MUSSOLINI'S RESCUE

Chronicle (Levin), 4 August 1947, Page 5

MUSSOLINI'S RESCUE

(N.Z.P.A.-

-Reuter,

Story By 58 Paratrooper Waiting Trial

Copyright)

Received Monday, 11.25 a.m. LONDON, Aug. 3. Qolonel Otto Skorzeny, the 77inch tall SS paratrooper who rescued Mussolini from the Italians ;n the Appenines in 1943, will face ;rial an August 18, with eight othgr BS men, charged with using American ijfiiforms in the Ardennes offehsive in December, 1944, in an attempt to spread confusion behind the Allied lines, says the Associated Press' Dauchau correspondent. Skorzeny, in his Dachau prison cell, has written a 42-page account of his rescue of Mussolini, in which he admits that he also snatched Hungary's Admiral Horthy from the advancing Russians. Skorzeny said: "Hitler informed me that he was finnly resolved not i.0 leave his. friend Mussolini in the lureh." He added that Hitler was not moved by political reasons, Skorzeny said he scoured Italy for four months and when he heard in September, 1943, that Mussolini might be held in the Appenines he invented the story that he wanted to send a love letter to a girl friend in the Appenines, and begged an Italian merchant to help hijn. The merchant informed Skorzeny that the valley was entirely cordoned off and the resort hotel had evicted its personnel, The merchant later, still anxious to deliver the love letter of which Skorzeny spoke, reported a rumour that secrecy had somlething to do with Mussolini. Skorzeny said he prepared twelve gliders and took off on September 12, 1943, The first two crashed into mountainsides. Skorzeny landed 50 feet from the hotel. "The Italian guards, including two generals, were too surprised to act. The hotel was surrounded without resistance." Skorzeny used a Storch plane on an improvised field because Marshal Badoglio's troops were too near for an escape by road. "The plane simply would not take off and we dived over the brink of a cliff. The pilot, after a drop pf perhaps 1000 feet, gained control and the plane then flew over the valley just above ground."