Grandmother honoured with three war medals after a 70-year wait Rossana Banti was a teenager when she was tasked with helping the Resistance throughout occupied Europe Senora Banti with her beau, an Italian named Giuliano Mattioli, who went by the British alias of Julian Matthews Photo: John Pepper By Nick Squires, Rome 10:05PM GMT 01 Jan 2015 Seventy years after she ran British secret agents behind enemy lines, a former member of the Special Operations Executive is finally to have her war service recognised by the United Kingdom. Rossana Banti, who is about to turn 90, was a teenager when she joined the British secret organisation, which was tasked with helping the Resistance throughout occupied Europe. At a ceremony at the British embassy in Rome, Mrs Banti will be presented with three medals to which she is entitled - the Italy Star, the Victory Medal and the 1939-1945 Medal. “It’s really very unexpected,” she told The Daily Telegraph from her home in Pitigliano, a medieval village clustered on top of a cliff in the Tuscan countryside. “I never thought this would happen. People of my generation just got on with what we had to do. We never really talked about it after the war - even my children and grandchildren know very little of what I did. Related Articles Churchill was begged to spy on 'Russian menace' 28 Aug 2008 Ghostwriting isn't as easy as it looks 16 Sep 2013 MI5 suspected Churchill's cousin 28 Nov 2002 French Resistance leader Raymond Aubrac dies aged 97 11 Apr 2012 “I’m deeply honoured but a bit embarrassed too. I’m an old girl now and it all happened 70 years ago, for God’s sake.” Mrs Banti had no idea that she was eligible for the medals until a chance encounter at Easter with a retired British brigadier, Bill Bewley. He was staying in an apartment owned by Mrs Banti’s son-in-law, John Pepper, a photographer and theatre director who was brought up in Italy and lives in Palermo, Sicily. The pair got chatting and Mrs Banti mentioned to the brigadier that as a school girl in Rome under the German occupation she had helped the resistance, distributing anti-fascist literature and even helping to transport dynamite around the city. Rossana Banti, 1945 (John Pepper) Hearing by chance of a clandestine British organisation that was looking for recruits, she made contact with British officers and joined up, first with the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and then with No 1 Special Forces Unit SOE, where she served as a radio operator. Brig Bewley did some research in British military archives and discovered that Mrs Banti was entitled to three war medals which she had never received. She served with the cloak-and-dagger unit from Sept 1943 until the end of the war, maintaining contact with British agents working with Italian partisans behind German lines. At the time, southern Italy and Rome had been liberated by the Allies but the north of the country was still occupied by German and Italian fascist troops, who fought bitter rear-guard actions all the way up the peninsula. “We were dealing with secret agents who were parachuted into the north to make contact with Italian partisans. We kept them supplied with weapons, food, clothing, that sort of thing,” she said. She also helped brief and prepare agents, including anti-fascist Italians and Yugoslavs, who were kept at a secret base in the countryside prior to being parachuted behind the lines. “It was all top security. They weren’t told until 24 hours before that they were going to be dropped by parachute. It all happened at night - the partisans would light up the drop zone. “It was the most incredible human experience I’ve had in my life. I was only 19 but I just went with my heart. They saw me as a sister, a mother. “Sometimes they cried - they had no idea where they were going or what they would find when they got there. It was a very difficult psychological situation. I helped them get into their parachutes and off they went.” Many did not return. A Yugoslav agent whom Mrs Banti knew was caught and shot by the Germans. Senora Banti with Major Williams Initially based near Bari in the southern region of Puglia, and then in Siena in Tuscany, Mrs Banti also trained as a parachutist and hoped to be sent behind enemy lines with the other agents. “But then the war ended. I was very disappointed.” She ended up marrying one of the secret agents - an Italian named Giuliano Mattioli, who went by the British alias of Julian Matthews. They married just days before he was sent off on a mission, parachuting behind enemy lines near Bergamo in northern Italy in early 1945. He fought with the partisans and helped liberate the city from German control. After they were both demobilised at the end of the war, they had two children. Rosanna Banti aged 89 ( John Pepper) Mrs Banti, who turns 90 on Jan 8, established a career as a television producer, working for RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, as well as for the BBC in London. “This brave woman has been unaware of the impact of her wartime service and is finally being given just recognition 70 years later,” the British embassy in Rome said in a statement. The medals will be presented by Christopher Prentice, the British ambassador. It will be a long overdue recognition of her contribution to one of Britain’s most fabled clandestine intelligence organisations. “From humble beginnings, SOE became active in every theatre of war, dispatching thousands of trained operatives to harass enemy garrisons, attack important installations, and encourage, arm and fight beside movements as diverse as communist partisans in the Balkans and headhunting tribes in Borneo,” historian Roderick Bailey wrote in Target:Italy, a recent book on the secret network’s activities against Mussolini’s fascist regime. Mr Pepper said his mother-in-law had initially been reluctant to receive the medals. “We had to apply for them in secret. We only told her 10 days ago because we knew that at such short notice she couldn’t back out. She has been very demure about it all but I think she’s warming up to the idea,” he said from Sicily. www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11320880/Grandmother-honoured-with-three-war-medals-after-a-70-year-wait.html
