Castle of the Eagles

by Felton, Mark;

  Once outside, he confessed what had happened to the others.17

  ‘The clerk chappie was probably giving you instructions about changing trains at Bologna,’ said Miles. ‘Never mind, I’ll get the tickets.’ Miles strode off into the hall, accompanied by Brigadier Combe, who would have to go to a different window to purchase his second-class return ticket.

  Miles and Combe bought their tickets without any problems.18 With plenty of time to kill until their train, the four escapers decided to walk around the streets of Florence for a while.

  *

  Dick O’Connor and Carton de Wiart were, in the meantime, making excellent progress on foot. They covered five or six miles before De Wiart took a wrong turn in the dark and they became momentarily lost. Map reading had never been De Wiart’s strong suit, so O’Connor took over and they managed to find the way again.19

  Neither man intended to stop for a rest throughout the hours of darkness and the two generals pushed on with the pace of men half their age. They successfully crossed the River Sieve before threading their way through the sleeping Borgo San Lorenzo, a town of over 16,000 people twelve miles northeast of Florence. At one point a searchlight beam suddenly stabbed out in the darkness, pinning them in the bright light. Both men froze, fearing they were about to be challenged, but after a few seconds the searchlight swung away over surrounding countryside and the two Britons hurried on.20

  Soon they found the main Bologna road, following it northeast. A quick glance at his watch showed O’Connor that they were making excellent time.21

  *

  Jim Hargest, standing outside Florence station, glanced nervously at his watch again.

  ‘Five minutes till the train departs,’ he murmured to Boyd, Miles and Combe. It was 12.30am.

  ‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ replied Boyd grimly. They strode into the station and made their way towards the platforms, tickets in their hands. The crowd was being funnelled through several gates that were manned by ticket inspectors and guarded by bored-looking Carabinieri. The four escapers shuffled forward with the crowd and presented their tickets. The inspectors barely looked at them, simply checked their tickets and waved them through. So far so good. In about an hour the duty officer at the castle would make his rounds. Hopefully the dummies would do their jobs and no alarm would be raised. By the time the inspection was finished, the four escapers would be well on their ways north.

  The platform was cold and damp, and there was no train waiting for the two teams. They waited and waited, scared to sit down in case they were drawn into conversation with other travellers, but increasingly exhausted by the ordeal. Hargest and the others constantly glanced at their watches, but still no train appeared. At 1.30am Hargest turned to Boyd, placing his hand over his mouth as he spoke.

  ‘Night-time check,’ he murmured. Boyd looked at his watch and nodded. If those dummies failed to pass muster, the station would soon be crawling with troops looking for them. It was one of the obvious places to begin casting the net for escaped prisoners of war. Stamping his feet to try to keep warm, Hargest looked along the lit tracks beside the platform. Still no damned train.

  *

  Captain Pederneschi, accompanied by a sergeant, tramped up the stone steps to the next level of bedrooms, his way lit by a handheld torch. It was 1.30am and the castle was deathly quiet. The sergeant opened the first door on the left and Pederneschi shone his torch inside. A figure lay asleep beneath a mosquito net. The security officer moved on. It was the same in each room. Everything was in order. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day and he was due to come off duty once he had completed his check of the orderlies’ accommodation. Pederneschi turned and, followed by the sergeant, tramped off towards another part of the castle.

  General Neame lay on his back in his darkened room, his ears straining as he listened to Pederneschi’s jackboots clumping away down the corridor. He smiled – the Italian had bought it; the dummies had passed muster. Neame thought of his friends who had escaped and wondered how they were getting along. He also thought of the new day to come and the challenges he and the remaining prisoners would face. Neame stared at the ceiling. It was a long time before sleep came.

  *

  Shortly after Captain Pederneschi began his inspection the Milan train finally puffed into Florence Station. Hargest glanced at his watch – 1.45am. ‘So much for Fascist efficiency,’ he thought. Every compartment was crammed to capacity and the corridors were full as well. As soon as the train squealed to a shaky halt the several hundred people who were waiting on the platform surged forward in a dense mass of clamouring, arguing and shoving humanity, each determined to board. The people trying to get off the train stood little chance, and Hargest and the three other escapers were swept along in this confusion towards a carriage. Such was the level of overcrowding that some passengers even boarded through the carriage windows. The escaped officers tucked their bags securely under their arms and, using their shoulders, bulled their ways on to the train. Boyd found himself miraculously inside the crowded corridor of a carriage and quickly spotted Jim Hargest at the other end. The train did not linger; shortly after arriving it puffed out of Florence, the previously raucous and fractious passengers settling down, and soon the corridor was filled with laughter and the melodic flow of Italian affability.

  The problem was the very friendliness of the average Italian. Jim Hargest found himself pushed up against a Carabiniere, who suddenly decided to engage him in conversation. Hargest ignored his first attempt, but the Carabiniere was insistent and, tugging at Hargest’s sleeve, asked him another question. Realising that his poor Italian was a complete giveaway, but also recognising that to ignore his questioner would only make him suspicious, Hargest fell back on a carefully worked-out ruse. He leaned closer to the Carabiniere and whispered in hoarse Italian: ‘I’m sorry, but I am very deaf.’ The Carabiniere nodded, shrugged his shoulders, then turned away and began chatting to another man.22

  The distance from Florence to Bologna, where the escapers would have to change trains for Milan, was 45 miles. The train was fast, but not fast enough, arriving at 3.00am. The Bologna to Milan train was supposed to depart at 3.00am, and the escapers were terrified that they would miss their connection. But they had reckoned without wartime railways in Italy. On arrival at Bologna station another interminable wait began on the cold platform for the delayed train. The delays were a cause for serious concern. Come 11.00am, the escapers fully expected to be noted as missing from the castle. It seemed inconceivable that the Italian officer who inspected them at morning roll call in the dining room could miss six officers. Then the alert would be issued and the train stations would suddenly be blockaded by soldiers and Carabinieri carrying the escaped officers’ descriptions and tasked with inspecting the papers of travellers. The infernal delays meant that Boyd, Hargest, Miles and Combe were practically half a day behind schedule. They were supposed to have been arriving at Milan at 6.00am and Lake Como, near the Swiss frontier, at 8.00am. In their original plan, worked out from purloined intelligence at the castle, they would have crossed the frontier around the time the Italians realised that they were missing, and before an alert could be fully put into effect.

  The wait on the platform at Bologna station was very uncomfortable for the four middle-aged escapers. They had missed a night’s sleep and had not even managed to sit down since they entered the escape tunnel at the castle over eight hours before. It was imperative that they find some hot food and a drink to perk them up, so Hargest was left guarding the bags while the others scoured the station for refreshments. Before long someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Are these your bags?’23 asked a nosy Italian railway policeman. Hargest replied in the affirmative and the policeman just nodded and strolled off. It wasn’t the last question that he had to field in his schoolboy Italian, as several passengers asked him about trains and timetables. He was relieved when his friends reappeared, but they had failed to find any hot food
or drinks.

  The Milan train finally departed from Bologna at 5.20am. Getting aboard was the same dreadful scrimmage as at Florence, and it almost brought dire consequences for Brigadier Hargest. Just as he was hauling himself aboard a carriage, someone in the crowd pulled at his suitcase. Seconds later and Hargest was left holding only the broken handle – his case with his clothes, wine, food and tools had disappeared beneath the riotous crowd. He made a snap decision to retrieve it and launched himself like an enraged bull into the mass of humanity and by sheer force managed to find his case and climb back aboard the carriage. By the time he made it inside a corridor he was exhausted and starting to feel unwell. He reattached the handle to his case using a bootlace, pressed his back against a wall and tried to catch his breath. Looking around he saw Brigadier Miles at the other end of the corridor, also looking exhausted and ashen-faced, while Owen Boyd was wedged in about six feet behind Hargest.24

  *

  With the coming of dawn, Generals O’Connor and Carton de Wiart were still shadowing the Bologna road. One of De Wiart’s feet was hurting, and he cursed his stupidity in not joining the others for more escorted walks around the vicinity of the castle.

  ‘’Bout time for a feed, don’t you think, Connor?’25 said De Wiart, grimacing slightly from the pain in his foot.

  The two men branched off from the road and climbed up a little tree- and scrub-covered hillock where they gratefully stripped off their heavy rucksacks and sat down on the grass. De Wiart removed his boots. One of his big toes was badly blistered.

  ‘We’ll take a breather for a few hours,’ said O’Connor. ‘We’re pretty well concealed from the road, I think.’

  The two men broke out some of their rations. They had covered over fifteen miles on foot since breaking out of the castle, and intended to push on once rested.

  *

  Aboard the Bologna to Milan train the journey seemed interminable, and unlike O’Connor and De Wiart, Brigadiers Hargest, Miles and Combe and Air Vice-Marshal Boyd were powerless to increase their speed or deviate from the route. They were trapped aboard the slow-moving and horrendously overcrowded train and becoming increasingly conscious of the time issue. Jim Hargest found himself buttonholed by a little old Italian man who was determined to chat. Hargest again deployed his deaf act, whereupon the old man started making jokes at Hargest’s expense to the carriage in general. The very last thing Hargest wanted to be was the centre of attention, but he couldn’t move away. ‘He was a mean little man,’ recalled Hargest, ‘and I would have loved to wring his neck.’26

  The train regularly jerked to a halt at stations along the way to pick up or deposit passengers. In preparation for the journey Hargest had committed to memory the names of the major towns along the route, so at each halt he took care to mentally note the station names. First was Modena, followed by Parma, Piacenza, and then Lodi.27 Finally the train steamed lazily over a bridge spanning the fast-flowing and wide Po River and on to the Plain of Lombardy. The sky grew dark and overcast and soon heavy rain battered the carriage windows like flung sand.

  The atmosphere inside the carriage, in spite of the weather, was jolly and the Italians chattered away telling stories and jokes. At one point a young couple tried to draw Hargest into a joke they were telling to the carriage in general, when the little old man suddenly interjected. ‘It’s no use talking to him,’ said the old man, pointing to Hargest who had a sickly smile plastered across his face. ‘He’s deaf. Anyway, I think he’s a German.’28

  *

  ‘Right, Carton, let’s get cracking,’ announced Dick O’Connor after they had rested for three or four hours. They packed up their kit, stood, and shouldered their heavy rucksacks. ‘I’m afraid we’ll be bushwhacking from now on,’ said O’Connor. They couldn’t afford to follow the main Bologna road any longer as the chances of running into police or Carabinieri were simply too great. Instead, the two generals would go cross-country, ‘up hill and down dale’,29 as De Wiart would recall, through pretty rolling countryside and the occasional village. The months of intensive fitness training that the two men had put in on the keep staircases paid off, notwithstanding Carton de Wiart’s blister. For some of that period O’Connor in particular had been up and down those stone steps 75 times a day, ‘which in height added up to between 3,000 and 4,000 ft – a very boring performance!’.30 Now the two men with a combined age of 115 were back eating up the miles towards their target frontier crossing at Tirano.31 O’Connor had his rolled umbrella tied to the top of his pack, while De Wiart made full use of his stout walking stick, which he had relied on to help him keep his balance since losing an eye.

  *

  Jim Hargest glanced at his wristwatch and silently cursed. From Milan, the four escapers had planned to catch the 8.00am train to Como near the Swiss frontier. From Como it was a six-mile hike to the border town of Chiasso and freedom. But as the train finally pulled into Milan’s vast main station Hargest knew that they had in all probability missed their connection, leaving them 40 miles short of Switzerland. Hargest glanced at Miles, who was standing close by. When their eyes met, Hargest briefly glanced back at his watch and then shook his head. Miles looked miserable. It was 8.20am on 30 March 1943 when a gloomy Hargest, Boyd, Miles and Combe finally disembarked from the train in Milan.32

  CHAPTER 15

  ___________________

  Elevenses

  ‘I watched Boyd and Miles wilt and go grey, and my hip was troubling me a good deal.’

  Brigadier James Hargest

  ‘So, what now?’ asked Brigadier Reg Miles in a low voice. He was standing inside Milan’s huge main station with Jim Hargest, Owen Boyd and John Combe. It was dangerous to stand around too long in discussion, but they were in a quandary. It was 8.30am on 30 March 1943 and the clock was ticking. The escapers knew that they only had until 11.00am before the alarm would be raised at Vincigliata Castle when the Italians finally noticed that six officers were missing from roll call. In two-and-a-half hours the Italian authorities would be informed, and within three-and-a-half at most their descriptions and photographs would begin to be circulated to all police, Carabinieri, army posts and border crossings.

  ‘The Como train has definitely departed,’ said Hargest, rubbing his tired eyes. ‘Let’s find out when the next one is due.’

  The little group split up and mingled with the hundreds of passengers and staff that were milling around the huge, echoing station. Miles quickly examined a train timetable before drifting back once more into a loose huddle with the others.

  ‘Next train to Como isn’t until twelve hundred hours,’ he said. They all knew that by noon the Italian operation to find them would be in full swing.

  ‘We can’t hang around here for another three-and-a-half hours,’ murmured Boyd.

  ‘Look,’ said Hargest, ‘we’re about 40 miles from the frontier. Lets take a taxi as far along the Como road as we can.’1

  ‘And then what?’ asked Boyd, his brow creased.

  ‘We walk,’ said Hargest flatly.

  This idea was vetoed as too risky. They had neither the energy nor the kit for such an undertaking. And they would stick out like sore thumbs on the main roads once the Italians started hunting for them.

  ‘Well then, it will have to be the train. I’ll buy us four tickets. We can wait on the platform,’ said Miles. The others agreed and Miles went off to the ticket office, returning a few minutes later. But when they tried to enter the platform gate, hoping to rest and disappear from view until the train came, the guard told them to come back at noon.2 The four escapers split up and wandered around for a while trying to think of a solution before coalescing again.

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Combe quietly. ‘I remember hearing that there is a private railway line that goes up to Como from the Gardo di Nord.’ This was quite far away across Milan. The others looked unconvinced.

  ‘Well, it’s worth a try,’ said Combe sharply. ‘It’s certainly better than standing around here all mornin
g and waiting to get caught.’

  ‘How do we get to the North Station?’ asked Miles.

  ‘We’ll take a tram,’ replied Combe. ‘They run right past the front of this station. I suggest we break into our respective teams and make our own ways there.’

  Combe glanced around and immediately noticed a youngish man in civilian clothes and a fedora hat staring at the group. He looked away when he caught Combe’s eyes, but when Combe looked back the man was staring again as he leaned against a wall. Combe decided to get moving.3 He and Boyd walked outside and headed for a tram that was just starting to pull away. Hargest and Miles followed them to the piazza and watched as their friends ran across, each of them boarding the tram from a different end of a carriage as it began to move.4 They didn’t notice the Italian man jog quickly over and also board at the back of the carriage.

  ‘We’ll give them a few minutes, then follow,’ said Hargest to Miles, who nodded solemnly.

  After a suitable period of waiting, Hargest and Miles walked down to the tram stop and boarded the next vehicle that came along. They felt good – they were moving again and they had a plan. Hargest held on to an overhead rail and looked out of the window. He was tired but captivated by Milan. He stared intently as the tram bumped and ground down the street past La Scala and the famous cathedral.

  *

  Boyd and Combe arrived outside the North Station at about 9.50am. Like everywhere else it was busy with people coming and going. They went inside and waited, hoping that Hargest and Miles would shortly join them. They tried to act normal, waiting with their suitcases on the floor in front of them, just two middle-aged travellers going about their lawful business. Combe discreetly glanced around. People were queuing for tickets or standing chatting, while the usual uniformed railway officials and police stood around and a janitor cleaned part of the floor with a mop. But then Combe saw the young man from the main station again. And he had definitely seen Combe and Boyd.