Castle of the Eagles

by Felton, Mark;

  ‘I told you my hens were unwell,’ said Combe to the red-faced officer.

  ‘Never mind, old chap,’ said General O’Connor to the Italian, a huge grin plastered across his face. ‘It’s a sign of good luck where I come from.’

  The officer’s eyes darted about the compartment before he abruptly stalked off in search of a damp cloth, followed down the corridor by gales of laughter from the generals and brigadiers, several of whom were holding on to each other and wiping tears from their eyes. It was, all in all, a fitting end to their imprisonment at Sulmona.

  *

  A few hours later the train pulled into Florence station, following a transfer at Rome. Everyone perked up, looking forward to seeing their new home, which the Italians continued to describe with such enchantment ‘that I could well picture all the charms of Decameron Nights’, wrote De Wiart, ‘and was only wondering what I should do by day.’29

  ‘Well, blow me down, it’s old Tutti-Frutti,’ declared Brigadier Todhunter to the compartment and General De Wiart in particular. Standing on the platform was indeed the genial Italian officer who had escorted Todhunter and De Wiart by ship from Libya to the Villa Orsini months before. Both men were quite touched that this officer should have taken the time to greet them again. It appeared to be another portent that their lot was improving.

  The baggage and animals were unloaded on to several trucks sent down from the castle, and the British prisoners climbed into cars for the onward journey. Conversation ceased as the convoy, escorted by a motorcycle combination, began to climb out of Florence and into the countryside. The generals and brigadiers sat silently staring out of the car windows, evaluating the lay of the land, ‘wondering whether or not it was going to be good ‘escaping country’.30 But then, like John Leeming the day before, they clapped eyes upon the Castello di Vincigliata and their hearts fell.

  ‘You know, I have a bad feeling about this, chaps,’ said Brigadier Combe to the other officers in his car as he stared up at the castle’s massive stone walls and battlemented towers.

  ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’ muttered General O’Connor next to Combe, quoting Dante. His eyes had taken on a hard, flinty expression as he stared through the car’s windows at the castle. He had spoken for everyone in the party.

  CHAPTER 7

  ___________________

  The Eagles’ Nest

  ‘Although Vincigliata itself was a bitter disappointment to us with its impregnable and unrelenting appearance, the actual move acted as a tremendous impetus and spur to our escape plans. From the moment we arrived in Vincigliata we never thought of anything else at all.’

  Major-General Adrian Carton de Wiart

  Dick O’Connor’s eyes darted everywhere as the cars and trucks carrying the generals and their luggage turned on to the castle’s approach road. The surrounding country was gloomy and dense with cypresses. The grey-brown walls of the castle’s outer perimeter were slick from a gentle rain that had begun to fall once the caravan had entered the hills above Florence.

  ‘Some country club,’ remarked O’Connor to no one in particular, Mazawattee’s promises prominent in his mind. Like John Leeming the day before, O’Connor’s eyes scanned the approach for any sign of a weakness in the castle’s defences that could be exploited by the prisoners. But the structure appeared solid. It was a medieval Florentine fortress with five stories above ground and two below. As the vehicles passed into the castle’s shadow, everyone noted the immense thickness of the walls, and the magnitude of the battlements: 15–30 feet high with towers in the northeast and northwest corners, enclosing a tall central keep.

  There was little talking as the generals passed through several portals into the castle’s gloomy inner sanctum on 24 September 1941. ‘We were a silent, despondent bunch as we entered this vault of a prison,’ described Carton de Wiart.1 The only bright moment was seeing John Leeming again; he greeted them in front of the main accommodation area.

  If Leeming was pleased to see the generals, his enthusiasm rapidly wore off as he started to show them to their rooms. Leeming’s rationale of allocating rooms by the simple expedient of the higher a man’s rank, the larger his room, had seemed sensible. But he had not taken into account the personal feelings of the generals, who he described, with commendable understatement, as being ‘tired and overheated’ on arrival.2

  ‘Look here, Leeming, can’t you give me a room better suited for escape?’ said General O’Connor conspiratorially when shown his allocated room. Within ten minutes of the generals’ arrival, Leeming’s carefully worked-out accommodation plan was in tatters.

  ‘It’s a blasted dungeon, man!’ growled De Wiart on being shown to his new subterranean digs. ‘Winter’s almost upon us. I shall freeze down here.’3 General Neame, who had spent most of his life in tropical climes and consequently couldn’t stand the cold, shared De Wiart’s objection. ‘I can’t sleep in here, Leeming,’ said Neame, scanning his new room, the largest bedroom in the castle, as befitted his position as ‘father of the camp’. ‘It’s as big as a church, for goodness sake.’ Both men demanded smaller, more easily heated rooms. De Wiart’s problem was quickly solved by giving him a tiny room in the top of the central tower, General Gambier-Parry swapping with him. The uncomplaining Colonel Younghusband took Neame’s ‘church room’, ironically pleased with the space after the overcrowding at the Villa Orsini.

  Air Vice-Marshal Boyd was particularly fraught after the long journey. Never in great health since being taken prisoner, he looked all in as he approached Leeming. ‘John, I don’t give a damn where I sleep,’ he said wearily. ‘If it would be easier, I’ll swap my room for one of the others.’4

  ‘Is there nowhere better, old chap?’5 asked Brigadier Combe on being presented with his room by Leeming, who was by now struggling to maintain his composure and feeling for all the world like the harassed manager of some third-rate hotel.

  ‘I like to think that they were tired by the long journey from Sulmona,’6 wrote Leeming charitably, having retired to his own small room with a considerable headache and the grumblings of the generals still ringing in his ears. The general consensus was that Leeming had made a mess of things.

  *

  The next morning, after a good night’s rest, the prisoners began to explore their new home. It made for a depressing activity, for it appeared that their first impressions of the castle had been accurate.

  ‘That damned Temple-Leader fellow has certainly made our lives difficult,’ commented General De Wiart as he stood in the castle’s courtyard and stared about him. ‘What an absolutely wretched place.’7

  The Duke of Montalto’s intriguing comment to Leeming at their introduction, when he had described the Castello di Vincigliata as ‘The Englishman’s Castle’ had been explained to Leeming by Baron Ricciardi. Leeming had then briefed the generals. It seemed that the castle was ancient, dating back to the 13th century. Originally, an important Florentine noble family had owned it, before it was passed to another family, the Usimbardi, famous for introducing glass manufacturing to Florence. It changed hands again before the Buonaccorsi banking family obtained the castle. In 1345, when the Florence banks crashed – caused, incidentally, by bad debts run up by King Edward III of England – the castle had been sold to the Albizi family of wealthy merchants. A branch of this family controlled the castle for over 300 years until by the mid-17th century it had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

  In 1827 the castle and its lands were sold to Lorenzo da Rovezzano, and the ruin became a haunt of fashionable artists and writers who would travel up the eight miles from Florence to view it. The fortunes of the castle changed dramatically when an Englishman came upon the tranquil ruins one day and immediately seized upon the opportunity to create something striking and romantic.

  John Temple-Leader had been born into a wealthy merchant family and entered the House of Commons young. A Liberal and a supporter of the Chartists, Temple-Leader’s political career had not flourished, an
d though well connected and respected, the Commons did not hold him. He was a man who was fascinated by Europe and its history and was a personal friend of the exiled Louis-Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I and the future Emperor of France. Temple-Leader also loved art and antiquities; numbered among his other acquaintances were the family of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1844, at the age of just 34, Temple-Leader abruptly left politics, and Britain, for the Continent, hardly ever to return.

  After a brief stay in Cannes, Temple-Leader had settled in Florence where he bought several houses and villas and then carefully restored them to their former glory, filling them with his large collections of art and antiquities. The ruined Vincigliata Castle was purchased in 1855, and it would take Temple-Leader fifteen years to transform the mouldering old walls and collapsed towers into his vision of a fairytale castle, complete with two huge towers, crenellated battlements, dungeons and great gatehouses, surrounded by a moat and set on the side of a hill in 700 acres of grounds.8

  In 1875 the celebrated American writer Henry James had visited the castle and admired Temple-Leader’s massive folly. ‘This elaborate piece of imitation has no superficial use,’ wrote James, ‘but, even if it were less complete, less successful, less brilliant, I should feel a reflective kindness for it. So handsome a piece of work is its own justification; it belongs to the heroics of culture.’9

  With such a ringing endorsement from so famous a writer, it was little wonder that Temple-Leader’s castle attracted many of the most famous and prominent personages making the Grand Tour across Europe, including royalty. In 1888 Queen Victoria signed the visitors’ book and sketched in the grounds. Temple-Leader was rewarded by the Italian government for his preservation efforts in and around Florence, which had by the end of the 19th century a sizeable British expatriate community. King Victor Emmanuel I created Temple-Leader a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy.

  But following Temple-Leader’s death in 1903 his estates passed to his great-nephew Lord Westbury, who had no interest in the buildings or their contents. All were sold off. The castle once more entered a period of deterioration until it was loaned to the Italian government for use as a prisoner of war camp in 1941. By then, the building had been largely stripped of its artistic treasures, save for the stone lions that guarded the main gate, and its carvings and frescoes; the once immaculate formal gardens had been left to run to seed, and the whole place had taken on a look and feeling of faded grandeur and dusty irrelevance.

  But Temple-Leader had effectively gifted the Italians the perfect prison. His careful rebuilding and remodelling work had been done using the best materials, resulting in a tremendously strong building that was, just like a real medieval castle, virtually impregnable, and therefore ideal for holding people inside.

  ‘Imagine an old castle restored in the worst Victorian style,’ wrote Lord Ranfurly to his wife, ‘grey and featureless with enormous battlements and a tower in one corner.’10

  The castle’s walls, with an acre and a quarter of battlements, traced a rectangle 100 by 80 yards across the hilltop, with commanding views for several miles around, including down into Florence where the golden-roofed Duomo Cathedral could be seen on clear days.11 Beyond the hill upon which the castle sat there was a slight hollow, then another hill, this one studded with villas formerly occupied by British expats, leading eventually to Monte Fano. To the west was a ‘huge mass of rock several hundreds of feet higher than the castle’,12 which the prisoners would christen ‘The Quarries’. Beyond this feature was the village of Fiesole, on a hill a little way out of Florence. To the east side of the castle lay the village of Settignano, with the Arno River flowing below towards Pisa and the Mediterranean Sea.

  The castle itself consisted of a seven-storied keep (including, of course, two subterranean floors – De Wiart’s ‘blasted dungeon’) the walls of which were two-and-a-half feet thick. Prisoner accommodation was on the southern side of the building, consisting of bedrooms and cloisters twenty feet below a formal interior garden with yew hedges,13 with more bedrooms and the prisoners’ public rooms in the keep proper. At the northwest corner of the keep was a bricked-up chapel and vestry. To the north of the keep was the gate tower, with two portals to enter the castle’s courtyard, and another tower at the northeast corner of the massive outer walls, which stood 15–30 feet high depending on the elevation of the hill and which were fitted with a wooden inside walkway so that the sentries could patrol the perimeter between their guard boxes. The garrison lived in an area north of the keep, enclosed by its own internal ten-foot-high brick wall, known as ‘The White Wall’ because it was plastered.14 Running parallel to the castle’s western curtain wall was an outer garden enclosed by another wall with a gatehouse at its northern end leading out on to a public road.

  There were no swimming pools, contrary to Colonel Mazawattee’s vivid description given at Sulmona, and initially no walks were allowed and no playing areas provided, save for the odd cramped space. The gardens were a tangle of weeds. The only pleasant area for the prisoners to use was a terrace set above the cloisters on the castle’s south side where they could sit or sunbathe with stunning views over the Florentine skyline. Perhaps the best thing the place had going for it was the modern plumbing, which Brigadier Todhunter was told had been installed by an American owner some years before.15

  Two things about Temple-Leader’s castle struck the prisoners. Firstly, the windows in the keep were small, making the place gloomy and chilly.16 Secondly, the castle was a warren of passages and odd-sized rooms, with many disused or closed-off areas. In contrast to Henry James’s adoring description of the castle in 1875, Carton de Wiart was under no such illusions in 1941: ‘Whether the Castello di Vincigliata is rococo or baroque I do not know, but I do know that Queen Victoria lunched there and Queen Elizabeth did not sleep there, and I know better still that I thought it was the most horrible looking place I had ever seen.’17

  Being constantly observed soon took a toll on the prisoners’ nerves. The castle appeared no more suitable to General Neame and the others than had the Villa Orsini. ‘They consider themselves to be too cramped in their new residence,’ commented a Red Cross inspection report, ‘and in addition the walls and the surrounding road which dominate the Chateau garden and from which they are incessantly watched by sentries contribute considerably to their sense of imprisonment.’18

  *

  The prisoners soon noticed that the castle had a very different routine from that at the Villa Orsini. There was a roll call twice daily, where the entire complement of prisoners would assemble for counting in the courtyard; there were random inspections, and very strict blackout regulations. They were guarded by 200 heavily armed Italian Carabinieri. There was, however, widespread relief that their new commandant was a gentleman and clearly an Anglophile. General Neame was delighted to discover that the Duke of Montalto was an Old Cheltonian.19 Lieutenant Ricciardi settled in to his new position on the staff at the castle alongside the ever-suspicious security officer Captain Pederneschi and the young Second Lieutenant Visocchi, who curiously spoke English with a strong Scottish accent, having studied in Glasgow before the war.20

  *

  The first escape committee meeting was convened within days of the prisoners’ arrival. Now they were settled, planning for escapes could recommence, and this time in earnest.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, we appear to be facing a much bigger challenge than that posed by the Villa Orsini,’ said General Neame, chairing the meeting. ‘I don’t think any of us expected this,’ he said, referring to the castle. The others nodded or grunted in agreement. Though they were nearly 200 miles closer to Switzerland, the castle presented any potential escapers with some very serious challenges.

  ‘Clearly, the Eye-ties are determined to keep us under lock and key for the duration,’ continued Neame grimly. Instructions were issued. Each prisoner was told to study the castle and the movements and habits of its guards. They must look for a chink in the castle’
s armour, some weakness in its defences, that might permit an escape attempt.

  ‘We need ideas, gentlemen, and lots of them,’ said Neame plainly.

  *

  Life at the castle took on much the same form as it had at the Villa Orsini. The orderlies dealt with the cooking, shopping and cleaning under Leeming’s supervision, while General Neame assumed overall leadership of the camp, assisted by Brigadier Vaughan who acted as his right-hand man. Henhouses and rabbit cages were installed and the animals were tended by the senior officers. Air Vice-Marshal Boyd reopened his carpentry workshop. Brigadier Todhunter began accumulating books for what would one day be a 1,000-volume library, and General Gambier-Parry began instructing the others in art, including the dark art of forgery, as well as music, which was his other passion. He also took up poker in the evenings, but as Lord Ranfurly noted, ‘plays extraordinarily badly and we all win his money’.21 After the tedium of Sulmona, everyone at the castle felt buoyed up by their closer proximity to Switzerland, and this was soon reflected by a number of escape plans that were brought before Neame’s secret committee.

  *

  ‘Right, Dick, tell us what you have,’ said Neame to General O’Connor one evening in late September 1941. The officers were meeting once again in secret after dinner. For several weeks O’Connor and Carton de Wiart had been thrashing out the theory behind a new scheme. It was time to present their idea to Neame and the rest of the committee for their approval.

  O’Connor and De Wiart had become fast friends, and were as thick as thieves plotting escapes. ‘The ideas and the working out of the plans gave us a zest and a vital interest that nothing else could have done,’ wrote De Wiart. ‘Personally, without this one thought, I imagine I should have either have become disgruntled, irascible and peppery, or else have reached the state of apathy I slide into in hospital when, after a long illness, I start to dread the mere idea of recovering and am perfectly content to stay in bed, preferably for ever.’22 Everyone coped with imprisonment in different ways, but the planning of escapes brought them together and gave them a defined purpose that none of the other activities they performed at the castle – from gardening, animal husbandry and music to carpentry and painting – would give them. Most importantly, it gave them hope.