On 12 April 1941 Brigadier Todhunter was collected by a German officer and driven to Benghazi. He was given a room at the Hotel Italiana before the next day boarding a Luftwaffe transport plane to Tripoli. Shortly after arrival he was hauled off for questioning ‘by various people which ultimately resolved itself into an amiable discussion of world affairs over a whisky and soda.’26 Like De Wiart, Todhunter gave the enemy no information. The Italian and German interrogators had accorded the British officers every courtesy according to their ranks and not pressed them too hard.
Todhunter was driven to the cavalry barracks where he met De Wiart for the first time. The two officers had much to talk about, and the Italians permitted them freedom of movement within the grounds of the barracks, their officers and men punctiliously saluting the two Britons as they wandered about trying to make sense of their predicament.27 It was all slightly surreal. De Wiart and Todhunter were given rooms with a shared bathroom and they were to dine with the Italian officers twice daily. Because the Italians couldn’t speak English, nor the prisoners Italian, everyone rubbed along with their schoolboy French – schoolboy, that is, except for De Wiart who, being half Belgian, was naturally fluent.
*
Edward Todhunter leaned on the ship’s rail, his head turned away from the tall, spare figure of Carton de Wiart who stood beside him staring at the land. Behind Todhunter’s glasses his eyes had misted up. The ship that was taking the two British POWs from Africa to Italy had steamed into the Bay of Naples on 21 April 1941 passing close by the town of Sorrento on the island of Capri. For Todhunter, who had honeymooned there years before, it was a poignant moment. ‘I could see the Hotel Quisisana where we stayed, and all the places we went for such lovely walks,’ wrote Todhunter to his wife Betty a few days later. ‘I wished I could have put the clock back fourteen years, or else that I could have swum ashore and sent a cable for you to come and join me.’28 At that moment, leaning on the ship’s rail, staring across the sea, Todhunter felt so far from home and his loved ones that it almost physically hurt. He removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath of clean, salty air that steadied him.
Todhunter and De Wiart’s journey had begun on 16 April, when, after lunch at the cavalry barracks, they had been conveyed to Tripoli harbour and herded aboard a small, 5,000-ton steamer. A rather pompous Italian staff officer was assigned as their escort, but he soon relaxed once they were safely aboard ship as his duties meant that he could visit his home for a few days after delivering his charges safely ashore in Italy. De Wiart christened their new friend ‘Tutti-Frutti’.29
The two Britons were each assigned a single cabin, but the ship didn’t move for days. More British prisoners were loaded aboard, including several officers from the Rifle Brigade and the Royal Tank Regiment, and Todhunter and De Wiart, who was a physical fitness fanatic, took to walking and running about the confines of the ship in an effort to relieve the boredom of waiting.
De Wiart’s morale was raised by an act of kindness from a visiting Italian general. He had been hatless throughout his captivity, his cap having gone down with his kit aboard the stricken Wellington, and the Italian general procured for him a British officer’s cap, ‘swathed it in a red band,’ wrote De Wiart, ‘and restored me my dignity’.30
The downside of remaining stationary inside an enemy harbour soon became apparent as the RAF put in an appearance. Bombs impacted around the harbour, but none landed closer to the prisoners than a quarter of a mile. Nonetheless, prisoners and Italians alike were eager to get away. The ship sailed on 19 April and tied up alongside the quay in Naples on the 21st after an uneventful crossing.31 De Wiart had prayed for a British submarine, so that they might take their chances in the sea, but nary a periscope was spotted.
That evening Todhunter and De Wiart finally set foot on Italian soil. Tutti-Frutti escorted them on to a train and revealed their ultimate destination – Sulmona in the Abruzzi. Both men expected some kind of prison camp, but Tutti-Frutti didn’t elaborate. The two British officers travelled in splendid isolation through the darkened Italian countryside in a first-class compartment. After leaving Rome, the train gradually climbed into the mountains, the air inside the carriage growing uncomfortably cold. The two prisoners felt the change in temperature, dressed as they were in desert uniforms.
*
On Thursday there erupted a commotion outside the Villa Orsini. Colonel Mazawattee was almost running as he came through the camp gates brandishing a piece of paper in one hand and his handkerchief in the other. ‘Many, many, many!’ he was yelling in English.
Air Vice-Marshal Boyd and Flight Lieutenant Leeming went into the courtyard to meet him along with Lieutenant Ricciardi.
Mazawattee was almost dancing on the spot, the buttons of his uniform straining to control his ample girth. He raced up to Boyd and waved the paper under his nose.
‘Many, many!’ shouted Mazawattee. ‘All of the highest rank! See, I have their names here!’
‘What on earth are you blithering about,’ said Boyd, reaching for the paper, but Mazawattee snatched it away and began reading aloud in his heavily accented voice.
‘See, Sir O’Connor; Sir Neame, Philip; Lord Carton de Wiart, Adrian. Look: others, plenty, many of them – Sir General Gambier-Parry, Colonels Combe, Todhunter, and Lord Younghusband. Plenty. The war is over. England cannot go on now. No, certainly, surely.’32
Boyd, his face like thunder, drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t very much, and glowered at the giddy colonel.
‘You haven’t got Churchill, have you?’ boomed Boyd.
Mazawattee stopped moving, his face fell and he sloped off muttering about more prisoners, more guards, more barbed wire and more responsibilities.
Boyd turned to Leeming, shaking his head. ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ he said gravely. ‘I bet they caught one colonel and imagined the rest.’33 Leeming just nodded and wondered where all this left their carefully planned escape.
CHAPTER 4
___________________
Men of Honour
‘If the men we’ve got here are a fair sample of the British Forces I don’t see how we can lose the war!’
Air Vice-Marshal Owen Boyd Villa Orsini, 1941
When Flight Lieutenant Leeming first clapped eyes on the tall and partially intact figure of Adrian Carton de Wiart hauling himself out of an Italian military car at the villa’s gates on 23 April 19411 he thought he was seeing things. He couldn’t understand how such an elderly and obviously incapacitated general had been anywhere near the front lines in the first place, let alone fallen into enemy hands.
De Wiart had arrived from Sulmona station in company with Brigadier Todhunter to discover that the villa was already stuffed full of top brass. Since Colonel Mazawattee’s extraordinary announcement of the capture of so many senior Allied officers, the Villa Orsini had been deluged by what Leeming teasingly described as ‘generals what-whating all over the place’. Leeming, as ‘Mess Secretary’, was expected to organise everything for the new arrivals, from making sure that enough food was brought up to the villa, to sufficient beds, cutlery and linen. Mazawattee assisted Leeming by forgetting to order half of the essentials.
The little camp had grown exponentially. Mazawattee had paid another visit to Campo 78 at Sulmona and collected additional men to act as ‘servants’ at the villa, bringing the number of other ranks up to ten. With the senior officers, the number of prisoners had suddenly mushroomed from five to 21.
Leeming strode forward and shook De Wiart’s remaining hand, introducing himself. The black eye patch and empty sleeve were complemented, he later recalled, by a ‘fierce-looking moustache and a “hang the devil on the yard-arm” sort of manner’.2
When Leeming learned of the circumstances of De Wiart’s capture, he was astonished. The old general had been knocked unconscious when his Wellington had struck the water, had come to and managed to swim one-handed half a mile to shore dragging along a pilot a
third of his age who’d broken his leg. ‘You looked at him and thought immediately of a pirate with a cutlass in his teeth climbing up the side of some old-time merchantman,’ Leeming would write.3
Sleeping arrangements immediately presented some problems. The villa was big, but it wasn’t designed to hold so many men. This was compounded by the obvious point that the senior officers, men of certain rank and in some cases advanced years, each required their own rooms. Air Vice-Marshal Boyd gave up his room to General Neame, who by dint of seniority was made ‘father of the camp’. Boyd moved into Leeming’s room, meaning that the junior officer had to vacate as well. Leeming trooped up to the roof, where there was a sort of greenhouse, and settled in there.
All day long sweating and cursing Italian soldiers and British other ranks bustled about the villa, moving furniture, hauling supplies and generally trying to make the place habitable, while an increasingly harassed Leeming tried to control events and deal with a long list of demands and complaints from various generals and brigadiers.
When Leeming showed De Wiart into his small room, the camp’s Italian medical officer lurked behind him. It had been reported to him that General De Wiart was suffering from concussion due to a plane crash. The doctor, who meant well, tried to give De Wiart a physical examination.
‘Get your bloody hands off of me!’ bellowed De Wiart, glaring down at the terrified doctor with his one eye. The doctor tried to protest, but De Wiart cut him off.
‘Don’t bother about me. Look after these other devils. They like it; I don’t.’4
The medical officer admitted defeat and slunk away. De Wiart claimed to feel no ill effects from the plane crash whatsoever. ‘Never felt better,’ replied De Wiart when Leeming asked him about any side effects from the crash. ‘Never had the vestige of a headache,’ continued De Wiart, hooking his walking stick over his mangled arm. ‘I imagine a few hours in a cold sea must be the perfect cure for unconsciousness.’5 It was perhaps unsurprising that the British orderlies soon christened the indestructible General De Wiart ‘Long John Silver’.
*
By the end of the day Mazawattee’s gleeful list had become physical reality. The villa indeed contained some of the British Empire’s greatest military leaders. Generals Neame, O’Connor, De Wiart and Gambier-Parry; Air Vice-Marshal Boyd; Brigadiers Todhunter and Combe; Colonel Younghusband and Lieutenant-Colonel Fanshawe. It made depressing reading for Leeming, and it was easy to understand the Italians’ gloating attitude.
If Mazawattee felt that Boyd had been a burden, with his constant list of complaints and recommendations, General Neame soon showed himself to be considerably worse. Possessed of a mischievous sense of humour, Neame decided that constantly needling and winding up Mazawattee, and the Italians in general, was one way that he could contribute to ultimate Allied victory. To this end, ‘Green Ink’ penned notes to the commandant that led to long drawn-out disputes about this or that clause of the Geneva Convention, and general prisoner of war rights. Mazawattee, to his credit, instead of telling Neame to shut up and mind his own business, allowed himself to be led into the General’s game, but never won any of the arguments. The Italians, no matter their frustration and irritation, always remained perfectly correct and courteous, and Neame and some of the other prisoners used this against them. Neame was mentally just too quick for the commandant.
One of Neame’s genuine peeves was the issue of overcrowding at the villa. The situation was, in his opinion, intolerable and the Italians needed to move the prisoners to a bigger property. Confronting Mazawattee over this, the commandant fell back on the old trick that he had used when dealing with Boyd of agreeing to everything the prisoners demanded without actually doing anything. Leeming had already fully briefed Neame on this tactic of Mazawattee’s, but Neame couldn’t help but push the point and expose Mazawattee by listening to the increasingly ridiculous answers that he gave.
‘Certainly, certainly,’ wheezed Mazawattee, when Neame demanded a bigger property, ‘a large mansion will be provided. A palazzo is now being prepared.’
‘A palace?’ replied Neame, raising one eyebrow suspiciously.
‘Surely, surely; a palazzo with plenty space in great park,’ continued Mazawattee, tugging at his uniform collar, which suddenly appeared to be tighter than usual.
‘Deer in the park?’ asked Neame. Leeming, who was standing beside the general, turned away, a grin spreading across his face.
‘But of course,’ replied the commandant, spreading his palms before him. ‘Plenty deers, si, plenty.’
‘What about a swimming bath?’ continued Neame.
‘Most certainly,’ replied Mazawattee confidently, his face increasingly sheened with perspiration.
‘When?’
‘Perdono?’
‘When do we leave?’ asked Neame impatiently.
‘Oh, yes, I understand. You leave at once,’ said Mazawattee, nodding triumphantly, ‘well … within the next few days.’6
Whenever Neame raised the issue of moving with Mazawattee over the ensuing weeks, he was met with the same empty promises. Discussing the issue with Lieutenant Ricciardi, the prisoners were assured that such a move was indeed planned. They were to be taken north, to either Lombardy or Piedmont. That would place the prisoners much closer to Switzerland. Boyd and Leeming agreed a week after the arrival of the other generals to postpone all of their escape attempts until they arrived at the new camp. It looked as though they would be 200 miles closer to a neutral country. Switzerland appeared a more appealing prospect than tiny and well-guarded Vatican City.
*
Early one summer morning Lieutenant Ricciardi opened his bedroom curtains and gasped in surprise. Dangling outside of the window was a Beretta automatic pistol, suspended in mid-air by a length of string tied to the trigger guard. Cursing, Ricciardi quickly searched his room, a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. His own pistol was missing. Ricciardi opened his window and leaned out. The string led up to the bedroom above his. He quickly untied the weapon and examined it. It was his; of that there was no doubt. He extracted the magazine – still full. Shaking his head in disbelief, Ricciardi stood for some time bathed in early morning sunlight, the heavy pistol in his hand, trying to work out how he had lost it and why it was returned to him in such a strange manner. He never did discover who was responsible for this curious episode.
In fact, Ricciardi had lost his pistol a day earlier while he was out picnicking with the prisoners. The line between guards and prisoners had started to become blurred since the main batch of generals had arrived in April. With the prisoners having agreed among themselves to postpone any escape attempts until they reached their new home – whenever and wherever that might be – Boyd suggested that they instead put the Italians to sleep: lull them into a false sense of security by appearing to cooperate with them. Relations between guards and prisoners became ever more cordial, even friendly. This was demonstrated by the long walks and picnics that the prisoners were permitted to take in the vicinity of the villa. These helped to stave off the boredom that all of the prisoners felt keenly. They had had active, busy careers and great responsibilities, but now had little to do. Todhunter wrote to his mother outlining just how bad the boredom had become. The prisoners needed diversions, and that could come from books and ‘any form of stupid game’.7 They only had cards, draughts and backgammon to pass the evenings. The United States Embassy had promised badminton equipment and a ping-pong table, but they were still waiting for them.
The Italians permitted shopping trips to nearby Sulmona, much to De Wiart’s delight, as apart from the clothes he stood up in and the bamboo cane he had salvaged from the crashed Wellington, all his kit had gone to the bottom of the Mediterranean. De Wiart’s favourite shop was Unione Militare, an Italian version of the British NAAFI, where he was able to buy good-quality Italian army clothing and footwear.8
The weather mostly was perfect that summer, except a nasty patch in May. ‘We have had a w
eek of cold beastly weather which makes … life generally miserable,’9 wrote Todhunter sourly to his father. But once the weather brightened again, the excursions resumed, the long walks which did so much to keep up the prisoners’ morale. Though the prisoners were heavily guarded during these trips, it was apparent that the guards enjoyed the excursions as much as their prisoners. The Generals were old enough to be fathers, or even grandfathers, to many of the young Italian conscripts, and for their part most of the Italians seemed bemused and more than a little embarrassed to be guarding such nice old gentlemen. But when opportunities presented themselves, the British were not averse to taking advantage of them.
During one long walk Leeming shouldered Ricciardi’s pack for him. The guards and the prisoners tended to muck in together, helping each other carry food and other supplies for the picnic. Ricciardi had earlier taken his pistol out of its holster and shoved it in his pack, forgetting all about it. Leeming noticed the weapon nestled among the cans of food that they planned to boil up when they made camp. When no one was looking, he quickly pulled the pistol from the pack and hid it under his shirt.
Later that evening, back at the villa, Leeming showed Boyd the Beretta. Boyd’s face dropped.
‘You’ll have to return it,’ he said.
‘Return it? But why sir?’ asked Leeming, slightly crestfallen.
‘When Gussie finds he’s lost it, he may start all sorts of inquiries. It would be a serious thing if they found you’d got it. You must hand it back at once,’10 insisted Boyd.
Leeming understood Boyd’s point. But he couldn’t very well march up to Ricciardi and simply hand him back his weapon. Ricciardi would have to report the matter to Mazawattee and Leeming would be in serious trouble. After some thought, Leeming came up with the novel idea of suspending the pistol on a length of string outside Ricciardi’s bedroom from the room above.
*
A high point for the prisoners was the sudden and unexpected delivery of a large consignment of Red Cross parcels to the villa on 4 May 1941. Brigadiers Todhunter and Combe were placed in charge of sorting them out. ‘John Combe and I have given a lifelike display of two rather quarrelsome children sitting on the floor opening Christmas presents,’11 wrote Todhunter to his mother. The contents of the parcels would be used to supplement the menu cooked up between Leeming and the two cooks, Sergeant Baxter and his assistant. But tensions already existed among the generals, cooped up together in the overcrowded villa.12 ‘You would have laughed a lot to see nine respectable middle-aged senior officers quarrelling as to whether John and I had shared out the chocolate fairly,’ Todhunter went on.13
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