大象传媒

I was in the 3rd Battalion of the Coldstream guards and I had been sent to Palestine and then the western dessert as war broke out.I was involved in the defence of the knightsbridge box for 18 days in May 1942 before being taken prisoner and was shipped to Italy. First of all I was sent to a hell of a camp at Benevento,I don't know how long we were at Benevento but eventually we were moved to a proper camp, because this Benevento had just been a temporary camp that they'd rushed up. We moved to this proper camp where, funnily enough, I met this chap Royale, who'd been shot in Palestine. He'd gone out on patrol in the desert and he simply hadn't come back so was just reported as 鈥渕issing on patrol鈥�.

Anyway, this camp wasn't too bad, I believe it was at Capua, and rations were better - they were never good - but we got issues of Red Cross parcels more often. In Germany, my brother Peter (who was a Battle of Britain pilot and was now in P O W camp there) used to get a Red Cross parcel to himself every week. Here, when we got Red Cross parcels we still had to share them between ten each time, but because of our policing it was much more successful and very welcome. Things were definitely getting better - we were able to take a bit of exercise without going dizzy, and we lived in huts. What went wrong there, and what split me from my dear friend Percy Head, was an outbreak of typhoid or cholera. Anyway, they got a team of Red Cross medical people in and they took swabs, and I was put aside as a carrier of this disease, and Percy Head was free of it. So they moved everyone out of the camp out except we carriers. It broke my heart to see Percy going and I made him promise never to do anything silly, and certainly never to try and escape or anything! In his absence I made a friend of a chap called Philip Fairfax-Brown, and we survived together for quite a bit, and then when we were 'clear' they decided to move us to another camp at Noceri, (Camp 53) and we were no longer kept in isolation. Noceri was a lovely camp and we lived in huts with bunks and things, and really got fed. I remember the main thing was getting things to burn and we used to make little stoves. Everyone had their own personal stoves which was made with a tin with a bit of macintosh round it to make bellows, and a long pipe along to another tin with a butterfly valve on.
You could burn almost anything in it. You鈥檇 put your bits of earth in it and you'd sit there, either outside in the sun or else on your bed, pumping away, boiling up water to make a cup of tea from the Red Cross parcels. It was good fun; we enjoyed it. Sometimes the Red Cross parcels contained cigarettes and I still smoked in those days. It was funny, however hungry one was you didn't stop smoking 鈥� if you could get one - because it was better than a meal somehow.
By this time I was feeling a lot fitter and more like my old self, and wanting to make amends for ever having been taken prisoner. So I started madly thinking of how to escape. I was getting restless; I just didn鈥檛 like being a prisoner! In end a friend said, 'Why don't you walk out of the gates?' So Philip Fairfax-Brown and I got together and we decided that we would dress up as carabinieri and walk out of the gates. This wasn't as silly as it sounded because at night, while you had your sentries round the camp, inside, carabinieri walked in pairs round and round the camp, and we figured that if we could fall in behind the two in front, so that they thought we were the two behind them, and the two behind them thought we were the two in front of them, nothing would happen. The only snag was - we had to go past the main gates to the camp, and go on to a side gate where the guards and the sentries used to come in and take up their positions, and it was quite complicated getting out of there.

Anyway we stole a couple of jackets from the cookhouse and made some hats. As it would be dark the most important thing was what our silhouettes looked like and our badges had to be visible as they would shine in the searchlights. So we made badges out of tin and then we got hold of some broom sticks, made them look a little more convincing, and we carried these as rifles.

The night came 鈥� we waited until two of the carabinieri had passed our hut, then just before the next two came round the corner, we fell in behind them. It was hair-raising walking so slowly round the camp but we kept going until we got past the main gate to the little side gate. There was still about 50 yards to go and it felt a very long way, particularly being in sight of all the sentries on the outside, so we were really trembling, and it became exceedingly difficult to walk slowly 鈥� we were so desperate to get out! When we got to the trip wire, (which if prisoners stepped over they were likely to be shot at,) and then the double set of barbed wire gates, we鈥檇 timed our steps so that the sentry wasn鈥檛 actually standing on the gate when we arrived. Then, instead of carrying straight on like the other carabinieri, we very slowly walked towards the gate and opened it. Immediately the sentry challenged us. We muttered something back and he shouted again while we continued to casually open the gate and walk towards the next one. The sentry got very panicky then, so we had to run - and he started firing at us - but he missed us. The trouble was that the guard up on the turret with a machine gun also opened up on us and some of his shots went into the guard room which meant that all the guard turned really quickly and half of them were in the same dress as us and it was completely dark - it was absolute bedlam - and in the middle of this chaos we reached the wall!

We had planned this part of our escape very carefully, and we knew that there was a wall, which actually turned out to border a convent, that we estimated that we could climb and escape to safety. We had noticed it was broken in one place but we had figured that this would be a death trap if searchlights were flooding the place so we'd have to get over to the high part. The wall was only about five foot high so we鈥檇 be alright. Well the alarms obviously did go off with all the shooting, and some sentries ran after us and some shot at us, but they weren鈥檛 quite sure who they were shooting at or what was going on in all the pandemonium. So we ran for this wall and when we got there we realised our calculations were completely wrong because it wasn鈥檛 five foot high at all. It was surrounded by really tall grass, so it was about seven foot high and we just couldn鈥檛 get over it! We鈥檇 been prisoners, we鈥檇 been underfed, were very badly nourished and were not particularly strong so we hadn鈥檛 a hope in hell, but there were guards rushing everywhere, shots being fired, and search lights flashing and we only had seconds to decide. The decision was to double back, hiding in the long grass, and nip through the broken part of the wall. I said to Phillip, 鈥淲e鈥檒l go after three 鈥�.one, two鈥� and on three I tried to dash through! You see I wanted to be in front of him, as the first one through had a better chance, but he thought the same thing and so we jammed there!
Well we scrabbled about a bit and eventually got through and landed in the convent. When we got to the wall the other side it also was a lot higher so we had to nick a ladder to get up to it. Then as we went over the top I was expecting a similar drop on landing, but the ground was raised and I injured my foot as I landed.

We pressed on regardless, and it was rather funny because the sirens were wailing away and we could hear all this shouting still in the distance, but all shooting had now stopped. Then as we started to cross a field we could suddenly see lights and thought, 鈥淕osh, they鈥檙e across there.鈥� So we changed direction but these same lights appeared - they were obviously surrounding this field. So we cut across to the farthest corner but the lights appeared again. It was such a silly thing because in reality they were fire flies and as soon as we got to the hedge we could actually see them, but they had given us a scare!

We had done it - we had got away, but we didn鈥檛 quite know where we were going! Back in the camp we had left papers suggesting we were going to head up north to get to Switzerland, which was the obvious way out of Italy. In fact our original plan, which was a bit silly, had been to go to a nearby aerodrome where the JU88s put their transport planes and the German transport planes used to take off every day at dawn. The plan was to stow away on one of these aeroplanes and then either force the pilot to fly where we wanted or if he wouldn鈥檛, bash him over the head and point it in the direction of Africa! We would have been shot down - the whole thing was absolutely stupid!

Anyway there was such a hullabaloo back at the camp when we got out that we abandoned that plan and instead made for the coast. The idea then was to steal a boat and sail across the Mediterranean and hope to be picked up by a British boat or else reach Africa! Mind you, the Mediterranean was just about controlled by German and Italian Navies so I don鈥檛 think we would have got far.

We worked our way down to Avalino, which was not very far from the beach where my regiment landed at St Leonard and we were caught after five days which was very sad.

The soldiers were not very pleased with us and the carabinieri were absolutely furious because they鈥檇 been made to look fools because we鈥檇 been in their uniform. Also a couple of soldiers had been shot during the escape and they blamed us and so we were taken back to the camp first and stripped naked and then beaten up until we were unconscious. We were then taken to a prison and were put in separate cells and told we would be shot: we鈥檇 worn enemy uniforms and had shot some of their sentries therefore all conventions of the red cross protecting us had gone! We really thought we were for the high-jump.

I fear I'm not talking very clearly now, because I'm getting a bit excited just at the thought of it, which is damned silly, so I'll just say that we were taken before some officers and thrown into a civilian gaol at Nocera. After they had finished interrogating us for a couple of days we did a further seven days solitary confinement in that prison, and then we were both sent away to separate camps, handcuffed to a couple of carabinieri, I might add!

I was sent to a camp at Maserata. It wasn't a bad camp, I suppose, but the trouble is that if you read books or watch films, it's great fun escaping and everyone thinks you're jolly nice fellows and jolly clever, and all that. In fact, when we left Nocera, we were the most hated people in the British Army. Because of our escaping there had been checks every five minutes. They'd turn everyone out for a head count, and keep them standing on parade for 2 or 3 hours each time. They had all their kits searched and all privileges taken away, and it had become absolute hell for them so I was very much disliked. Escaping wasn't organized in Italy like it was in Germany, and we were really hated.

When I arrived at Maserata, my history had gone on before me! It wasn't a bad camp and we were in bunks, but they made me report to the guard entrance every two hours during the day, and at night they used to come and visit me every four hours. If they were decent sentries they would just come, pull the blankets back and have look to see that I was there, and that would be that. But if they were nasty, they'd make me get out of my bunk, stand by the side of it and turn my bedding inside out to make sure there was nothing hidden. So life was a bit miserable.

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