1943 - part two

It is now September, and most of us are looking fit and brown as berries. The camp is well organised, a drama group has been formed and has performed several plays including Pygmalion and The Barratts of Wimpole Street. The Red Cross have sent musical instruments and daily, a camp orchestra play in the open air for the men. So among varied pastimes, the chaps can plan a daily programme of activities.

The food does not improve and the supply of parcels from the Red Cross are not being delivered very often due to the continued Allied bombing of the railways and the lines being used for the passage of troops to the front.

It is now one morning in September 1943 and all of us are on the morning roll call. We have been told to expect an important item of news, so naturally much speculation is going on, with many believing the war is near an end.

"Parade, attention!" roars the Sergeant Major across the parade ground, and as one man, all spring to attention. It is years since I saw the men drill like that. The S.S. states that the Italian commandant has a statement to make. The air is electric with apprehension. The rotund Italian waddles onto the scene and through an interpreter, states that at mid-day, an Italian Royalist General would sign an Armistice with the British High Command in Italy and that from mid-day tomorrow, the gates of the camp would be open and all would be allowed out daily until the arrival of the relieving British force. He went on to say that the Royalists had taken over, and that Mussolini was now their prisoner. All the men were requested to be calm, and behave as gentlemen when the gates were open.

Never in my life had I heard such cheering; few of us realised that our present joy was to be so short-lived.

Two days later, we made grand trips into the local villages and walked along country lanes as free men. How we had dreamed of the day when it would be possible to walk along without an armed escord ad here we were this morning, on parade for roll call.

Early on that Thursday morning, news had been brought in that German paratroops had been dropped a few miles away, and they were marching in the direction of the camp here at Monturano. At the moment, the news was not authentic and we were all told that no man must go more than two miles from camp for the next day or so. Day or so! Hardly had these words been uttered when a burst of machine gun fire was heard outside the camp. Minutes later, German paratroops were standing guard in sentry boxes that had recently housed the Italian sentries.

All of us were ordered to our billets, and told to await further instructions. Within an hour, we were on parade again, but with a difference - the Germans were now in command. The German major said life would carry on as it did under the Italians, and that within a week, all of us would be moved to camps in Germany. The war had not ended and would go on until the Germans had defeated us on all fronts.

And it was so within a week we were told to start packing and get ready for the move to Germany.  Little did I know what was ahead for me. Tomorrow is my birthday - 23 years old - and within a week I am to jump from a train 20 miles north of Verona. Nothing is further from my mind at present, but it is to be.

My group move on my birthday, and all of us are given a small parcel of salami sandwiches for our trip.