AC/DC singer Brian Johnson has revealed his mum was a Second World War resistance fighter who smuggled British pilots out of Italy.
The 73-year-old rocker’s father Alan was an English soldier who fought the Nazis in Italy, where he met his mother Esther, who was born near Rome.
Esther told Brian how she and other women in the family had a hide-away at their farm where they smuggled in downed Allied fighter pilots under the noses of her three brothers – who were members of the elite blackshirt Arditi corps.
He said: “Her brothers were Fascisti, blackshirts, they thought Mussolini was the greatest thing – a lot of people did – they had the little pistols and fancy uniforms.
“My mum worked as a stenographer in the German headquarters and she would get any little bits of information and pass them on to the underground.
“At her farm, underneath the chicken run, unbeknownst to her brothers, there was a hideout where the underground would bring all the downed pilots and hide them there for a couple of days and then from there they would march them to Switzerland to get out of the country.
“I said to my mum, ‘Jeez, you guys were busy.’ She went, ‘It was fun, very nice pilots. English men, very polite’.”
Three years ago the Back in Black singer learned from cousins that his mother’s grandfather Achille was murdered by one of his own sons.
He told the We Have Ways Of Making You Talk podcast: “Achille went to America to make his fortune with olive oil, it didn’t happen.
He came back embittered and a bit of a drunk and started beating his wife Nona.
“The sons warned him and said, ‘Don’t do this again.’ One day the youngest son came in and he was doing it and he just shot him in the back of the head.”
County Durham-born Brian said some blackshirts put the son on a ship to South Africa and he died in 1972.
He added: “We’re still a very close family.”
