Photo By Lori Stewart | Col. George Smith’s S Force accompanied the U.S. Fifth Army as it liberated Rome.... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
5 JUNE 1944
On 5 June 1944, more than 1,200 members of the Security (S) Force entered Rome with combat forces of the U.S. Fifth Army. Their mission was to secure and place under guard key strategic and political targets within the city before they could be destroyed by retreating Axis forces. S Force operations in Rome proved a model for similar task forces in the larger cities of Europe.
In late 1943 and early 1944, the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula from Naples to Anzio with plans to invade and occupy Rome, the Axis capital. Rome was a particularly rich strategic and political intelligence target. However, the division, corps, and army-level intelligence sections were far too busy supporting rapidly moving combat operations to handle security issues once the city was taken. With more than twenty organizations and agencies claiming intelligence interests in Rome, security and seizure of targets within the city had to be centralized. For this purpose, Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) in Italy formed a joint American-British intelligence assault force, referred to as the “S Force.”
On 5 January 1944, Col. George S. Smith, a 44-year-old New Jerseyan known to his friends as “Budge,” established the headquarters of S Force at Caserta. A field artillerist, Smith had been working in the Army’s Military Intelligence Division in Washington since August 1941. In June 1943, while conducting a world-wide inspection of intelligence activities, he was tapped to be G-2 for the 15th Army Group under AFHQ. While the S Force fell under his G-2 section, once established at Caserta it operated under Fifth Army throughout its operations in Rome.
Upon arrival in Rome, the S Force would have responsibility for the “seizure of documents, records and archives to prevent their dissipation and destruction, the apprehension and proper disposition of enemy agents and sympathizers, and the arranging for a more detailed long-range exploitation” of targets of intelligence interest. The development of prioritized target lists was critical to ensure effective operations without redundancy. Each interested organization submitted a detailed target list to the Intelligence Objectives Sub-Section (IOSS) within AFHQ. The IOSS classified the priority of the targets, prepared target folders, and passed them down to Smith’s S Force.
Within two weeks of establishing his headquarters, Smith had laid out an initial plan of operations based on the target lists. Hard fighting in Anzio and Monte Cassino, however, delayed movement to Rome, allowing him another four months to refine the plan. On 21 May, Smith was ordered to assemble his force of 1,200 men, representing nearly twenty different Allied intelligence organizations. The force arrived at Anzio on 30 May and, four days later, began its movement to Rome alongside the tactical forces. On 5 June, at 3:20 a.m, after six months of planning and preparation, Smith opened the S Force command post on Monte Pincio. There, he concentrated organizational representatives, interpreters, a reserve force to handle newly discovered targets, and a documents section.
Four sub-task forces fanned out from the command post to seize predetermined targets in their sections of the city. Over the next ten days, they arrested 249 individuals, including 81 German deserters or prisoners of war, 45 enemy agents, and several stay-behind wireless teams transmitting information about the Allied forces. They seized 332 banks, factories, government and administrative offices, museums, churches, and Vatican properties. In one building, S Force found a trove of 250,000 documents belonging to Mussolini’s personal secretary. By 12 June, with all viable targets secured, the participating organizations took over the actual exploitation phase. Mission accomplished, the S Force was dissolved.
Based on S Force success, Smith was tapped to form similar units, renamed “T” (Target) Forces, for operations in other major cities, like Paris and Berlin. By January 1945, however, now Brig. Gen. Smith was assigned to the G-2 Section, Mediterranean Theater, U.S. Army, and others were put in command of those subsequent T Forces. [See "This Week in MI History" #55 25 August 1944]
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| Date Taken: | 06.05.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 06.05.2023 11:10 |
| Story ID: | 446222 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 223 |
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