大象传媒

A Proper Prison Camp

After some time, in the morning, we arrived at Altemura. This was an open camp out in the country with big tents, which held about twenty, ten each side when you lay down at night. There was a soil road down the centre and there were other tents on the other side. Eventually some Indians came to take over that side. I remember when they arrived, something .. made me look over to them and one of the Italians was holding up a battleaxe which one of the Indians must have .. had hidden on him! It had quite a shiny head and a short handle on it. They came in and went over the other side. So begin our first couple of months in what was supposed to be a proper prison camp.

Once more to toilets. Here they were a bit better than the ones on the ship. These consisted of a long Nissen hut, with a wall down the full length of it, about three foot high, and on each side of it, a row of holes with 2 raised footprints. So when you used the toilet, you put your feet on the footprints and squatted and were spot on, you see. In the morning, when everybody came down to the toilet the Indians had a religious belief that they had to clear their throats, and I think they started from their boots upwards, so you can imagine the noise of them all clearing their throats and spitting. This was a regular morning routine. I remember I was using the toilet once, cheek to cheek with the chief engineer and another ERA and the padre was just talking to us about the weather and other everyday things as if it was just the thing to do.

This camp happened to be just a transit camp, so eventually we were moved once again, put on a train up to Monterana. This was inland of the east coast about ten miles, opposite Rome. We arrived there, changed over to a narrow gauge railway and went inland. We came to what was the permanent camp, a very high brick building which had been built for a jam factory. Just the shell of it had been built when the war broke out and it was made into a prison camp. We were taken into this huge empty building, no heating of course, and we were given a pailasse and a load of straw and we made paillasses and then picked our own bunks. We were given one blanket. Sometime after, my feet were just about bare again, so they gave us some clothing at last. I had Italian type riding breeches, a Yugoslav jacket and a forage cap. They gave us a woollen vest and a body belt, which was just a band of cloth, which we used as a scarf to keep our necks warm. They gave us army socks, boots and a greatcoat so we felt a bit dressed at last and certainly a bit warmer than we had been.

We were counted about three times a day, first thing in the morning, midday and evening time. They seemed to be terrible mathematicians, for they seemed to make an awful job counting us over and over again. Once it rained very hard when we were standing out there and got soaked and never really dried out. I got chilblains, which were very itchy at night with the warmth of the bunk, and then during the day, when I got cold, they were very sore. But we couldn't do anything about them.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.