AFTER the armistice with Italy, some twenty thousand out of the hundred thousand British prisoners in the country were free, the remainder were taken to Germany. Many of these escaped or liberated prisoners eventually reached the British lines, after innumerable adventures and hardships. Others found temporary haven in the country, fed and cared for by the peasants and working on the land in return, while they waited for the Allies to advance; and still others, through carelessness or bad luck, were rounded up by the Germans and taken away to a second grimmer captivity.
This is the story of two of the fortunate ones who got through. Our forty-eight-day trip was relatively uneventful—I have since met others whose amazing adventures make ours look like a Sunday-school outing—but it represents perhaps the average trip of the average prisoner; and as we covered a greater distance and could speak the language, we were probably better able to understand the Italian point of view than most.
Yet it is, I’m afraid, but a tenuous impression, blurred by fatigue, and sweat, and anxiety, and the hot pain of falling arches, and the impossibility of taking written notes. For most of our ten-hour day our eyes were on the ground, seeking a firm foothold for the next step. In the evening our bodies were too tired for our minds to be receptive. Certain impressions stand out: the flame of a beech tree against blue sky; white cloud frothing over a mountain top; cobwebs in frosty sunshine—but mostly they are sound impressions, for our ears were continuously straining for sounds of danger. We learnt that the harsh staccato shout of the peasant was directed at his oxen, not at us. We grew to love the whistle of the shepherds, for they were our best friends. We learnt the noises which make a mule go, and a bullock stop, and a herd of pigs come scampering to be fed. We knew the friendly sound of woodcutters at work, the thrilling whirr of partridges. And we experienced that particularly unpleasant voice used by a Fascist on the warpath.
Inevitably, one grasped something of the Italian point of view. We enjoyed their unbounded hospitality. Their industry, their simplicity, their power of self-deception, their sympathy and their lack of guts were apparent in every contact with them. (I speak, of course, of the peasant point of view—we never entered a town—but it is the peasants who are the backbone of the country—they are the real Italy.)
So I have thought it worthwhile to record this great pilgrimage of British prisoners of war, and the picture of a country facing disintegration—a country which knows it is beaten, but is quite unable to realise that it is all its own fault.