Hobbling and on the run!

It’s been about 4 years since I first read Eric Newby’s book entitled “Love and War in the Apennines” so I’ve decided to see if I can refresh my memory of the very feelings I had when I first read it.

And before very long you’re immersed in another world. And most importantly I’m aware that my own Dad was alive and experiencing the exact same circumstances that Eric Newby is describing. And you’re there. You’re walking the same corridors. Marching the same roads. Playing in the same exercise yard. And eating and drinking, yes drinking, wine and vermouth in the same rooms. My Dad’s favourite drink on a Sunday lunch after a few hours in the garden when we were living in Jersey, was a Gin and Dubonnet.

 Actually, I think he used to say that it was the Queen Mother’s favourite tipple, but I now wonder if this taste for vermouth first came from his imprisonment in PG 49 at Fontanellato?

Whilst immersed in this book I start wondering if other relatives of these inmates at PG 49 have felt the same feelings that I am now experiencing once again. For suddenly you’re in Fontanellato. And not only that but you’re the one unfortunate who has broken his ankle, just two days before being released from captivity. As Eric Newby explains…

“….on the seventh of September, 1943, the day before Italy went out of the war, I was taken to the prison hospital with a broken ankle, the result of an absurd accident in which I had fallen down an entire flight of the marble staircase which extended from the top of the building to the basement while wearing a pair of nailed boots which my parents had managed to send me by way of the Red Cross.”

Hold on. Rewind! Did he just say “marble staircase”! What sort of POW Camp is this? And it’s only once you have seen it in real life, not just pictures from the Internet, that you get to appreciate the elegance of this grand old building. So how come my Dad didn’t mention any of this?

But this story of “Love and War in the Apennines” doesn’t end there obviously and, without going into a spoiler alert, it’s fascinating to learn that soon after sampling the intoxicating emotion and joy of being set free from captivity, Eric then faces what must have been an intolerable dilemma. Just a day after being set free from PG 49 at Fontanellato, he receives the worst possible news.

“Around eleven o’clock an Italian doctor arrived in a Fiat 500.He was an enormous, shambling man with grizzled hair, like a bear and one of the ugliest men I had seen for a long time.

He examined my ankle, which was rather painful after the strains to which it had been subjected, raised his shoulders, made a noise which sounded like urgh and went off to have a conference with the capitano.

‘The doctor says you must go to the hospital,’ the capitano said, when they emerged from their conclave.

‘But that means I shall be captured again,’ I said.

‘You’ll be taken away if you don’t…….. The doctor can get you into a hospital in Fontanellato. No one will think of looking for you there.’”

So, you’ve just experienced the euphoria of freedom to now finding yourself thrown back into the Lions Den of Fontanellato! Which by now is full of angry Germans who have just been betrayed and let down by the Italians. And very soon you’re lying in a bed in the Ospedale Peracchi on the outskirts of Fontanellato, only a few hundred yards from the orfanotrofio (Orphanage) which we now know to be the site of PG 49.

And suddenly I’m jumping on to my computer to see if I can establish if this Ospedale, or Hospital, exists. And sure enough a quick Google search comes up trumps. Sitting at Via XXIV Maggio 16 it’s just an 8 minute walk from Via IV Novembre 21 where the building housing PG 49 can also be found.

Now this I have to see one day!