Lett, Gordon

Lett, Gordon

Gordon Lett

Ernest Gordon Appleford Lett

E G A Lett

56 items. The collection concerns Major Ernest Gordon Appleford Lett, DSO (1910-1989, 50112), a British Army officer and partisan leader in Italy. He was taken prisoner after the fall of Tobruk and detained in different camps in Italy. After the September 1943 armistice, rather than re-joining Allied forces, he took to the mountains and established contacts with Resistance forces active in the Apennines between Liguria and Toscana. Lett founded and led the Battaglione Internazionale, a multinational unit that successfully engaged Black Brigades and German units. Later, when reliable lines of communication were secured, supplies were dropped by air and the Battaglione was supplemented by Special Operations Executive personnel. Gordon Lett was relieved by Major John Henderson in March 1945. After the war, Lett was awarded the DSO and received the Medaglia Argento al valor militare.

The collection consists of a selection of Gordon Lett's papers and official correspondence with key figures of the local Resistance movement. They include Colonnello Mario Fontana (‘Cossu’, or ‘Turchi’), Comandante Luciano Scotti (‘Vittorio’ or ‘Gonzaga’), Commissario Politico Anselmo Corsini ('Ambrosio', or ‘Max’) and Mario Fortelli, a lawyer acting as liaison officer with the local Allied Military Mission.

Documents consist of military assessments, notes on air drops, a ciphers book, a draft of a radio message sent via clandestine radio operators, and a request for tactical bombing. The collection contains notes on an aircraft crash, the military funeral and the subsequent burial of the aircrew. A specific subset includes correspondence, plans and reports about the construction of an improvised landing strip for Allied aircraft operating behind enemy lines.

All documents were deposited at the La Spezia City Council and then re-housed in 1972 at the Istituto spezzino per la Storia della Resistenza e dell’Età Contemporanea, where they have been preserved ever since. The selection published here has been curated by Tiziano Vernazza.