by Tom Carver
Innumerable times I measured the distance between myself and the lieutenant, wondering whether I could catch him a clip on the chin before he fired his revolver into my stomach. There were German soldiers in the truck besides the driver, but I thought we could probably deal with them if we knocked the lieutenant out. But a really favourable opportunity never presented itself, so we arrived at Deutsches Afrika Korps HQ which at that time was south of Mersa. We could see tanks of the DAK engaged in an armoured battle about 2000 yards to the south, but unfortunately our fellows did not penetrate any nearer that day.
It was about 10.30am when we arrived at the HQ and I had had only a biscuit since 0200 so when they offered some sandwiches and ersatz coffee I found it very welcome and so did my driver. Hugh would only take a little coffee. After about an hour they took us over to the Intelligence Staff Officer’s caravan where we were searched and interrogated. They had taken my notebook from me whilst I was trying to get rid of it on the truck and I regret to say it contained some names of officers in the Eighth Army. This made me feel more miserable than ever.
Sitting on the bench outside the intelligence officer’s caravan, Richard wondered anxiously how much information Rommel’s Intelligence Corps had about Monty. Would they know that he had a son and two stepsons? Did they know what their names were or where they were serving? Monty had only very recently risen to the top levels of the British army. Richard hoped that the intelligence dossier on him had not yet been fully assembled.
I thought we were in for a stiff interrogation but after the usual formal questions (name, rank and number and unit, which we didn’t give) the IO shut up and amazing to say we were never questioned again. The Germans always wear their decorations in the full and this Intelligence Staff Officer was an amazing sight in the middle of the desert having some large green star on his breast and something else around his neck. We were then asked if we needed baths and said “No”, so we continued to sit outside the IO’s caravan in the sun and at last I began to feel warm. About 1400 we were put on a truck and taken off to Panzer Armee HQ which was then not far from Sollum.
The fact that he had a different name from Monty had saved Richard. The Germans never made the connection. Had they done so, the High Command would almost certainly have ordered Richard to be flown to Berlin and kept as hostage as a way of demoralising Monty. Inside the thick walls of Colditz Castle, the Germans had already collected an odd assortment of Allied relatives and offspring, including a nephew of Churchill and the son of Field Marshal Haig.
Twelve hundred miles away, at the Lord Mayor’s luncheon at the Mansion House in the City of London, Churchill celebrated the victory of El Alamein. “This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning,” he intoned. Churchill was right; El Alamein and the far bloodier defeat of Hitler’s army which was occurring at Stalingrad at the same time proved to be the tipping point. Though the Second World War still had another 30 months to run, the German army never regained the upper hand from that moment on.
*
That night – 7th November 1942 – Rommel pulled his forces out of Mersa Matruh. Richard and Hugh spent the night lying in a six foot by six foot trench guarded by two sentries.
I didn’t care much about sleep but thought only of the possibilities of escape. They seemed to be pretty poor, as it was a bright night and we had two sentries over us. In the morning when we thought we would drift slowly back through POW cages, we were taken instead to an aerodrome and flown back to Tobruk. There was the usual dust storm blowing and I thought we might be able to creep off in it but we were very closely guarded. We were taken to the Control Hut where we waited for about an hour.
Then we were taken out again under guard of a really unpleasant Nazi NCO who looked hate in every pore. Indian prisoners were being made to carry petrol about and they looked pretty miserable. We were pushed into a transport plane which was carrying empty petrol tins. It wasn’t very comfortable and when we got high up it was pretty cold. Our guard and rear gunner gave us some ersatz chocolate which was very good and some biscuits. After five hours flying we came down over flat country covered in olive groves which I thought looked like the heel of Italy and I was right.
Richard and Hugh were taken to a large holding camp outside Brindisi where there was an argument between the Germans and the Italians over what to do with them since the camp was for soldiers and not officers. Eventually the Italians decided to keep them separate and put them in the sick bay in recognition of their officer status. An Italian guard came in and asked them what they would like for dinner:
We nearly fell down in astonishment but recovered sufficiently to agree to a large plate of macaroni stew, bread, cheese and vino.
It was the best meal they had had in several days, but after they had eaten, gloom descended. It was a violent shock to be removed so suddenly from the noise of battle and the frenetic activity of the headquarters, just when victory was in their grasp. Richard lay in the sick bay, going over and over the moment of his capture in his mind and thinking how he could have avoided it. He imagined Monty and the headquarters pushing forward, leaving the two of them further and further behind.
We were now well and truly captives, locked up in a small room in a camp surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by sentries in the enemy’s country. Up until that time we had been kept on the move and as long as we were on the move there had always seemed to be some hope of escape however remote, but now it would mean a long and arduous job probably to get out of camp and then the almost insuperable task of getting out of the country. We were doomed to the life of a POW for some time, possibly even for years!
The next morning they were ordered downstairs, where they found a horse-drawn cart with a driver waiting in the rain. They squashed into the back with their guards and the cart ambled off; as they passed out of the hospital gates the reins of knotted rope broke, forcing everyone to dismount while they were repaired. By the time they arrived at Brindisi railway station, guards and prisoners alike were soaked through. From Brindisi they were taken in a first-class compartment 90 miles up the Adriatic coast to the small port of Bari.
It was dark by the time they got there and no one had any idea where they were supposed to go, so they waited on the platform with their guards. Eventually a small boy on a bicycle appeared out of the darkness.
We set off walking through the dark wet streets guided by the little boy and carrying our bundles, a lugubrious little procession. In the dark the boy lost the way and took us such a long way round that by the time we did eventually arrive at the camp we had walked about 10 km and the guards cursed the boy heartily.
The new camp was a miserable-looking compound of huts surrounded by two rows of barbed wire. Richard and Hugh were shoved into a long single-storey hut with no glass in the windows. The next morning they woke to see clumps of grey figures with blankets draped over their shoulders pacing around inside the wire. They learnt that they were in a transit camp, where they were supposed to be for only a few weeks. But some of the inmates, it turned out, had been there several months, awaiting deportation to other camps.
The conditions were grim; the single electric bulb was too dim to read by and the cold weather made them permanently hungry. Many of the inmates were still dressed in the thin shirts and shorts they had been captured in in the desert. For breakfast they were given a small helping of stewed onions and ersatz coffee; for lunch they had a bread roll and a thin soup made out of pumpkin and the same for supper.
If Monty had any regrets about ordering his stepson on such a foolhardy mission, he didn’t share them with anyone. After all, he had been only 24 hours out in his assessment: Rommel had pulled out of Mersa Matruh on the night of the 7th rather than the 6th. But his private correspondence revealed his sadness at losing Richard; on 8th November 1942 he wrote to David’s guardian, Phyllis Reynolds, in England: “I regret to say that my stepson Dick Carver was captured by the Germans at Matruh o
n 7th November. He was on a forward reconnaissance in the early morning. I am very sad about it as I was devoted to him and he to me. Would you make enquiries through the Red Cross as to where he is? When we know where he is we must arrange for a proper and regular despatch of parcels; but it is too early to do that yet; we must first locate his prison camp.”
*
I suppose someone must have lent us a razor as I remember shaving…
The next few days in Richard’s diary are written as if they were in a dream as he struggled to comprehend that he was really a prisoner of war. No one had any idea how long the war would drag on or what would happen to them. Even if they managed to escape, where would they go? They were stuck in enemy territory separated by the sea from their colleagues in the Eighth Army and hundreds of miles from England. The best they could hope for was that Monty would sweep through North Africa and then turn his attention to Italy, but it seemed a long shot.
Richard found the best way to cope with the depression was not to think about freedom or the past but to focus on the present and how to improve the conditions in their hut. They fashioned a mess table by taking one board from each person’s bunk, then adding a tablecloth – a rough piece of hessian – and some knives and forks. One corner of the room they allocated as the “card room” for gambling. At the other end, they held lectures; each prisoner was given the opportunity to describe their capture and their version of the battle as they saw it. The chance to explain offered a form of therapy. In syndicates of fives they shared a razor, a mirror and a comb. They appointed a Captain Mickelthwait to pester the camp commandant for changes to their standard of living.
One day the commandant surprised them by agreeing to hear their complaints. All 150 officers turned up and Captain Mickelthwait, speaking through an interpreter, listed their grievances as 1. Clothes. 2. Red Cross parcels. 3. If this was a transit camp, shouldn’t they be moved on? 4. The poor conditions in the tented accommodation where the other ranks were housed.
PG75, at Bari
Since the interpreter was clearly telling the commandant something very different to what he was hearing, it was a fruitless conversation until the commandant agreed to let one of the officers speak directly to him in Italian.
An officer stood up who could speak Italian and let him have it. The commandant began gesticulating and getting furious. Finally the officer said that we treated the Italian prisoners much better in England than they were treating us, whereupon the Comandante pretty well lost his head and certainly his temper and the meeting broke up in chaos. The next day we heard that 30 officers were to be moved to another camp forthwith. Whether this order was a sequel to our meeting we never knew.
On 29th November – three weeks after his capture – Richard was among the 30 who were marched back to the railway station and put on a train. His spirits immediately lifted: “We were all like schoolboys for we felt the change couldn’t be for the worse.”
The train took them from Bari over the snow-covered Apennines. It was exhilarating to sit and watch the scenery go by; just to be on the move once more gave Richard hope. As they trundled along, the senior Italian officer in charge of the guards gave them an impromptu lecture on the theme of “povera Italia” and how she had been forced into the war because she had no raw materials of her own and the Allies were blockading her. From Naples they travelled slowly north up the coast, passing through Rome in the middle of the night, until finally reaching the town of Arezzo 40 miles south of Florence just as dawn was breaking.
At Arezzo, they were ordered out and caught a little train that chugged up the Arno valley to Poppi, their final destination. As they were marched from the station, they could see the twelfth-century castle built by the Guidi family which towered over the red roofs of the town. They stopped outside a large building on top of a nearby hill surrounded by tall cypresses. The name above the doorway announced that it had once been a convent called the Villa Ascensione. It seemed an incongruous name for a prisoner-of-war camp. They were greeted by four British officers, Lt Commander Bowker, Captain Turner, Flight Lieutenants Spence and Pringlewood, who turned out to be virtually the only inmates of the camp. A few weeks earlier a large New Zealand detachment had been moved out.
To our astonishment, the Italian authorities served us cocoa and biscuits as soon as we got in the door. We soon discovered that this was a very different place to Bari. In fact in contrast to that stinking place it appeared a perfect paradise. There were Red Cross parcels and a limited amount of clothing. We had beds with mattresses and slept in dormitories of 6. There was a little garden inside the wire with the basketball pitch and a short exercise path.
The town of Poppi, with Villa Ascensione, the prison camp, in front
Richard liked the intimacy of the camp – there were only 90 prisoners, a big contrast to the large impersonal transit camp. The trauma of the capture was receding and he was drawn by the beauty of where he had ended up. He had never been to Italy before and he began to take a close interest in his surroundings. He asked one of the Italian guards to teach him about the area. From the top-floor windows, the guard pointed out the medieval walled town of Poppi in the north dominated by the old castello where Dante was thought to have lived and to have written The Divine Comedy. In the east they looked across water meadows and an undulating landscape of farms and vineyards down into the valley to La Verna where the guard said St Francis had received his stigmata; in the south lay Bibbiena in front of a range of snow-capped mountains. It was a strange place to be a prisoner. He knew that he was fortunate compared to many others.
To his surprise, Richard found that he almost enjoyed the routine of camp life. The food was sufficient. He could rest and read. While others were itching to escape and continue the war, he welcomed the peace and isolation. The odd traditions of the place – all the meals were announced by Flight Lieutenant Pringlewood bellowing “Tallyho!” at the top of his voice– the communal dining; the similarities of class and backgrounds and the routines of study– reminded him of being back at Cambridge as an undergraduate.
“We developed something of a family spirit,” he wrote approvingly in his diary. Somehow he managed to keep a list of all the officers in Prigione di Guerra (PG) 38, carrying it through all the adventures that he subsequently endured, at some risk to himself and those on the list. He recorded their regiments and even their nicknames: “Pop” Morrison, “Fanny” Fane-Hervey and a Colonel MacDonnell who was known as “The Gloomy Dean”.
Richard was asked to be “Professor of Studies” and “Officiating Padre”, which he was happy to do. He organised two lectures a week in farming, French, German, Arabic and Italian.
We held our first service on Christmas Day in the dining room. I chalked the words of the hymns up on the ping-pong table, for we had only one hymn-book in the camp and only one Army prayer-book. Jimmy Hannah played the piano and Hugh read the lessons. I gave a short address. There was a very good attendance, I think about half the camp so I was encouraged to go on. After that I took the service every Sunday until Palm Sunday when padres Lawrence and Guinness took over.
At Christmas I insisted on putting up decorations and with the help of others in my room we made a very good show of the dining room. Coloured paper from the Red Cross parcels was used for streamers and branches of fir trees hung on the walls. I painted a little menu card for each table.
Richard’s insistence on decorating the Villa showed how at home he felt there. He had ceased to see it as a prison. But he was aware that others did not share the same enthusiasm and he was careful to continue joining in the heated discussions that took place about how and when to escape. There had been several attempts in the past. Some had tried to climb out of the windows on the side of the Villa that faced the road where the barbed wire ran very close to the house. Two had escaped that way by climbing down knotted sheets only to be recaptured after three days. A mad parachutist had had the idea of running out of one of the windows off a plank and over the
sentry’s head using a sheet as an impromptu parachute to break his fall but he’d somehow never found the right moment.
It was decided that the only feasible way out was to sink a shaft down into the floor of the dining room and dig a passageway through an existing door in the outside wall, which was half concealed below the ground. That would get them into the garden and past the first line of wire. They would then be able to get over the second wire under darkness. It was slow and tiring work since all they had to dig with was an old table knife and a broken spade. They kept a table covered in a tablecloth nearby that they could quickly move over the hole if the lookout warned that guards were on the way. They seldom managed more than a couple of hours a day.
Disposal of the soil was the main difficulty. First we tried the garden but the “Caribs” [the carabinieri, the Italian police who helped to guard the camps] began to take too much of an interest. After that we had to carry it all the way up to the top floor in Red Cross boxes and deposit it under the floorboards of the attic.
One afternoon, they noticed the comandante scrutinising the half-submerged doorway on the outside wall. He appeared to be looking for some evidence of tampering; perhaps the guards had been tipped off. The comandante went inside and down into the dining room. They just had time to pull Richard out of the tunnel and move the table and tablecloth over the hole in the floor. Richard sat at the table, with earth under his fingernails, conscious of the comandante examining him closely. Eventually, without saying anything, the comandante turned and left. Richard was sure he suspected something and that it was only the fear of being laughed at if he was wrong that had stopped him peering underneath the table.