Page 234 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

THE SECRET WAR ON THE ITALIAN FRONT IN WWI (1915 – 1918)

Beta cipher, for ‘beta’ inserted as a separation marking between preamble and address, address,
and text of the dispatches, etc .
3

relaTIons wITh The allIes
On 3 February 1917, “Colonel Cartier, Head of French RT Section, is welcomed by the Head
of the Section R and is put in contact with the Head of the radiotelegraphic unit, having a long
discussion with him”. The next day “Colonel Cartier had a second meeting with Captain Sacco
and left Rome on the same day” .
4
These rare pieces of news shown in the Logs of Section R undoubtedly marked the beginning of
a renewed collaboration between the analysts of the Italian and French armies but deserve some
comments. Colonel Françoise Cartier, or more precisely de Cartier, was Head of the ‘Section du
Chiffre’ of the ‘Deuxième Bureau’, the Intelligence Service of the French Army General Staff.
His unit, operating since several years before the war, had already broken numerous Germans
ciphers on the western front . The French Colonel had been one of Sacco’s counterparts during
5
the mission to Paris in July 1915 and on that occasion, the search for support played by the Italian
Captain - at a particularly critical time due to limited Italian cryptologic skills - had failed also
because of the scarce generosity of Allies.
The situation at the beginning of 1917 seemed completely different. Now the head of the famous
crypto analysists from beyond the Alps, aware of the successes achieved by Sacco including those
to be discussed shortly, visits him in Rome for a couple of days. The information exchanged during
the Cartier visit is unknown, but a few days after the meeting, Sacco sent a report titled Notizie sul
R.T. francese (News about the French radiotelegraphy) to the Radiotelegraphic Institute in Rome,
as well as, of course, to the Chief Inspector of SMT .
6
Françoise Cartier carried out another mission to Italy between the end of October and the beginning
of November 1917, to visit the French expeditionary corps arrived in the Italian rear immediately
after the events in Caporetto. According to the memoirs of the French Colonel, on that occasion,
he met Bardeloni and later Sacco in an undefined location of the war zone. The movements of
the last Italian Officer, as recorded in Section R logs, do not seem to confirm that circumstance .
7
In mid-April, also the British Head of the Radiotelegraphic Service in Malta visited Sacco in his
office in Via Nazionale.

3 Section R Logs, 1° December 1916, and 8 March 1917, AUSSME, B1, 101S, Vol. 251c and 267c. Intelligence Service,
Section R, Norme per la trasmissione telegrafica col filo dei r.t.g. nemici intercettati, (Rules for wire telegraphic transmission
of enemy intecepted radio telegrams), 1 gennaio 1917.
4 Ibidem.
5 Colonel Cartier had unofficially managed the position since 1906, and officially since July 1912. (Gérard Arboit, L’émergence
d’une cryptographie militaire en France, Centre Française de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris, Note Historique no.
15).
6 Section R Logs, 8 February 1917, AUSSME, fund B1, 101S, Vol.261c. The Military Radiotelegraphic Institute “created by
the law of 13 July 1911, provided for coordination between the radiotelegraphic services of the Navy and the Army” and was
a research and advanced training centre (AUSSME, Series F4, Env.12).
7 Information about the second mission in Italy is contained in F. Cartier, Souvenirs du General Cartier, Une visite au Grand
Quartier Général italien, La Revue des Transmissions, no. 87, 1959, p.36 - 39. These memories, collected by Cartier’s
family after his death, contain many errors and inaccuracies, such as the visit to Udine when the Austro-Germans had already
occupied it. One cannot exclude that the meeting with Sacco may have taken place in Rome, where the French colonel went
after visiting the front lines.

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