A new book by an expert on Britain's
WWII spy service hails more than 20 Italian women who worked
with the Special Operations Executive, the agency set up by
Winston Churchill to operate behind enemy lines.
Military intelligence historian Bernard O'Connor's "Churchill's
Italian Angels" is the fruit of an analysis of wartime files
recently declassified by the British government.
The youngest of the 'angels' was 21, the oldest 64; five of them
were students, three office clerks, and two housewives, but
there were also shopkeepers, teachers, seamstresses, a famous
writer, and a widow with seven children.
Among the more noted names was Veneto-born Paola Del Din, 21,
who went on to win an Italian military gold medal, who was a
full-blown SOE spy and a member of a Resistance brigade in
Friuli Venezia Giulia.
Last August she turned 100 and was feted by President Sergio
Mattarella, Premier Giorgia Meloni and King Charles III.
Another famous angel was Fausta Cialente (1898-1994), a writer,
journalists and translator, also of a famous version of Little
Women, who was active in Egypt and was recruited by the Italian
section of the SOE to set up an underground radio in Italian and
also some pro-Allies periodicals, also in the Italian language.
The other SOE operatives were; Anna Vishovitch, Maria Ciofalo,
Anna Maria Cialvi, Anna Danti, Enrica Filippina-Lara, Augusta
Langha, Olga Molinatti, Leda Santi, Maddalena Madureri, Elda
Pandini, Carla Boattini, Anna Irgher, Anna Sabbadini, Mary
Arnaldi, Ida Serafino Bastianello, Ines Pasquarelli, Elide
Galloni, Maria Rigeli, Emma Bocchi, and Francesca Carabelli.
They all professed to work for the SOE out of "a sense of
patriotism, of being an antifascist and an anti-Nazi."
photo: Del Din at her 100th birthday celebrations
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