Footsteps to freedom

In a letter to his parents my father described in detail his escape from a prisoner of war camp in Italy. It was hard to read his hand writing so he later banged the letter out on a typewriter, over 6,500 words The attached map is an attempt to picture his escape with three friends.

A summary of how it went down follows…

They were captured in Tobruk, shipped to Italy and sent to a POW camp near Venice. Dysentery ran rife amongst the troops. Days were spent working in the fields planting vegetables and the like.

It was Wednesday, September 10th, 1943 that they heard the camp commander say, “Italy is out of the war.” They were free men. Their first instinct was to get as far away as possible from rumors of German forces taking control of the station in Padua .

An attempt to get a boat out of Chioggia failed forcing them to walk, catch trains and busses all the way until they met allied forces near Campobasso in southern Italy nearly 700 kilometers from where they began.

The hospitality of the Italian farmers helped them on by providing shelter, giving advice and feeding them. Sometimes a spare a loaf of bread was enough. Where they could they walked at night. At one point a German patrol passed within feet of them hiding in the bush of a mountain trail.

In perspective there were approximately 75,000 POW’s in Italy of which 6,000 escaped. The others were captured and sent to Germany or noted as missing in action.