Where the Hell Have You Been?

by Tom Carver

  The earl explained that he was General Neame’s ADC and that he had escaped from a POW camp near Florence. Hoping for the same kind of service as the earl, Richard and the Dean were disappointed to be shown into a cold cell with two mattresses on the floor and no fireplace. Other POWs had clearly been before them, for the floor was littered with old tins and newspaper. “I didn’t realise that Franciscans were so attuned to the requirements of the British aristocracy,” the Dean muttered sourly.

  Two days later they found themselves looking down on a familiar sight – the small neat walls of Poppi and the Villa Ascensione standing on the next hill. “It was a rather strange feeling to look down on it from the outside, when we had so often looked up from the inside.” They had been on the run for 25 days and in that time they estimated they had walked at least 200 miles, allowing for diversions and wrong turns – eight miles a day.

  “Doesn’t sound very much,” murmured the Dean as they sat in the woods looking down on the little railway line that had delivered them to the gates of Poppi from Bari.

  “Piano, piano ma sicuro, sicuro – better to go slowly but safely,” said Richard. “I don’t want to get recaptured.”

  Apart from the earl, they had not encountered any other POWs. It was as if they were travelling in some bubble separated in time and distance from the carnage that they knew was happening across the continent of Europe. They listened to the bells of La Verna calling the faithful to prayer – the Tuscan countryside, flooded with evening light, could not have looked less like a battlefield. “This can’t last,” said Richard.

  *

  As October wore on, the weather grew colder and the countryside became steeper and wilder. The wind turned into a raw angry presence that harassed and harried them everywhere they went. Some days they walked for several hours through rainstorms without seeing a building or person; when they reached a cottage they would shelter in a barn hoping that the farmer would take pity on them and let them into the kitchen to dry out.

  Transcript of daily entries from “The Dean’s” diary

  At every opportunity Richard would ask if there was a radio and then sit patiently turning the dial through the squelches and the static for any fragment of English voices or the reassuring notes of the BBC’s Lillibullero theme tune while the Dean puffed his pipe by the fire, happily oblivious to the fact that he was sitting in the farmer’s favourite chair. The news of the war was not getting any better. Between the Germans and the Eighth Army somewhere to the south lay the Gran Sasso, the highest peak of the Apennines. Richard had hoped that Monty and the Allies would reach the Gran Sasso before winter set in, eliminating the need for them to cross it, but now that seemed impossible. Even in summer the mountain was a daunting obstacle to cross but it was impossible to navigate in winter. There seemed little choice but to press on.

  Over the next few days, they noticed that food was becoming steadily scarcer and the farms increasingly poor. They left behind the flat valleys littered with medieval towns and villages and found themselves walking higher into the mountains. No longer was the countryside filled with vines and fruit; there were long fingers of steep meadowland sliced on either side by dark wooded ravines. They crossed a fast mountain stream where they saw the head of a sheep wedged in the rocks and the body 40 feet below, torn apart by the force of the water.

  In vast chestnut forests they swept up handfuls of nuts and mushrooms into their bags and began lighting fires in the day to keep warm, roasting their chestnuts. It was now hours between farms. And they had walked off the maps they had carried since camp – Richard felt curiously blind as if they were wandering in a limbo. From then on, they had to rely on Richard’s compass for direction. It was a fragile instrument that had to be flattered rather than bullied into service.

  When they did encounter farms, the inhabitants were usually quietly hospitable, and the Dean rarely missed an opportunity to enthuse about a good meal: “11th October. 33rd day on the run. We came to a farm perched on the end of a promontory. It was a communal farm with several families occupying one building, somewhere near Bivio. They used one kitchen and all fed together. The place was practically in darkness, except for what light the burning twigs gave off, supplemented later by an oil boat lamp and a very temperamental acetylene lamp which judging by the noises it made might have exploded any minute. One by one the party began to assemble, the men folk as usual occupying the available chairs near the fire.

  “The cauldron for so large a party, for I think we must have been in the region of twenty, was of appropriate size. The water was boiling in the massive vessel hanging over the fierce fire by the heavy chain, supported somewhere up the chimney. A quantity of dried beans and peas mixed with barley was poured in, well stirred and allowed to boil. The cauldron was removed and placed on the table. Our plates were first filled to the brim and passed to us, the other men were then given helpings, the women recovering a lesser portion. Some of the women, unable to obtain a place at the table, ate their suppers with their children standing in the background.”

  Their paths continued upwards for another three days.

  “Wind has dropped a bit but still pretty cold,” Richard wrote, “probably because we are so high. Climbed over a mountain which cannot have been less than 7,000 feet and got lost on the top of a pass in the cloud.”

  As they were resting near the summit a mist swept in, blotting out all visibility. They stood up and walked on what they thought was the right path but after ten minutes, the Dean claimed he’d seen the same rock twice. From his pocket, Richard pulled out the little tin and extracted his compass; sure enough it showed that they were heading back the way they had come.

  Up ahead they could see the peak of the Gran Sasso already covered in a fresh coating of powder. They fingered their thin cotton suits nervously; the plan for going south depended on the Allies being able to fight their way north in time. In their naivety they had left Fontanellato camp with hardly any supplies, and now, more than a month later, they still had far to go.

  At high altitude, these farms barely had enough to feed themselves and what little extra they had they were husbanding for the cold nights that lay ahead. The peasants were also becoming increasingly nervous about being caught. Although Richard and the Dean could not have imagined it on their long isolated walks through the woods, from all over Italy, thousands of German and Allied soldiers were closing in on a front line that ran roughly from Monte Cassino in the west across the country to the Adriatic coast. Their paths were about to converge with hundreds of escaped prisoners who were also heading to the front in the hoping of reaching the Allied side.

  One of them was Carol Mather, Richard’s old childhood friend whom he had encountered in PG49. He had walked out of Fontanellato with all the others, but as soon as the POWs had arrived at the ditch, he and another prisoner had slipped away on their own without waiting for any orders. They’d walked south as fast as possible and had managed to get through the mountains of Abruzzo while the weather was still warm and there were still shepherds on the high pastures to give them food. They slipped through the German lines before they were fully established and reached Monty’s headquarters by the Biferno River on 15th October 1943. The whole trip had taken six weeks.

  The map of his escape route, from Richard’s wartime diary

  On the 19th October Monty wrote to the Reynoldses, David’s guardians: “Carol Mather has escaped from his POW camp in Italy, came in through my front, and is now safe and well at my Army HQ. Will you telephone the Mathers and let her know; I think it is Putney 4259. I have written to Louis Mather but she may get your message first if he is away. Dick escaped at the same time, but they got separated and Carol does not know where he is. I have great hopes he may appear soon. There are of course a great many POW wandering about Italy in peasants’ clothes, and the Germans are trying hard to collect them in and have offered very large rewards to the Italians to give them away.

  “You should stop sending parcels t
o Dick until we know more as to his whereabouts.”

  In fact, Richard and the Dean were 100 miles away but the gap was closing all the time, as they kept moving south and Monty continued his advance north. Somewhere below Paranesi, they came across an ominous sign: an Italian artillery gun lying beside the road, mangled and disfigured. The locals told them that instead of surrendering their position like their colleagues, a few Italian soldiers had turned the gun on the Germans and opened fire. For one brave hour they became partisans, until the Germans stormed their position and blew up the gun.

  Waiting in a ravine about to cross the Teramo–L’Aquila road, the sound of a car made them hesitate. Round the corner came two German motorbikes, followed by a staff car with a general and his staff officer in the back. Richard and the Dean could see the medals glinting on their coats. Behind them came a truck with a machine gun mounted in the back and the crew standing beside it ready to open fire.

  The next morning, they were chased out of a barn before dawn by the owner, who claimed that a German convoy was approaching. The farmer said that German patrols had recently raided the village across the river. Richard and the Dean fled up the side of a hill and eventually arrived at a small farmhouse belonging to an elderly shepherd and his wife. All this couple could offer Richard and the Dean to eat were chestnuts and lard. She was about to wrap them in an official-looking piece of paper when Richard noticed the signature of Kesselring on the paper. “Cos’è questo?” he asked. “What is this?”

  “It’s a notice from the Germans,” said the shepherd’s wife. “We were ordered to pin it up in the village last week.”

  The poster described a long list of forbidden activities and offences. The punishment for assisting British or American prisoners was death by firing squad and the burning of any farm that had harboured them. As they read it out, the shepherd’s wife laughed and finished rolling up their small gift. Richard was stunned by the unflinching bravery of these people. After they had eaten the lard and chestnuts, Richard and the Dean used the poster as toilet paper.

  12.

  EACH MORNING, RICHARD noticed that the saucer of snow lying in one of the shoulders of the Gran Sasso had grown in the night. The cold and malnourishment began to wear away at their reserves of energy; they felt tired as soon as they started in the mornings.

  When Richard knocked on doors to ask for food and shelter, he encountered more and more excuses, often accompanied by a glimmer of fear in the faces of those who stared back at him – we have already eaten, a German patrol came past this morning, we looked after a prisoner the night before… The days of leisurely walks and replete suppers of pasta and a smoke afterwards began to fade as they found themselves scavenging in the fields for the occasional potato that had been missed by the peasants.

  Once a shepherd and his child offered to share their lunch with the Dean after they spotted him looking hungrily at their picnic; the gesture shamed him into declining.

  On Friday 22nd October, as they were clambering across a stream early one morning, a farmer in a nearby field spotted them and ran after them. “Some American parachutists are hiding at a nearby farm,” he said. When Richard arrived at the farm, he was surprised to find the parachutists still in bed. They said they were there to help organise POWs in preparation for evacuation. But they seemed listless and depressed.

  “The Germans are massing in strength on the Pescara River,” they explained. “The Italians around here all tell you it’s now impossible to get through to the Allied lines this winter.”

  General Kesselring’s defensive lines across Italy were starting to pay off. The first line following the Volturno River had been hastily assembled in the summer soon after Mussolini’s arrest; it had been intended only to delay the Allies long enough for the Germans to be able to build bigger defences further north. Next came the Barbara Line on the Trigno River, which ran into the sea just north of Termoli, then the Gustav Line on the Sangro River 30 miles north and finally the Caesar Line on the Pescara River 30 miles north further. Each one, built by the Organisation Todt, the engineering company of the Nazis, using thousands of conscripted Italian soldiers, consisted of more and more elaborate artillery positions and fortifications. The last two, Caesar and Gustav, were known collectively as the Winter Line.

  “Kesselring’s plan is to hold the Allies south of Rome long enough for winter to set in,” said the parachutists. “Once the snows come, it’ll be very hard for any Allied tanks to move. That will give him four months to bring in enough reinforcements to defend the Italian capital.” They advised Richard and the Dean to find a warm farm and stay put until spring, which is what they themselves were apparently doing. Large numbers of POWs were gathering behind the lines, unable to move through. Several of the farms Richard and the Dean tried were already full, and they were told that the Germans, unhappy about the presence of British soldiers behind their positions, were conducting house-to-house raids. Richard and the Dean debated their situation:

  The question is whether to go on, and risk the difficulties of food shortages and the increasing dangers of capture or stay put and hope our forces will arrive soon. After a short mental prayer for guidance I decided quite definitely in my own mind that the right thing was to go on, and the Dean agreed.

  They may have been heading straight towards the enemy but staying put seemed equally risky if not more so; sooner or later, someone would tip off the Germans. So long as they were moving they were still free.

  The next morning, as Richard and the Dean were walking down through a field of stubble near the village of Celiera, they saw a figure striding confidently up towards them. As he came closer, Richard thought he looked familiar. He realised that it was another POW, whom Richard had trained with at the start of his military career. His name was Major Gordon – for some reason neither Richard nor the Dean recorded his first name in their diaries – a big, ginger-haired Scottish officer from the Royal Signals Regiment.

  General Kesselring’s defensive lines across Italy

  Gordon told them that he had escaped from PG21, the camp in Chieti where the SBO had put guards on the gate to prevent anyone leaving. For two days, he had hidden in a tunnel while the Germans moved around above his head. Eventually the sounds had vanished and he had found himself alone, crept over the wall and disappeared into the hills. At that stage, he was less than 100 miles from the Allied lines and there were far fewer Germans in the area. But for reasons best known to himself, instead of heading south, he had decided to stay and appointed himself as protector for the other POWs in the area. He had mastered only a few words of Italian, which he spoke in a broad Glaswegian accent. Gordon agreed that the Pescara River was heavily guarded.

  “They’ve got sentries all along the north bank,” he said. “The best way out is by sea.”

  He said he had managed to make contact with the Eighth Army by sending a message on a fishing boat down the coast to the port of Termoli which had recently fallen to the Allies. This piece of news cheered Richard considerably. Termoli was less than 80 miles away. The Allies had replied with a message that they would be willing to evacuate some of the POWs. When Gordon heard this, he had ordered one of the officers, a Captain “Badger” Light, to go down to the coast to organise the evacuation while he rounded up groups of prisoners. Badger Light had not yet returned, but Richard and the Dean agreed to join in the evacuation plan; it seemed like one that might work. Certainly, the prospect of a short if hazardous boat ride was more appealing than a long uncertain hike over the mountains.

  Two days passed. There was still no sign of Captain Light and Richard began to get anxious. As a back-up, he suggested that he and Gordon go down to reconnoitre the Pescara River to see if the reports of large numbers of German troops were true. They set off after dark and walked through the night. It had been agreed that Richard would take the western end of the river; Frank, an amiable Serb officer, the middle; and Gordon the east. Just before dawn, Richard could see in the distance flares being
dropped by Allied planes on the coast – it was the first sighting he’d had of his own troops since leaving Fontanellato nearly two months before. He stood in the middle of a field gazing at the silent pyrotechnics on the horizon.

  As it was getting light, he met a shepherd boy who guided him down to a spot close to the river where they were able to watch a road bridge; traffic seemed to be light and there were few guards. He was moving nearer to the road when a German patrol came around the corner. Richard squatted quickly down near the verge, pretending to be inspecting the crops in the field as it passed a few yards away. He then withdrew to a barn and waited for night to arrive.

  That evening he walked east until he came to a dam on the river where he found a house. An elderly woman let him stay in the attic and in the early hours her husband came home drunk, complaining loudly that the Germans had stolen his umbrella. The following night, Richard returned to Carpineto where the Dean was staying with the local schoolmaster. The others were already there. Frank the Serb described how he had persuaded an old woman to lead him across a bridge pretending to be his mother. They had walked right passed the German sentries without being challenged, had taken a look around and walked back. Gordon said that he found no place in his area where they could cross.

  As they were comparing notes in the schoolmaster’s kitchen, there was a knock at the door and in walked “Badger” Light, accompanied by two French commandos – “terrible-looking villains armed with sten guns” was the Dean’s description. When the commandos took off their tunics they revealed bandoleers of ammunition across their chests. The schoolmaster stepped back with a panic-stricken look on his face; it was one thing to be caught harbouring unarmed escapes, but these were combat soldiers. Light dumped a stock of maps and English cigarettes onto the farmhouse table, and announced that everything was in place. He described how he had smuggled himself down to Termoli on a fishing boat and had spent 24 hours there arranging the rescue operation.