West - to the river

Second stage

Gerald, Peter and Van now set off with the loose overall intention of heading west and then, probably North, with either France (semi neutral) or Switzerland (fully neutral) as eventual goals. Peter also had some friends who lived near the French border and thought that they might be able to take refuge with them. The general feeling among the newly liberated prisoners was that it would not be long before the Germans were forced to abandon Italy altogether and so they would not be needing to hide for long.

However these ideas were vague and not fully formed and they still had no clear view of the larger picture at this point...the information that reached them was usually sketchy, often inaccurate and sometimes plain wrong. The sense of optimism produced by their sudden freedom was soon to fade as the full difficulty of their position became clearer.

The Allies had in fact not made any landings in the northern part of Italy – the commotions that they had heard of in the Genoa and La Spezia directions were bombing raids and not landings, The main, predominantly American, landing at Salerno, near Naples, was still being hotly contested by the Germans and until around the 15th of the month it was not at all clear who would prevail. The British landings at Taranto were initially successful, but, being about as far south as it was possible to be, could not be expected to offer much hope to escaping prisoners more than 500 miles away in the North of the country for some time yet. Salerno, for that matter was not exactly round the corner , being well the other side of Rome which itself was some 300 miles distant.

Nor were they yet fully aware of the serious jeopardy that the Italian country people would be placing themselves in by offering escaping prisoners help and shelter. One of the most remarkable aspects of the accounts of the fugitives is the almost inevitable hospitality that they would all be offered by Italians of every station in life, particularly when viewed in the light of the ferocious penalties for so doing promised, and often enacted, by the German occupiers.

Back in rural Oxfordshire my mother, Elizabeth, at home with their young daughter Caroline, was following events as closely as she could. But the flow of correspondence via the Red Cross was not always a streamlined affair… On the 6th of September she records the receipt of a card from Gerald dated 24th of June, (promptly dispatching her own 66th missive by return)… so she, as so many other families and spouses of soldiers and prisoners, was very much in the dark as to how the unfolding events that she was hearing and reading about in the Press were affecting her missing husband. On the 9th of September she recorded in her diary the fact of the Salerno landings; by the 11th she notes “news from Italy most unsettling” and on the 13th, hearing of the sensational liberation of Mussolini by German paratroopers, notes that she “feel(s) frantic about G”

About 600 men had walked out of PG49 on the 9th of September and were now, a day later, having to make difficult choices as to how to use this new found freedom… firstly whether to stay or go, and then, if the latter, where, how and with whom??

Here are a few of of them, whose experiences have been recorded either by themselves or by others.

Lieutenants Douglas Clarke and John Birkbeck were early adopters of the Swiss option, setting off immediately on foot for neutral Switzerland. In terms of distance this was the shortest route to take, the swiss border being not much more than 100 miles away.

Colonel Hugo de Burgh and Lieutenant Reggie Phillips managed to get a lift to Milan, from which city they too would eventually continue on toward the Swiss border.

Dick Carver, General Montgomery’s stepson, (a fact of which his captors were, fortunately for him, unaware) had been captured under very similar circumstances and at almost exactly the same time and place as Gerald and Peter, had also ended up in Fontanellato. He opted to head south, at first as part of a group of 12, quickly reduced to just one travelling companion, with the aim of rejoining his famous stepfather somewhere in the south of the country. .

Stuart Hood, who had paired up with his Gurkha friend Ted, describes his more relaxed approach to solving this problem.

“ We, two men in their late twenties, with nothing in common except the shock of capture and the boredom of captivity,… had agreed to make for the hills together, but not right away… For a couple of days we lay in a green gully, sleeping and planning in the sun. The others disappeared by 2’s and 3’s. We sat and discussed where the Allies must land… if they were delayed more than a few days, then we would start walking|”

Others found themselves not quite so well in control of their own destiny…

Eric Newby, who was later to write a book about his experiences at this time, had needed to be evacuated from PG49 on horseback as he was suffering from a broken ankle but had then, on medical advice, been returned to the local hospital where he now found himself under guard and with the clear prospect of being recaptured as soon as the Germans turned up. However, as his luck would have it, there he met a young woman, who, with help from her family and friends, was to help him too escape the clutches of the Germans,,, at least for the time being.

By the reckoning of Ian English, another inmate of the camp who later collected and published many of the stories of the adventures of the prisoners that autumn, only around 5% of the escapers actually made it as far as the Allied lines … by this metric out of the 6 or 7 hundred prisoners held at PG49 it was but the smallest minority - not more than 30 to 40 men - who would be successful in this endeavour.

Gerald, Peter and Van now set off to see whether they could place themselves in that small minority.

10th September

The Via Aemilia lay a couple of fields further on, and was quite without traffic. Peter, Van (Leutenant van Burton Twelfth Royal Lancers) and I climbed an awkward wire fence on its south side, and set off across the fields on a course South East by south.

We walked in the bright moonlight across the fields, ducking under the wires in the rows of vines. All the dogs in the countryside were barking so from each farmhouse came a continuous yapping. We kept moving at a good speed, wanting to put as much distance as we could between us and the Via Aemilia. We went through a small village, as quietly as we could, and saw no one. We had been told that Germans were encamped in this area, but beyond that, we had no idea what to expect. At about two in the morning we struck a hard road again and followed it. We passed a farm and at a small wood just beyond it we decided we could go no further. We lay down in the wood, and slept by turns till dawn.

11th September

As soon as it was fully light, we cautiously emerged from our wood and found that our situation was by no means as secluded as we had hoped. The countryside was closely cultivated and was well stocked with buildings and farm roads; the road we had left the night before was a motor road, and ran within 100 yards of us.

Almost at once we met, and could not have avoided, a milkman on his rounds; he seemed friendly but we could not understand him. We went on to a nearby small farmhouse, leaving our haversacks in the wood. Here we were given black sugared coffee, and also 3x eggs for which we offered money. In spite of her husband's protests, the woman took our lira. We started back to the wood, but were soon accosted by a voluble man, who jabbered at us over a hedge; it all had something to do with the farm by the wood, but we could not make out what. When we got back, we found our haversacks gone; it occurred to us that this had been the burden of the voluble man's song and so it turned out. small boys from the farm had observed our departure and had swooped on our haversacks like hawks. With some difficulty we retrieved our belongings.

As the price of their redemption, we had to submit to a continual stream of visitors; we drank their vino and ate their bread, and tried not to listen to their talk. Our interest was fixed, however, when a woman said that two Germans in civilian clothes just passed along the road, asking for news of British prisoners; they had called at the farm behind our wood - about 150 yards away - but had now gone. It appeared also that there was a considerable detachment of Germans stationed at Noceto about two kilometers away. We therefore insisted on reducing our number of visitors - their chatter we felt could be heard half a mile away - and regularized their comings and goings, at the same time dispersing a considerable group of sightseers, who were hanging about in the lane.

During the day Van paid a visit to a French speaking Italian lady, living in a house about a mile away; she had housed three English the night before, but they had now gone on. From her Van got the latest BBC news, from which we began to get a somewhat more realistic view of the military situation.

Soon after sunset we continued our journey in a southerly direction, our objective being Pellegrino. We started off a longer pleasant Green Lane through Fields; by the time it was dark we were again on a motor road and continued on it for five or six miles. We passed through one hamlet, in which we were told, other English prisoners were at that moment sleeping. We left Salsa Maggiore on our right, where were reported to be many Germans.

The country was rapidly becoming more hilly, and in the bright moonlight we could see ahead of us country more mountainous still. We turned off the motor road eventually and went along a farm track; at the farm which it led to we stopped for a while and were given vino by the proprietress who had been a governess in England. We were shown small scale atlases which did not help us at all, and as no further hospitality was forthcoming, we took our leave. The farm bailiff walked with us for a mile to show the way. We went on uphill for another half hour and then stopped. We moved off the road a few yards and settled down to sleep in the shelter of some scrubby oak and thorn trees. The hillside was rather steep and this caused Peter some discomfort, as he showed a tendency to roll down the hill, whenever he got to sleep.

12th September

Next morning, a Sunday, we arose at an early hour and ate our breakfast - hard boiled egg and bread. We then looked about for a suitable place to spend the day, and finally settled on a grassy hollow under a big rock shaded by oak trees and overlooking the lane; there was a farm half a mile further on.

During the morning we slept by turns and visited the farm, where we washed and shaved, and got bread and cheese. After midday we had visitors, but neither so numerous nor so intolerably loquacious as on previous occasions I contrived to sleep through a large part of their visit. Later on I conversed with a boy from the farm and learned the names of several trees; it seems that the local oak tree was a distinct variety from the normal sort of oak tree or ‘Quercus’. I also cut hazel walking sticks for myself and Peter.

Again at sunset we started out; this time up a steep hill. We were somewhat vague as to our exact position, but intended to continue South and to avoid Pellegrino, where Germans and Fascist carabinieri were said to be. We had been given the name of a friendly priest, whose church we were now looking for. The country was by now almost mountainous and the soil poor and stony. After a couple of hours we found the priest but unfortunately for us his house was already full of English; one of these turned out to be Gazeley, with a badly blistered heel. The priest told us of a reliable and friendly Italian towards whom we now went, on a South Easterly course. We went by rough lanes for the most part, and, in the main, downhill. It became clear after an hour or two that the priest's directions and our route were no longer the same, so we pulled into the nearest farm and asked for shelter. We were directed to the host of an American named Augusto who received us, almost literally, with open arms. We were given good white wine - very different stuff from the ordinary rough red vino - and food; in time we were allowed to go to sleep in good straw in a barn which we found to be a great luxury, and, as a result, we all slept like logs.

13th September

In the morning we were given a good breakfast of coffee, eggs, and bread, followed up with more white wine. Augusto accompanied us for a mile and parted from us with every appearance of sorrow. Many years in the United States had left him with a violent dislike of Fascism.

We walked on slowly up a steep hill in hot sun; we were still uncertain of the advisability of walking by day, and after discussion decided to spend the day in a wood. Augusto had given us food and wine, which, together with the heat, materially assisted our decision. We found the wood on the top of a hill within a couple of miles and there we stayed till shortly before sunset. Our position overlooked from the North a Deep Valley running East and West. We could see a motor road and a wide shallow river close together, both coming from the town of Varsi which lay a dozen miles to the west. We planned to go west round Varsi and then to continue our southerly course. At this time our general plan was merely to get as far away as we could from centres of population, roads and railways; we still imagined that after a few weeks the Germans would be forced to evacuate all Italy south of the river Po.

Accordingly that evening we continued our westward march along a mule track which ran along the high ground parallel to the road and river line. We soon passed a farmer, who warmly invited us to come in for the night; we hardly thought we could stop so soon, but nonetheless we rested for a while; we were given eggs and bread and when we said we had been advised by Augusto to go to a farm called Gravegotte, the man offered to guide us there.

We therefore started on again with our guide and in about  two hours reached Gravegotte, on the south bank of the river and about half a mile north of the motor road. We had passed a mill on the route with circumspection, as the miller was a fascist. Gravegotte received us politely but not enthusiastically and showed us a place in his barn where we could sleep; the bedding was maize straw, which we found much inferior to wheat straw.

14th September

Next morning we received a good breakfast and were given cheese for our journey. We re-crossed the river-in full view of the carabinieri barracks just east of Varsi, and regained the shelter of the hill and its abundant cover. 

We continued our westward march, after a short rest, along the mule tracks; there were many blackberries, which we ate. Before long we came to a small village, where, after a suspicious greeting, we were taken into a house in which three other officers from Fontanellato were lurking. They had already changed into civilian clothes, and looked rather like musical comedy vagabonds. It seemed that the Italians, on seeing our battledress had told them the Germans were coming. and they had been whisked off into hiding, until our identity had been disclosed. We were given eggs and bacon ( fried ) by their hosts, and altogether made a heavy meal. We got underway again after an hour or so but made slow progress; the sun was considerably hotter, and we still found room for blackberries. While we were wandering along we were overtaken by a priest - a youngish man, very well shod and moving fast. He spoke a little French, which sufficed to invite us to his house for a meal. This we reached in rather more than an hour, including a halt for wine with one of his parishioners and were introduced to his mother and three young sisters. His church and house was pleasantly sited halfway up the hillside, well away from other houses, and overlooking the Varsi to Bardi motor road. We were now well beyond Varsi, and could see to the west of us from time to time the black mass of rock on which was Bardi castle and part of the town. He was a priest of advanced outlook for he had a bath, which he showed us with pride; there was however no water laid on, owing to the war, he said. We fed off cold ham, lettuce and wine; again we ate a tremendous meal. 

We studied atlases and a good large-scale local map; we planned provisionally to cross the Taro moving east at Borgo Val del Taro and the priest gave us an itinerary with likely halts on the way. One of these was the priest at San Mariano, and he pointed out the way we should start out; across the road and river, south east up a long rise to a high col, and then south to San Mariano. We left the priest and his family at about 3 o'clock and lay ourselves down in an oak grove about a mile away and further down the hill. We dozed till about half an hour before sunset, and then got ready for a further march. I persuaded Peter to throw away his hat, which he did with evident regret. We moved downhill to a small hamlet just above the road, in which we found a cockney speaking English woman with her Italian husband and children. She gave us a glass of wine, and found a guide to show us across the road. This we successfully accomplished, in spite of the conspiratorial attitudes struck by our minute and extremely talkative guide, and made our way across the wide and completely exposed riverbed. Before we regained the further fields, we were accosted by an ill-natured and dull-witted man, who showed great curiosity, and would, we felt, have done us harm if he had known how. Half a mile further on, having thrown off this boor, we met two Italian soldiers, ‘in borgese’ having recently crossed the Taro on their homeward flight; they reported Germans on the roads and railways, and on bridges, but not specifically guarding the line of the river. As darkness fell, we stumbled along a stony lane, and through a close- built dirty village; it's name, we found out later, was Tosca. Just beyond the village we refused an invitation to sleep and eat; we regretted that later, as we became very weary, and had to content ourselves with a draughty stable and insufficient bedding.

15th September

We were however given a very fair breakfast the next morning, and were set on our way by a guide.

Within an hour we reached the col overlooking the Taro Valley (at a distance of six or seven miles) and the cultivated plateau on which were the villages of San Martino and San Mariano; the latter lay close under the high hills and to the south of us, well away from the main road and railway in the valley. We reached San Mariano by midday, having followed a pleasant route along a mule track which ran right at the foot of the mountains and well above the plateau. We gazed curiously at the high land to the east of the valley and wondered whether we should in fact shortly be walking across it. As we were looking into the sun, we could see little detail, but only the mass of lines of formidable looking hills. We could not see down into the Taro valley, but could easily pick out its course from the deep rift it made in the tumbled landscape. The priest at San Mariano was delighted to see us; he greeted us - someone prematurely - as liberators and allies, and very soon we were sitting down before bowls of coffee and milk. His mother washed our socks, and darned them, though this work was not to stand the test of time - in fact mine were in holes again within 24 hours. Shortly we were taken down to the house of three ladies with a wireless. Van was put ‘on the set’ and after much labor he extracted a rather garbled version of the news from the foreign service of the BBC. We were in the meantime given lunch by the ladies, and spent a civilized interlude; their garden was full of flowers and conversation did not seem unduly impeded by our lack of a common language While we were having lunch a party of a dozen ‘other ranks’ from Fontanellato turned up led by the bull terrier-like sailor whose boxing mannerisms had fascinated me so much in the camp. He appeared to have his party under control and being Italian speaking and in plain clothes was able to reconnoitre his route with some measure of safety. He went on his way after we had exchanged information, and we continued with our lunch. Towards the middle of the afternoon, refusing pressing invitations to stay longer from the priest his mother and his brother, we started off again. We planned to move nearer to the valley and reconnoitre a place to cross. We walked for three hours over wooded shoulders of the hills until we were not far above the village of Ostia, on the railway. We paused on the outskirts of a village further up the hill, and found that the party of ‘other ranks’ were before us and had taken up all of the available accommodation. We went on further down the hill along quite a reasonable road, passing many houses and numerous Italians. When we were near our objective - a church directly overlooking Ostia - we were stopped by a garrulous and extremely tall man - He must have been six foot six inches. from the welter of his talk we gathered that the Germans had issued a manifesto offering a substantial reward for English prisoners, and stating penalties for anyone found helping them; also the Germans were in Ostia and that they were in the habit of visiting a corn mill which we had just passed. We noticed further among the  curious crowd watching us an Italian who had retained his arms and uniform. This was unusual and might well have indicated pro German sympathies. With only slight hesitation, therefore, we turned about and retraced our steps. As we went, a woman ran out of a house and gave us a loaf of bread hot from the oven. When we again came to where the ‘OR’s had been we found them gone; they had heard the news of the German reward, it was said and had taken to the hills. We went on another mile and sat ourselves down on an open bit of ground, well away from houses, but near a track.

As the darkness fell, we ate our bread and cheese and cooled off after our climb. Soon after it was quite dark a small dog began yapping at us; he was closely followed by an Italian who offered to take us to his house for the night. We were glad to go with him, and in due time we arrived at his one roomed shack. Here we drank quite good wine for an hour or so, in company with at least six other Italians, and then retired to bed in a barn full of good wheat straw, accompanied by the oldest and dirtiest of the Italians; he unfortunately fancied his English and showered on us much advice and exhortation.

16th September

We left before dawn next day, and occupied ourselves pleasantly, once the sun was up, in washing ourselves and our clothes in the stream running through the woods. During the afternoon we moved about leisurely and begged some eggs at an isolated wood land farm. At dusk we returned to our previous night's lodging, and were not received with much enthusiasm by the householder, though many of his friends and relations remained quite affable. We guessed that news of the German manifesto had spread this far, it only having been published on the day on which we heard of it. We offered to go, inconvenient though it would have been, but were in the end invited in without undue frostiness. Again we drank vino, but not so much, and again we slept in the barn with the old man, who was even more talkative, but much less intelligible.

17th September

Before dawn we left our barn and going through part of the woods in which we had spent the previous day we climbed up above the tree line onto grassy downs. This took about two hours, and we were by then hot and very ready for our breakfast of bread, cheese and water. after a leisurely meal we strolled along a ridge, intending to view the country to the west, and to see in particular if we could pick out a village which the old chatterbox in the barn had advised us to go to. While on our way we came across a thug, who said he had escaped from the Germans in Yugoslavia, and who also seemed in some fear of local Fascists. He appeared a criminal type and was most unprepossessing; as we were talking, he pointed to a determined looking man of the gamekeeper type, who was approaching, muttered something about fascists and slunk off in a practised manner. We followed suit, less expertly, and the man passed. The thug had by now vanished, and we wandered rather aimlessly on. As we went along a path which wound down the hillside through thick bushy cover we heard some rustling below us. We stopped and listened, but before we had time to move the man of the gamekeeper type was upon us. With him was an Italian officer, in uniform, armed and wearing his fascist badges. We eyed each other suspiciously and all stood still. The officer informed us that he was escaping from the Germans but in spite of this conciliatory statement the atmosphere for some reason remained tense. The gamekeeper remained grim, dark and silent, while we disposed ourselves in a kind of arrowhead formation so that we could not all be attacked simultaneously; after a few moments we parted, they in the direction in which the thug had last been seen and we in the opposite direction. We moved quickly for a mile or two, then turned sharply right handed down a scrubby slope and finally along a valley in the direction of San Mariano. While still out of sight of the church and village we stopped and took cover in some thick undergrowth by the side of a stream. Here we stayed till dusk, undisturbed except by a singing procession of children returning from the hills and bringing their cattle with them.

As night fell we descended again on the priest and were welcomed in, fed and bedded down.

18th September

Next day we spent in the same thicket where we were soaked by a violent thunderstorm during the morning; in the afternoon Van, partially disguised as an Italian, went to the village to listen to the wireless. When he came back, he reported that the priest and his family were in a state of considerable flap, and seemed unlikely to harbor us for much longer, although we had been invited to spend the coming night at the parsonage. Accordingly, we decided that we must accelerate the making of the plan which we had been discussing for the last 36 hours. Peter, though formerly in favor of crossing the Taro and moving East, now advocated moving West possibly to France or possibly to Alassio, where friends of his had a villa which was still being looked after by their pro English Italian agent. He argued that the Germans would be sure to hold the line of high hills running East and west just north of Firenze and would probably be at work there or already in position by the time we wanted to go through and that in the rear areas base installations of all kinds would make movement very difficult, while in the area that he contemplated moving to there should be few Germans to worry us. He also suggested that crossing the Taro valley would be an unnecessary risk, when we might well be able to contact advancing British Forces by remaining at large in the area between the Taro and the French frontier for a comparatively short space of time - an area which, he said, was without strategic strategic significance and therefore a suitable one to hide in. I advocated crossing the Taro and moving East to wherever the British Forces might be. I doubted that the Germans would yet be seriously fortifying the Firenze line, not expecting that they would be forced as far back as that for at least three months. I had advised keeping north of the Chisa pass, which we knew to be occupied by Germans, and then passing north and east of Firenze before turning south.  As neither of us would agree to the other's plan, Van was called upon for a casting vote. He chose to go west.

That night also we spent in the parsonage.

19th September

We left next morning as dawn was breaking, dressed in a mixture of battle dress and some civilian clothes which the priest had given us. We started off across the ground we had been moving about in for the last few days. We found, after a couple of hours, a small farmer who gave us milk and an egg each to take with us. We were by now on the tops of the hills and found a conveniently westward running ridge which took us well on our way. We fell in with a muleteer who produced a friend to guide us, and next, after a rest in the sun for an hour, a woman who boiled our eggs for us. We had by now lost a lot of height, but were still on a narrow ridge running almost due west. A party of scared and loutish youths passed us - clearly deserters, who were not intending to obey the German orders to report for duty on the following day, which had been circularized in a recent manifesto. We had intended to go to a village called San Martino, on the recommendation of our San Mariano priest, but German billettees were reported there, offshoots of a corps HQ at Borgo Val del Taro, and so we sheared off. We lunched late, about three pm, in sight of Bedonia. As we were digesting our meal, two tough looking girls approached us – heavy walking shoes, rucksacks etcetera – a cross between English hikers and Swiss Alpinists. We conversed for a while – they very friendly –  until I said something about Germans in San Martino. They looked pleased and I thought perhaps they had misunderstood me, so I made it clear that I didn't like Germans.  Their faces changed immediately to horrified indignation - Germans are all right by us they said, and flounced off in an easterly direction, moving fast. After only a brief discussion, we moved west, equally fast, and continued for a couple of hours until we reached the village of Siddolo. Here we saw on the church door the German manifesto, breathing forth threats against anyone harboring English prisoners, carrying arms, or failing to report to the Germans when ordered. Not much comforted by this, we moved on to another smaller and more remote Hamlet, arriving as darkness fell. Here we were given supper and a bed in a good straw loft.

20th September

The next morning we spent struggling across the slopes of an immense wooded mountain. We could not go south as that would have taken us into Bedonia, in which were Germans, or north, as the wooded range continued for many miles. By midday we were over the worst, and after our midday halt we moved down into a pleasant secluded valley. We looked for the village priest, but could not find him. We had noticed a man taking a keen interest in our approach, and he was now to be seen moving away at speed - he either thought we were Germans or that we were English.  In neither case were his actions likely to benefit us so we somewhat reluctantly addressed ourselves to yet another densely wooded ridge. As we reached the crest, we heard a church bell below us in the trees, and gladly made our way towards it. Within an hour we viewed the white church tower, and a village beyond. The valley and its stream led directly into the mountains – there was no motor road for miles, only a narrow strip of cultivation along the stream, a few scattered hamlets, and mule tracks. The inhabitants were friendly, in fact already harboring prisoners, two of whom we met, from PG49. From these I had news of Wilfred Tatham, “somewhere in the woods”. After talking for some time, we went on, as night was now falling, towards the white church.  Cornolo was the name of the village. The rectory was a white square house and might have been a small English country house of the late 18th century. Inside, however, the similarity ceased. The parson's horse was stabled in what should have been the dining room, and, we found later, the characteristic stable odors penetrated to every corner of the house. We never found the Italians very good at mucking out, nor were there likely to be drains in a dining room. We dined up stairs with the priest in civilized comfort, and had wine above the average. Peter slept in a bed, Van and I in lucerne hay, which we found cold and prickly.

21st September

Next morning we washed our socks and sat about in the sun. After a midday meal with the priest, we climbed uncertainly out of the Cornolo valley, and continued west across a wide valley, passing through two rather inhospitable villages. At dusk we found a youth in a farmyard who led us willingly into his house. His parents had kept a restaurant near Paris, and entertained us now as if we had been their best and oldest clients. We were made to dine apart, and were waited on by Madame, while Monsieur Malaberti brought in the wine - of two varieties and both good. We had eggs and cheese, excellent minestrone and grapes. We slept in a straw loft and after an equally good breakfast, we set off again, reinforced by a motor touring map of Italy, the gift of  Malaberti.

22nd September

We climbed the shoulder of a mountain at first in thick cloud, and made a somewhat devious path through the woods on the far side. It began to rain about 11 and by midday it was raining really hard, with almost continuous thunder; we were soon as completely wet as if we had been swimming in a river. We walked for an hour around the head of a deep valley along a narrow track through woods, first oak and Hazel and then almost entirely castanie. Our objective turned out to be a mean little village; we were taken into a small cottage and spent the afternoon drying our clothes and conversing with innumerable Italians. We were lighted to our beds in a loft by the unceasing lightning, and kept mobile during the night by the leaks in the roof .

23rd September

Next morning, in mist and drizzle, we set about crossing the next valley, in which was a considerable stream, merging into a lake. This lake was contained by a dam, complete with a hydroelectric Power Station, by which was the only practical crossing place. We viewed this course with distaste, as power stations were reputedly the haunts of Fascists. Nonetheless, we found a guide; he had with him in his house two ORs who were going east. I remarked to Peter on their good sense. We approached the dam cautiously, and there, the guide pointed out, was the Fascist; an unsavoury type with a beard. We watched him covertly, and choosing our moment, slipped across the dam. We ascended the opposite hillside “bride abattue” and got very hot. We walked steadily on during the afternoon, and by the evening we're in the neighborhood of Ottone, and overlooking the valley of the Trebbia. At nightfall we went into a small village and visited the priest. It appeared that the Germans were operating at least in battalion strength on the other side of the river – 600 of them having that day passed through a nearby village – and that the whole area was rather jumpy. Remnants of the Italian fourth army were reported to be in some mountains about 10 miles off, and it was presumably these which the Germans were looking for. The Trebbia itself was an obstacle, as it was said to be too deep to wade, and was also skirted by a main road, on which was considerable German traffic.

I welcomed this opportunity to sabotage the Alassio plan …..