大象传媒

The ingenuity of prisoners when they're locked up is absolutely fantastic and there was one chap in this camp, at Maserata in Italt, who was making, not cuckoo clocks but that sort of clock. He used a bit of tin to weigh down a chain that was actually a piece of string which he wrapped around and made into these lovely clocks which he then sold to the guards. We had got aluminium tent posts which we honed down on stones so that they were reasonably sharp, and we used these as knives cut the tin up. We weren鈥檛 actually allowed anything sharp and every time there was a search they were taken away, but this chap had used them for cutting and making these clocks. Well, the sentries liked these very much, and although they only gave him a loaf of bread for them, they wanted more. The prisoner said, 'Well, I can't do it properly with these things - give me a pair of cutters and then I can make you half a dozen!' Amazingly the guard promptly brought him a pair of wire cutters, and gave them to this prisoner 鈥� who genuinely wanted them for his clocks!

Well, I had got rather fed up with being a prisoner so I nicked these from this poor chap and decided to escape again - in fact three of us decided to escape together by cutting the wire at the top of the camp. Later, when I was recaptured, they told me not to think I was clever to escape from the camp,(no one had ever escaped from the camp before,) but the only reason I got out was because they never thought someone could be quite so stupid to try!!

We chose a dark night and I had arranged to go first as I had learned from bitter experience that the element of surprise is terrific, and so I felt it was to my advantage and as it turned out the others didn鈥檛 come. I don鈥檛 know what happened to them but I prefer doing things alone really. I had needed their help with some of the planning which was why they鈥檇 got involved but they didn鈥檛 follow me and I got out without any trouble at all, although it was terrifying cutting the wire. The fear, the trembling, the panic when the sentry walks behind you and you鈥檙e aware you鈥檝e made a slight noise. They look about and peer, and someone flashes a search light all around you and you think, that鈥檚 it I鈥檓 going to be shot! You鈥檝e got sentries walking nearby but you鈥檝e got to keep going. Then there鈥檚 the coiled wire springs 鈥� you can get into terrible trouble with that as I had seen with people in a camp before. In front of it is the trip wire that you can鈥檛 go beyond but I had seen this chap, he wasn鈥檛 even trying to escape, but he had gone round the bend and he just stepped over the trip wire, and the sentry shot him. He couldn鈥檛 have escaped, it was broad daylight but they wouldn鈥檛 move him, they just left him lying there, entangled in the coiled wire springs until the red cross could come and see where he鈥檇 been shot. By then the poor chap was dead you know - It was as stupid as that, so it wasn鈥檛 good escaping.

Anyway, having cut the wire I did get out and I scampered across to some woods about 50 yards away and hid and waited for the others to come. When they still hadn't turned up after a quarter of an hour I just pushed on alone. There had been no alarm or anything鈥� and I was free again!

I remember during this period wandering round the mountains, keeping fairly high, but not so high that it was mountaineering, just away from civilization. There were isolated cottages and farmhouses and places where one could beg food occasionally. You had a sense whether to beg or wait for darkness and steal, and I used to vary this. There were masses of oranges on some of the trees and you鈥檇 wait for darkness and then climb the tree 鈥� and then you couldn鈥檛 find them!! It was ridiculous! Sometimes I would go to a farm and look for a chicken to steal or some eggs and I broke into lots of houses too but the dogs were a bit of a pest. If they had a shed I鈥檇 sleep in the shed and be off before light. Sometimes if it was very lonely I鈥檇 go to the house and ask for food. I did go to a convent once. The nuns there wouldn't let me in but they gave me the best food I'd had in days. It was hot and came with some bread too but I had to promise to leave straight away. From time to time I would hide during the day and walk at night but then you had to be really careful not to walk over a precipice! O yes I had lots of escapades. One time when it was very misty I got trapped up too high in the mountains and then it became dark as well. I couldn鈥檛 get anywhere, I couldn鈥檛 see anything and I was frightened of walking over a cliff. I built fires around me not as a camp but just so I knew where I was! However I often did walk at night but it was a dangerous place up too high - I would never stop high up a mountain at night out of choice.

But I survived, and it was wonderful being free. I remember in lonely parts of those mountains wandering along singing, 'I Wander alone 鈥nd there will I live and die'. I walked from there - Perugia - down about 100 miles south to Ascoli Pecino which is on the other side of the mountains to Rome. Then I came to a big old monastery. It was in a quiet area with no houses or anything in sight so I approached with caution. To my amazement it wasn't a monastery at all but had been turned into the home of this chap Matteo, and this was in fact San Giorgio which was a place that was to take on great significance for me.

Matteo was friendly towards me. He had been in the Italian Division of the American Army in the Great War, and he spoke the odd word of English. He indicated that there were a lot of Germans in the area and he hid me in a cave, where members of his family brought me food but I wasn鈥檛 allowed to go up to the house. I remained there for about a fortnight, then one night there was a terrible earthquake. I was alone in the cave and it started falling in around me and I thought at first that it was the Germans randomly throwing hand grenades into the caves 鈥� which they did sometimes. When I realized it was an earthquake and that I could hear boulders bouncing down the mountainside, I got the hell out of there in case I was buried alive and, as I hadn't had any food at all that day and no-one from San Georgio had been to my cave, I worked my way back down to the house. I got into the building all right but couldn't recognize it because of the earthquake (and this was just the first tremble - in actual fact we had another two during that night, one of them while I was in there and one early on the morning of 3rd October 1943, just as I was taken out). It was in complete darkness and I wandered in to try and find where I had been before but everything was altered and I couldn't get my bearings at all. It had really shaken up San Giorgio and the ceilings were down - in fact part of the tower had fallen too, and the family had evacuated.

Whilst I was in there I suddenly heard German voices, so I hid away behind a door in one of the rooms. I learned later that a German patrol of parachutists occupied the room opposite where I was hiding and I was trapped! They began to set up their headquarters there and more and more of them arrived! I waited for a long time, watching what the sentry outside was doing, and then decided I had to get out before they found me in the daylight, so with my boots in my hand I crept out down the corridor to the exit

As I tried to accustom my eyes I watched a sentry standing there, and he just happened to turn his back to the wind and was lighting a cigarette, so I rushed in the opposite direction - and bumped straight into another sentry! I should have known better, I mean, obviously they would have two sentries! He was so frightened to be crashed into in the dark. He鈥檇 got a rifle over his shoulder and a pistol by his side - that he was instantly feeling for - and was a bit panicky but I couldn't get away from him, so I kept up very close so that he couldn鈥檛 retrieve his pistol. The other sentry came to his aid and was running in circles around me pointing a gun, but couldn't do anything because I was too close to his comrade. This went on until they'd calmed down a bit, and of course I'd got my hands up and I said I was an Italian in the few words that I knew.

A lot more guards had come out by now and one of them started talking to me in Italian, so I gave up and said, 'Sorry - Englese, I'm English, an English soldier.' There was a bit of a panic then and the sergeant of the guard was called. During all this time I was still standing with my hands above my head, with my boots in my hands, and they were getting jolly heavy, and so I asked if I could of lower my hands. 鈥淵es, yes, yes鈥� they said, but as soon as I started to, there was panic stations and they started prodding me with rifles and pistols again so up would go my hands again! I dared not just drop my boots because that would have startled them too much.

Eventually the sergeant of the guard came and I was officially a prisoner once more. They kept me there the rest of that night and the following morning they lined up all Matteo's family, and their cousins, along the roadside outside San Giorgio. The Germans accused the family of feeding and sheltering me, and they tried to make me identify them. Well, I didn't let on that I knew them at all - I just ignored them and said that I had been taking shelter in San Giorgio from the falling boulders. When I wouldn鈥檛 admit to knowing them they began to rifle butt me. In fact they gave me a very thorough thrashing, but this probably looked worse than it felt at the time because of my feeling of total confusion. But Matteo and his family - and there were seven young boys and girls - were really scared that I would say they had given me food as they would then have been shot!

Then, the Germans took me off into Ascoli some miles away and I was put into a civilian prison there, and then put on a truck and taken to somewhere north of Florence, and stuck in a German camp, The Italians were still in the war, but we鈥檇 invaded Sicily and so they were moving all prisoners to Germany now. Well I thought I鈥檝e got to get the blazes out of here somehow. I should have mentioned at this stage that when I was recaptured by these Germans I was in civilian clothes which was very dicey. If you were in uniform you were unlikely to be shot unless you were actually escaping or being recaptured, but when they put me in this camp they said the Red Cross would issue me with new army clothes. They took the civilian ones off me, and gave me an army shirt, but they hadn't got any trousers, so at this stage all I had on was an army shirt with the tails tied together with a piece of string, so I was not a very becoming sight.

Once I鈥檇 done my time in solitary it wasn't a bad camp, and I quite enjoyed things, but I'd got plans to escape 鈥� there was no way that I wanted to go to Germany! This camp had obviously been a lot bigger at one stage and the compound was now empty, and the Germans were using it to load trucks and gradually move prisoners out. When we were first taken prisoners, Percy Head had told me; 'When they ask you what you were in civilian life, tell them you were a farm worker because if there are any jobs going you might get a job on a farm,' so as I had at other camps I told them I was a farm worker, but it hadn't done me any good until now. These Germans were moving out the technicians and important people first and as I was only a farm labourer, I remained there. This gave me the chance to form a plan.

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