In Milan the organisation had at its disposal a number of CONTACTS who would offer accommodation to escapers and their guides when it was necessary for them to wait for others to join them in order to make up a party, or when a temporary postponement of the trip was necessary. Generally speaking, if there were no problems, the waiting time was limited to a few hours. In addition, the organisation had access to food, clothing and other necessary equipment and materials.

 

THE GROUPS
The person in charge of organising the transfers, based on the information in his possession,

 - directed the escapers towards the border crossings in groups of three to ten per expedition with two guides (in the early days, until the end of October 1943 larger groups were possible)

- assigned guides

- studied timetables and means of transport

- provided money and other requisites.

 

In the period of major traffic (November 1943) three or more groups a day left for the border.  In order to faciliate this transfer The Service was involved in:

 - fundraising

 - the purchase and storage of clothing, shoes, medicines, weapons and food

 - procuring of means of transport

 - issuing of false documents for illegal circulation and obtaining food

 - preparing the forms (formulari) to be filled by escapers as documentation of the assistance received;

- Financing and distribution of these means to other centres.

 

FUNDS

The funds were mostly assigned by the CLNAI (Liberation Committee for Northern Italy) from Milan, and only to a small extent were they collected directly from private individuals. The remittance of the funds took place weekly with sums commensurate with the availability of the CLN itself and according to requirements. A small remittance of funds was made by the Allies in early 1944 through an agent of 'A' Force and another more important one (L. 1,900,000 in gold coins) towards the end of 1944 through the Swiss; this last sum was almost entirely lost with the arrest and shooting of Dario Tarantino, the head of the Service at that time.

 

EQUIPMENT AND FOOD

The most important purchases of material were therefore made with evacuation in mind and consisted mainly of heavy footwear, (about 800 pairs of boots), coats (about nine hundred) and food to be consumed during the journey. These materials were handed over partly to the border centres and partly to the collection centres; whenever possible, the shoes and coats were returned by the escapers at the end of their journey to the border and brought back to the collection centres. The food was mainly sent to border centres where there were fewer opportunities of obtaining supplies locally. For the collection and conservation of the aforementioned materials and any other purchased material (clothing, medicines, tobaccos, comfort products, etc.) some warehouses were set up in Milan. These materials were supplemented to varying degrees by local supplies.

 

TRANSPORT

As for the means of transport, numerous bicycles were purchased, mostly used for journeys between the neighbouring centres and Milan, while the vehicles and other means of transport were hired from time to time; two boats were purchased for a ferry service on Lake Como.

 

FALSE DOCUMENTS

A series of personal identity documents were issued to the Service's agents and associates and also to the escapers, including: identity cards showing residence in other local authority areas

discharge papers  and other military documents

Italian and German circulation permits and passes

Tessere - documents required to obtain food rations. The updating of all these documents, given the variation of the provisions and the discovery of their provenance following arrests and searches, required continuous and accurate work.

 

FORMULARI

The forms (formulari plural, formulario singular) for the documentation of the crossings into Switzerland were printed in Italian, English and Serbo-Croat and distributed in numbered blocks to the various centres. Despite the inevitable losses and perplexity produced by the details given in some, over a thousand of them, compiled by the escapers, have been preserved. The list of escapers contained in this website has been compiled from over six hundred of these forms, held in the INSMLI archive in Milan, and from lists of escapers compled by their guides.