Some Corner of a Foreign Field: Deaths Behind the Lines in Italy 1942-5

By Janet Kinrade Dethick

“Even after capture, the full horrors of war still persisted. Bombed and strafed by our own planes, and shelled by our own artillery, the words ‘For you the war is over, Tommy,’ had a hollow ring…November 1942, after five months in Suani Ben Adem, we sailed from Tripoli, en route to Naples. We were held in the hold of a coal boat, battened down, with only a few buckets for sanitation purposes. Packed in like sardines, we would have had no chance of survival, had the ship come under attack from the Royal Navy, not an uncommon occurrence.”

These are the words of Private Bill Blewitt, 1st Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters, captured near Gazala in the Western Desert. He survived his capture, but over a thousand did not.

Laid to rest alongside the battle casualties in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries in Italy are these prisoners of war. They died from neglected wounds or diseases, were accidentally or deliberately shot both inside and outside their camps or were victims of friendly fire incidents. Some lost their lives when trying to cross the mountains to freedom, and some were betrayed by spies. Some had taken up arms again, had fought with the partisans and had died alongside them. Others had been captured whilst on dangerous missions and summarily executed. Many, but not all, have a name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398408500

Janet Kinrade Dethick

Janet Kinrade Dethick was born in Derbyshire, England. After graduating from London University, she taught in schools on Merseyside, in Derbyshire and Sheffield, before becoming a Senior Lecturer in Human Studies, at the Sheffield College. Winning a bursary to study Italian, in Florence, led to a huge career change and she now lives in Italy, where for some years she has been researching the effects of the Second World War on the lives of ordinary people. On this theme she has published: The Trasimene Line, Cortona 1944 and a volume in Italian about prisoners of war in the region of Umbria.

Book preview

Some Corner of a

Foreign Field

Deaths Behind the Lines

in Italy 1942-5

Janet Kinrade Dethick

Austin Macauley Publishers

Some Corner of a Foreign Field

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Chapter One: Camps and Cemeteries

Chapter Two: Friendly Fire

Chapter Three: Hospitals and Illness

Chapter Four: Special Forces

Chapter Five: The Special Operations Executive

Chapter Six: Deaths Preceding and Immediately After the Armistice

Chapter Seven: Shot, Tricked and Betrayed The Post-Armistice Escapers

Chapter Eight: With the Partisans

Chapter Nine: Crossing the Alps

Chapter Ten: In Transit: The Camps and the Trains

Chapter Eleven: Unusual Cases

Chapter Twelve: Known Only to God

Chapter Thirteen: Epilogue

Appendix A

Appendix B

Endnotes

About the Author

Janet Kinrade Dethick was born in Derbyshire, England. After graduating from London University, she taught in schools on Merseyside, in Derbyshire and Sheffield, before becoming a Senior Lecturer in Human Studies, at the Sheffield College. Winning a bursary to study Italian, in Florence, led to a huge career change and she now lives in Italy, where for some years she has been researching the effects of the Second World War on the lives of ordinary people. On this theme she has published: The Trasimene Line, Cortona 1944 and a volume in Italian about prisoners of war in the region of Umbria.

Dedication

For Roy Hemington, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, without whose considerable help this untold story could never have been written.

Copyright Information ©

Janet Kinrade Dethick 2022

The right of Janet Kinrade Dethick to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398408494 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398408500 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Alessandro Tuzza (www.trenidicarta.it), Andrea D’Arrigo (Fondo Novascone), Wendy Dodds, Stewart Thomson, David Shepherd, Jane Fairweather, Pam Swanson and Charles Baker-Creswell for permission to use their photographs, and Chris E. Harris for supplying information on Major D.C.L. Shepherd.

The cover photo, which shows part of Bolsena War Cemetery, is my own. And the back cover photo, which shows Guardsman Robert H. Broughton, Coldstream Guards, is published by courtesy of David Broughton.

Prologue

In his unpublished memoirs, The Greatest Escape, Private William Blewitt, 1 Sherwood Foresters gives a telling description of what it was like to be a prisoner of war of the Italians in the summer and autumn of 1942.

Captured by the Germans whilst a Private with 1 Sherwood Foresters near Gazala in the Western Desert. Endured a waterless march to Tmimi, where I was handed over to the Italians. From there, it was a forced march of hundreds of miles to Libya, and many were killed or died on the way. Our anti-tank gun had been knocked out very early, on the morning of 6 June 1942, and even after capture, the full horrors of war still persisted. Bombed and strafed by our own planes, and shelled by our own artillery, the words ‘For you the war is over, Tommy,’ had a hollow ring. Worse was to come on that march in the desert. Many fainted through lack of water, especially, the walking wounded. Some Indian troops were shot trying to drink petrol! There was no respite, but always the promise of water kept us going. Tmimi was the Promised Land, but even there, the water shortage was acute, and the meagre rations went nowhere near slaking our thirsts. A new place became our goal as we trudged forever northwards, Suani Ben Adem, but in spite of all our hopes, Suani Ben Adem turned out to be even worse than Tmimi…November 1942, after five months in Suani Ben Adem, we sailed from Tripoli, en route to Naples. We were held in the hold of a coal boat, battened down, with only a few buckets for sanitation purposes. Packed in like sardines, we would have had no chance of survival had the ship come under attack from the Royal Navy, not an uncommon occurrence. The hold stank, and it was impossible to find a resting place on the steel plates. As we were all at starvation level, and as many were suffering from dysentery, it was a nightmare voyage…in Naples, the Italian newsmen, with their cameras, awaited us, and what a pitiable sight we were; all of us without any real clothing, the dysentery cases dressed only in pieces of blankets around their waists, their clothing having been used in an effort to keep themselves clean. What wonderful propaganda it must have been; the men of the Eighth Army in rags and starving from lack of food.

Unlike Private Blewitt, who escaped and was repatriated, other men from his battalion who had been captured in North Africa survived the horrors he has described only to die in Italy behind enemy lines and be laid to rest in seven different British and Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Private Joseph Edward Smith lies in Bari, Private Claude Leslie Warner in Florence, Privates John Thomas Wiswould, Arthur Cordall, Henry Alfred Smith and Amos Kirk in Caserta, Privates George William Dolby and Thomas William Needham in Ancona, Privates William Lambert, Thomas Henry Ball, Enoch Jackson and John Francis Terrett in Milan, Private Laurence Ernest Beardsley in Bolsena and Private Robert Crofts in Padua.

Eleven of these soldiers had been recovered from communal cemeteries where men whose deaths occurred in prisoner of war camps and hospitals had been temporarily buried. Two soldiers died in hospital from wounds sustained in a friendly fire incident. Another, the victim of a war crime, lies in a communal grave with the other two soldiers who were killed with him.

Too many men met their deaths behind enemy lines and rest in some corner of a foreign field. Members of the Special Forces, who were killed during operations or executed on Italian soil as required by Hitler’s Commando Order of 18 October 1942, shared the same fate.

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Chapter One

Camps and Cemeteries

On 1 September 1942, just seven weeks after the burial of Private Joseph Edward Smith in Bari communal cemetery, over one and a half thousand prisoners of war were registered as being present in the nearby prisoner of war camp at Torre Tresca. They formed almost two percent of the grand total of prisoners of war in Italian hands at that time. A document held in the Archives of the Italian Army in Rome gives the overall number of prisoners being held on that date as 76,706, of whom 27,229 were still in North Africa, and 1,477 in Greece, all of whom were awaiting shipment apart from 48.i Apart from a small number of Americans, Norwegians, Greeks, Free French and Slavs, all had been serving with the British and Commonwealth forces.

These prisoners were held in camps with the title campi di concentramento per prigionieri di guerra, which translates as ‘concentration camps for prisoners of war’, shortened in Italian documents to PG. Each camp was given a number by the Prisoner of War Office of the Ministry of Defence (Army), under whose jurisdiction it lay. Some prisoners were held in newly established or existing Italian military hospitals, designated H in Italian documents, from where they were transferred to prisoner of war camps as soon as their health permitted, or to local cemeteries in case of their decease. For example, the seriously ill from PG 52 Coreglia Ligure were cared for in the Colonia Fara military hospital in the nearby town of Chiavari, and the ten prisoners who died in this hospital between May 1942 and July 1943 were buried in the small communal cemetery of Cicagna before being transferred to Milan War Cemetery on 21 November 1945. ii

With the prolongation of the conflict a number of work camps were established to satisfy the growing demand for labour to replace the Italian servicemen who were in action at the front. Some of these work camps were ‘satellites’ dependent on a main camp in the same region, for example, PG 115/3 at Marsciano in Umbria, which supplied labour for Briziarelli & Sons’ brick-making factory, was dependent on PG 115 Morgnano, 50 kilometres away near Spoleto. Santa Clotilda farm in Puglia, numbered PG 75/7, was a sub-camp of nearby PG 75 Torre Tresca (Bari).

In the north, some farms became work camps in their own right. PG 146 Mortara in Lombardy had no central base but was made up of over 30 sub-camps, which were farms, spread throughout the rice-growing region of the Lomellina. All the men in these northern work camps had been sent there from one of the main camps in the centre or south of the peninsula. For example, Private E. Jackson, referred to in the Prologue and buried in Milan War Cemetery, is registered as being a held in PG 70 Monturano, near Fermo in the Marche region,iii more than 400 km. distant from Piacenza civil cemetery from where he was concentrated. Having escaped at the armistice, File WO 417/102 (British Army Casualty Lists 1939-45) gives him as ‘killed in action’ on 18 January 1944.

It is known that the twenty-four British and Commonwealth ex-prisoners of war who perished in trying to cross the Alps into liberated France in November 1944 had escaped from the sub-camps of PG 112 Turin. However, as was often the case where prisoners who had been transferred to work camps was concerned, none of the victims in the above disaster was listed as present in these sub-camps in the International Red Cross prisoner of war register dated August 1943. Nine were registered in PG 65 Gravina in Puglia and one in PG 98 San Giuseppe Iato, in Sicily: all would have been sent to northern work camps in the spring and summer of 1943 when these camps had been evacuated ahead of a possible Allied invasion. The only survivor, Trooper Alfred Southon, had been sent to work camp PG 112/5 at Castellamonte in Piedmont from PG 53 Macerata (Sforzacosta) in June 1943.iv

The prisoner of war register referred to above is described in The National Archives’ catalogue as being a compilation of ‘lists of members of the Allied Forces (British and Commonwealth only) who were reported by Italian or Red Cross sources as being prisoners in Italian hands, minus those known officially to have died in Italy being in Libyan camps or buried in Greece. Camp locations are given where men were last known to be, in most cases’.v

Prisoners being held in Italy whose deaths occurred before March 1943 do not usually appear in this register, and unless the service record for each man is obtained it is not possible to find out in which camp he was being held at the time of decease. For example, there is no entry in the register for any of the sixteen men buried in Section 6, Row D of Bari War Cemetery whose deaths occurred between May and November 1942. Of the 20 prisoners of war buried in Section 10, Row D who had died between 28 January and 11 August 1943 and had been concentrated from Altamura communal cemetery – presumably following their deaths either in the Altamura prisoner of war hospital or in nearby PG 65 – only the last four, whose deaths occurred after 8 July, are in this register.vi However, some detail about deaths in the earlier period can be found in the camp and hospital reports produced by the International Red Cross inspectors. A comment made in the May report for PG 65 records fourteen deaths during the preceding twelve months from diphtheria, and in the previous report, dated 5 March 1943, we read: ‘The day before our arrival there died in this camp Gunner Thomas Reginald Jenkinson, 4131516, husband of Mrs Jenkinson, no. 6, East View, Cranleigh, Surrey, England.’vii

Bari is just one of the forty war cemeteries in Italy in which the dead of the Second World War are buried. A few casualties are also to be found in ten communal cemeteries, and there are four war memorials to the missing. According to the online records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the graves of the 1061 identified British and Commonwealth servicemen who died in Italy between that country’s declaration of war on 10 June 1940 and the Allied invasion of Sicily on 9 July 1943 are to be found in twenty-five of these war cemeteries and one communal cemetery, and the names of the missing are inscribed on one memorial. Eight hundred and ten of these servicemen were soldiers, two hundred and twenty-five served with British and Commonwealth air forces, twenty-five with the Royal Navy (including five marines), one with the Royal New Zealand Navy, one was in the Merchant Navy and four were members of the South African Corps of Military Police. The airmen had either died upon impact or through injury as their planes were shot down or had been taken prisoner upon landing. The naval casualties were mainly, though not exclusively, men whose bodies had been washed ashore from stricken vessels, but the soldiers and policemen had to be, by deduction, prisoners of war, given that their units had not yet landed on Italian soil.

From the Italian Armistice of 8 September 1943 until 2 May 1945 casualties whom it has been possible to identify as being prisoners of war can be found in twenty-three war cemeteries and two communal cemeteries. The names of the missing for the whole of this period are to be found on two memorials.

For the most part, though not exclusively, those prisoners of war who died after the armistice were escapers from the camps, though there are important exceptions, given that the German forces had already begun to take prisoners following the allied landings in Sicily and on the Italian mainland. One such prisoner was Corporal Sidney James Pritchard, Royal Corps of Signals, who was posthumously awarded the military medal and is buried in Salerno War Cemetery. The citation for his award indicates that on 17 August 1943 he was still with his unit, but when met his death on 19 September he was a prisoner of war, a detail recorded on his concentration form.viii

These forms, compiled by the Graves Registration Units to record the recovery of the dead from communal cemeteries and isolated burial plots prior to their reburial in the non-battlefield war cemeteries,ix have now been released by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and may be consulted on their website. The more detailed ones give sheet numbers and six-figure map references, and the maps to which they refer.x Sometimes, as in the case of Corporal Pritchard, if a deceased servicemen was known to have been a prisoner of war it was indicated on these forms, but for obvious reasons no such form exists for those men whose bodies were never recovered. Lance Sergeant George Edward Cass, Grenadier Guards and Special Raiding Squadron, SAS, died on 5 November 1943 and is remembered on the Cassino memorial, as are other men from his regiment who fell during an action at Termoli on 5 October. It is only from his listing as the victim of a war crime, and from the testimony of a colleague, that it is possible to learn that he did not fall during a military action but as a prisoner of war.xi

Two trains carrying prisoners of war from Italy to Germany came under friendly fire from Allied Air Forces, one at L’Aquila station on 8 December 1943 and the other on 28 January 1944 near Allerona in Umbria. Whilst the bodies of the victims of the L’Aquila bombings were recovered and buried in Ancona War Cemetery, many of the dead in the second incident were simply thrown into bomb craters at the scene. The presence on the train of a man listed as missing had to be ascertained from the testimonies of the survivors. Fusilier Timothy Conlan, 2 Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, managed to get away from the wrecked train and reach Allied lines, after which he was repatriated. Retraced by his former battalion in January 1945, he was asked if he could supply any information about six of his comrades who appeared in the battalion’s missing men list for 18 January 1944.xii

He confirmed that all had been taken prisoner during attempts to cross the river Garigliano, after which they had been taken to PG 54 Fara in Sabina from where they had been put on the train, but added that whilst he knew nothing of three of them, he was able to testify that he had boarded the train in the company of Fusilier R. Gibson, Lance Corporal T. Power and Lance Corporal W. Stringer.xiii It later transpired that Fusilier Gibson had been injured in the incident, hospitalised and then sent on to a POW camp in Germany, but the bodies of the two lance corporals were never found. Their names are recorded on the Cassino Memorial, their date of death being given 28 January, that of the bombing.

In addition to the missing men files the National Archives holds other sets of documents which are invaluable in providing information about deceased prisoners of war. Liberation and Escape and Evasion reports are of great importance and have on occasion provided evidence which has enabled servicemen initially buried as ‘unknown’ to be identified. This was the case with Leading Telegraphist Victor James Crosby, HM Submarine Saracen, whose temporary burial place was identified from map references indicated in an escape report.xiv In 2015 the CWGC confirmed that they had concentrated an unknown sailor from that location into Cassino War Cemetery, and in October 2017 a new headstone was dedicated to him.xv Having served with the Royal Navy, he had been previously remembered not on the Cassino Memorial, which is for soldiers only, but on that at Portsmouth.

Leading Telegraphist Crosby had been the victim of a war crime: three files regarding the investigations into this crime are held in the National Archives.xvi Some war crimes were committed inside the camps themselves before the armistice, for example in May 1943 a prisoner in PG 54 was accidentally shot whilst lying on his bunk, and another in PG 57 during a cricket match, but for the most part the war crimes were committed in the eighteen months which followed, when the liberated prisoners were found to be operating with the partisans or were suspected of doing so. A list of war crime investigations in Italy held in the National Archives can be found in Sources, p. 246-250.

The importance of individual servicemen’s diaries in giving details about prisoners who died before the register of prisoners was compiled cannot be underestimated. South African Gunner John Adriaan Joubert, who had been held in PG 60 Colle di Compito near Lucca and was in transit to PG 65 Gravina on 13 November 1942, wrote in his diary that a man named T.C. Lee had died that morning on his way to the station. The CWGC records show that Staff Sergeant T.C. Lee of the South African Corps of Military Police (SAP) is buried in Florence War Cemetery. Gunner Joubert offered no explanation as to how or why Staff Sergeant Lee had died, but at least his testimony gives the name of the last camp in which the unfortunate prisoner had been held.xvii

Hence laid to rest alongside the battle casualties in the Italian War Cemeteries are these prisoners of war. They died from neglected wounds or diseases, were accidentally or deliberately shot both inside and outside their camps or were victims of friendly fire incidents. Of the escapers after the armistice, some lost their lives when trying to cross the mountains to freedom, and some were betrayed by spies. Some had taken up arms again, had fought with the partisans and had died alongside them. Others had been captured whilst on dangerous missions and summarily executed. Many, but not all, have a name.

Chapter Two

Friendly Fire

As has been said in Chapter One, the register of prisoners of war in Italian hands was made available by the International Red Cross in August 1943. The document description indicates that it also included POWs who had died at sea. Six ships bringing them from camps in North Africa to Italy were sunk or rendered unserviceable between 9 December 1941 and 14 November 1942, beginning with the Sebastiano Venier, otherwise known as the Jason, and ending with the Scillin: all six were victims of ‘friendly fire’ in that they were attacked by British submarines – the Porpoise, P38, Upholder, Turbulent, Unruffled and Sahib.xviii

Friendly fire incidents involving prisoners of war in Italian hands were not restricted to submarine attacks on shipping. The four air raids discussed below were also responsible for the deaths of numerous servicemen behind enemy lines.

In mid-1943 the patients in prisoner-of-war hospitals H 206 Nocera and H 204 Altamura had been evacuated to H 207 in Milan in order to distance them from areas which, in the event of allied landings, would become combat zones.xix This rendered the prisoners safer from war on the ground but more exposed to war from the air which, in the period following Mussolini’s fall from power on 25 July, was mainly directed against the three industrial cities of Genoa, Turin and Milan in an attempt to force Marshal Badoglio, the new head of government, to sign an armistice.

Hospital H 207 had been set up in a school building opposite a factory in central Milan, and on 13 August 1943, during a bombing raid carried out by the