Arthur Young (police Officer) - Wartime Service

Wartime Service

The war overtook Young's career again in February 1943 when he was one of a number of chief constables seconded to the War Office Civil Affairs Training Centre and attended the first course for senior officers. Before the course was finished, he was transferred to the instructing staff and in June 1943 he was appointed the first commandant of the new Police Civil Affairs Training Centre at Peel House in London (gazetted with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel) and charged with the task of setting up the training school for policemen and provost officers who would maintain law and order in Axis territory as it was liberated by advancing Allied forces. Barely was that centre up and running and its first students through their course when Young found himself a Colonel and moved from the classroom in July 1943 to be Senior British Police Officer in the Mediterranean Theatre, stationed in North Africa awaiting the invasion of Sicily.

Ashore on day two of the invasion, Young became Director of Public Safety in the first functioning Allied military government - the Allied Control Commission for Italy; in December 1943 he was given the additional role of Director of Security, responsible directly to the Commander-in-Chief for hunting saboteurs and enemy agents as well as the removal of fascist officials from public offices. In Italy, Young now commanded not just British officers but the 120,000 men of the entire Italian police and had responsibility for all Italian prisons, fire brigades and civil defence. The models Young developed in Italy were later applied across Allied occupied Europe in 1944–1945, but his proudest achievement was the restoration and reorganisation of the Carabinieri, with whom he maintained an association for the rest of his life. He also fell in love with Italy, returning regularly and frequently holidaying in Positano and visiting his wartime friend Colonel Alfredo "Freddy" Zanchino of the Carabinieri.