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Pip, as he was then known, arrived in Varisella in July 1943 and remained there until November 1944. One of a number of Englishmen who were seeking to cross into France, Pip had escaped from an Italian prison camp and travelled north. Pip whose real name was Ken Bailey, had joined the war effort at the age of 18 years with the 67th Medium Suffolk Regiment and after training been sent to fight in North Africa. The fourth in a family of five, Pip had never been abroad before or even far from his home in Suffolk, England where he worked on the land. The excitement of ‘joining up’ was soon followed by the reality of the tank warfare in North Africa. Pip was among the 30,000 English soldiers captured by the German army at Tobruk. He and his Unit were then shipped across to Italy, a trip that he considered himself fortunate to survive, as colleagues lost their lives aboard ships accidentally bombed by the Allies. He was then moved from camp to camp until escaping one day when the Italian guards left the camp and found his way to Varisella in Northern Italy hoping to cross into France.

Pip never talked about his experiences until he was in his sixties. It was only after he died that his daughter found photos and an address for Giacomo Colombatto which led her and her husband to visit Varisella to thank the people who had enabled her father to survive. Unfortunately she found that Giaco had died five months earlier at the age of 84 and just two months after Pip aged 80. Visiting Varisella and meeting with Giaco’s son Remo and relatives who remembered Pip helped piece together the story. The last they had seen of Pip was of him walking out of the village in November 1944 with a guide to cross the mountains into France. Hearing nothing year on year they assumed reluctantly that he had not survived the difficult journey in winter over the mountains. In fact as his diary records, Pip successfully crossed the mountains although he feared for his life when shot at as he descended into France. He took a train to Marseilles and from there a ship to Naples and from there to Gibraltar arriving home in England in January 1945. The first thing his family in Ipswich knew of his being alive was when his sister bumped into him in the Cornhill.

Piecing together his experiences in Varisella from his own accounts and those of Giaco’s family, we know that he was in the village for 18 months, sheltered by the Partisans but too weak to work alongside them. Pip spent most of his time in the village helping in the fields and hiding in different houses when the women and children of the village bravely faced the Fascists who came searching for hidden Englishmen. He remembered his time there as one of constant fear, not knowing what would happen next, of shootings and danger. This may explain his reluctance to speak of his experience on his return and why he did not contact those who had saved his life.

After returning home Pip decided to try his luck in Canada but after working as a logger for a couple of years returned home to England. He married in 1948, the daughter of a Suffolk farmer and had two children. Pip spent the rest of his working life managing a large estate, enjoying country pursuits including fishing and shooting. But he had not forgotten Varisella, the village that saved his life all those years ago. When retired, he had a house built which he named Varisella and that is where he died - in Varisella in March 2002 - after a long and what he considered a very lucky life.

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