So I had another chip on my shoulder and seeing a Britisher behave like this to win favour with the enemy made my blood boil. This interpreter might just as well have put on a German uniform.
It was getting cold as we marched into the Italian barracks in Verona. Passing the sentries on the gate who gave the Fascist salute as the German officer in charge of our guards passed them. We crossed the barrack square, through a tall gate into a barrack compound. Round the high walls sentry boxes reared their ugly shapes against the night sky. We were halted and led into the barrack blocks.
I was put into a large wooden hut containing about 50 three-tier bunks. In ten minutes, the room was full up, so much so that I climbed up to the top of my bunk and stayed there for the next hour, hoping every minute that someone would come in and say that the Italians wanted to give us some grub. An hour passed and nothing happened. All of us had a mattress filled with straw but we had no blankets.
A bugle broke the stillness of the night air and when silence reigned again, the lights went out. So there was nothing for it but to lay down and sleep without blankets. It was nothing new. I believe most of us could now sleep quite well in a bed of thistles.
Morning came, and at 6am, a voice shouted "Coffee up!" On the barrack square, two Italian soldiers stood with a large bin of coffee, and from a lorry at the side of the soldiers we were issued with a bowl from which we would eat and drink. It was the usual type of acorn coffee, but it was warm and wet.
In ten minutes we were all back in the hut waiting for the next move of the German commandant. At 11am we were all taken on parade for a roll call. 200 of us lined up and after the count, were taken in groups of 20 to see a German officer, who said we were to go to Germany the next day to work in German factories. The sergeants and warrant officers among us told this officer that under the rules of the Geneva Convention, he could not make us work for the Reich. He stood up and shouted that we were not in any position to refused and would do as we were told.
When I went back to the hut, I noticed a chap lying on the bunk underneath me, wearing civilian clothes in a PoW camp. He introduced himself as Francis Harvey, a driver in the Services corps. He, like myself, had been captured in Tobruk. He had the features of an Italian; good-looking, fine, chiselled features and black wavy hair, height 5' 10". His story was that a few weeks earlier, he had been a member of a working party on a farm near Mantova and decided to escape.
Suceeding in this, he had contacted a Contessa who had told him to contact some friends in Vicenza town in the north east of Italy. He was not a big man, and the Contessa decided that as he was slim, he could be disguised as a woman. Dressed as such, he was put on a train at Mantova and his journey began without incident. Things began to get ticklish when German soldiers began to make eyes at him and offer to date him.
I said he must have been well made-up to attract such attention, and he said that the Contessa had told him to dress himself and take the clothes he thought would suit him best from her wardrobe. He had chosen a black two-piece costume and close-fitting hat. A fur stole and jewellery were added. I had to laugh when he said he had worn a girdle in order to attach his stockings.
