the Allies planned to break through the enemy lines. Eventually, he and Maj. Roy Farran led a group of British special forces soldiers, Italian irregulars, and Soviet POWs in a decisive attack against the regional headquarters of Germany’s 14th Army. Lewis wades deep into operational details, though he sets a brisk pace and laces the narrative with colorful character sketches. Battleground history buffs will be entertained.

June 15, 2020
Fireworks in Nazi-occupied Italy during the final year of World War II. Prolific filmmaker and historian Lewis has written many accounts of commando derring-do across various historical eras. His current effort begins in the fall of 1944, one year into the Italian campaign. After months of slow, bitter advance up the peninsula, the Allies were stalled at the Gothic line, a heavily fortified position north of Florence. On the bright side, resistance forces in North Italy were perhaps the most effective in Europe. Fortified by air drops of supplies, arms, and members of Britain's elite Special Air Service, they became a major thorn in the side of the German occupation. Lewis builds his story around Roy Farran and Michael Lees, two veteran British officers, describing their dramatic, if not always successful exploits in the years before they came together for Operation Tombola. Ordinarily resistance units confined themselves to acts of sabotage and ambush, but on this occasion, they received approval to target a corps headquarters housed in two well-defended villas. Lewis delivers his usual vivid account of the planning and fierce March 1945 attack, which included 50 British soldiers dropped in for the occasion and several hundred partisans including a company of Russian escaped POWs. It was largely successful, destroying the villas and causing substantial German casualties at the expense of two British dead. The operation has been called "possibly the most significant single action involving partisans in the entire history of the partisan movement." Readers may wince at some of the author's purple novelization in which historical characters talk, think, and reveal their emotions, but they will forgive him because he has turned up a little-known behind-the-lines spectacular led by two heroic British officers. Successful niche military history for a popular audience.

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