One could attend lectures, debates or go to school to learn one of many subjects. The schoolteacher among us had a grand opportunity to carry on their profession. By now, my mind was made up, and it was my intention to escape at the very first opportunity. First, I must learn the language, so attended the Italian class for the next six months.
By June, the life here had become a life of dull routine. Walking the compound, brewing up, attending lectures, collecting rations, and grumbling! Herded together day after day was getting on my nerves, chaps were talking about escape but it was just talk. Of all the escape ideas that were discussed among us, most had a fantastic built-up, then fell like a building whose foundations were built on sand. I felt that a lot of chaps had been reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, or just lived in a world of fantasy.
My own mind was made up and decided that the best plan for escape was to get away when the opportunity came, as it must. Another decision was that I would not speak to a soul of my intentions. Many an escape was foiled by an idle tongue.
In August, my teeth were giving me trouble, so I reported sick. Two double teeth were rotten and they had to come out. Report to the M.O. at 2pm. I saw the M.O, and entering his billet, was told to sit on a box. The orderly stood behind him, and the M.O. casually said: "This is going to hurt you, Sergeant. I have no cocaine or anything else to ease the pain; I have forceps and I shall just have to do my best".
He picked up the forceps and told me to open my mouth. The orderly held my shoulders and pressed down as the M.O. put pressure on the first tooth. The pressure was so great that the tooth was crushed and broken. I spat out the pieces into a bucket and he commenced again. The gum was forced down as one would push a nail cuticle, and the pulling repeated. My jaw felt as though it would break, stars floated before my eyes, the M.O. was cursing, sweat ran down his face. I wondered how long my head would remain on my shoulders, and the orderly was saying: "Sorry, sarge".
Crack! The tooth had broken near the root, and the withdrawing commenced. After another ten minutes, the tooth was out. I was now bathed in sweat and my nervous system had had a great shock. There was still another to come out, so after the three of us had a breather, the Battle of the Ivory Castle began again. I do not remember anything of the second tooth coming out, but apparently, it was harder to get out than the first.
I sat up and gave the orderly gave me a cup of water with which to rinse my mouth. I put my tongue in the cavities, only to find that the second had been badly torn, the gum had been cut with a knife in order to help the M.O. get the tooth out.
The next two days were spent in my bunk, my pal a Coldstream Guard Sergeant getting my 'skilly', As I lay there, the chap in the bunk above spent hours delousing his clothes and person, dropping the dead lice on my bunk with a jest: "From me to you".
From me to you. I hope my fiancée was thinking like that as she posted her cards to me. I had received two letters since my arrival in Italy. My fiancée had joined the WAAFs, and in her one and only letter had mentioned that she was friendly with a chap in the RAF, but I need not worry, it was only a platonic friendship.
Later, I was to know different. It was becoming a general thing for chaps to get letters from home saying their girlfriend wished to break off the engagement. Did these girls think we prisoners were cowards, and had given ourselves up to the enemy?
About this time, four chaps committed suicide. The first was missing from roll-call one afternoon. A search was made and his body was found in tall grass beyond the trip wire. The guards must have been asleep when he crawled through the wire to this tall grass. He had cut his throat, his weapon an issue loaf of bread into which he put a razor blade. In 24 hours, the loaf would be as hard as stone, and could then be used as a knife. This man had received a letter from his mother stating that his wife, with whom he had married on his embarkation, had gone off with a G.I. and had mentioned that her husband was not a man, as he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner. Did everyone have that point of view? Surely people did not thing that chaps gave themselves up because they wanted a rest cure from the enemy?
This man had not killed himself without premeditation, so determined had he been in cutting his throat that his head was hanging from his shoulders when found. So this was the first suicide in the camp, and during the next three weeks, three others did the same for various reasons; one because he thought he should be repatriated, another through melancholia, the others because they had not had a letter from home since they had become prisoners.
Gloom and despondency reigned in the camp for days, and the Padre thought it was his duty to boost the morale of the men, for at the next Sunday service, the sermon was preached from the Psalm that states: "A thousand shall fall at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh to thee". In my mind, this was not the type of sermon to preach under the circumstances, and I had to ask myself who was kidding who.
I left the service that morning feeling that life as a prisoner had to be led with the same zeal as normal living, and despondency had to be eradicated. This sounded to me very idealistic, but life can be lived to the full if the mind is fully occupied and thoughts lifted to an intellectual plane. Putting these into a working operation was another thing.
Most of us in the camp had been in captivity for a year, and our hopes were being built up to the fact that we might be home for Christmas. News had got through to us that the second front had opened up in Italy, and a defeatist attitude was now prevalent among the camp guards.
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