FINDING FONTANELLATO

Finding Fontanellato was a bit like “Finding Nemo”. Yes, I had always known that my father had been in a POW Camp in Italy during WWII. Mainly because I knew that he had been told that his father had died on 10^th March 1943 when he was a prisoner of war. But for the best part of half a century I had no idea Where in Italy? What Town? What did the Camp Look Like? Was it Still There? What had it been like Being Imprisoned There? Where did they go after being Liberated at the time of the Armistice? Question after question kept popping into my head.

After establishing in early December 2018 that my father had indeed been in PG49 in Fontanellato I couldn’t think of anything other than finding this place.

It was about this same time that my partner, Rex, and I had started to plan a trip to Europe to catch up with family and friends. Plans started to formulate in early 2019 and soon we had our itinerary set for stops in London, Malaga, Granada, Rome, Sarnano (to visit friends), Lucca (a pilgrimage for Rex to pay homage to Puccini), Verona (for an Opera at The Arena) and Venice before embarking on a memorable Cruise around the Baltic on the Queen Victoria.

London saw us take in the incredibly acerbic and riotously irreverent musical comedy “The Book of Mormon” at The Prince of Wales Theatre and the gloriously melodramatic Opera of “Tosca” at Covent Garden. That set us up for the most incredible journey into the Moorish Architecture and Arabic World of The Alhambra in Granada which is an experience I would recommend to anyone. But it was on returning from The Alhambra in Granada with my brother Graham and his wife, who had both brilliantly organised our glimpse into The Arabian Nights, to their holiday home in Estepona that the most incredible thing happened. As you can imagine both he and I had recently stumbled on this treasure trove of information on PG49 at Fontanellato, as provided by the Monte San Martino Trust. And consequently, all these questions which had been bouncing around in my head suddenly had a sounding board, which probably only succeeded in creating yet more questions.

Then, out of the blue, Graham said…. “I think you need to read this.”

Eric Newby’s lifetime exploits are well documented (see Books) and none more so in relation to PG49 at Fontanellato than “Love and War in the Apennines”.

And what an extraordinary revelation it was. Not only was this man, Eric Newby, writing about his wartime experiences and capture off the coast of Sicily in August 1942. But he very soon afterwards pops up in PG49 at Fontanellato when he starts describing some of his experiences and life within the Camp. And suddenly I’m there……

“The prison camp was on the outskirts of a large village in the Pianura Padana, the great plain through which the river Po flows on its way from the Cottian Alps to the sea. The nearest city was Parma on the Via Emilia, the Roman road which runs through the plain in an almost straight line from Milan to the Adriatic.”

So now I know Where it Is! But there’s more!

“The building in which we were housed had originally been built as an orfanotrofio, an orphanage…The foundations had been laid back in 1928, but the work had proceeded so slowly that the war began before it could be completed, and it remained empty until the spring of 1943 when it became a prisoner of war camp for officers and a few other ranks who acted as orderlies.”

And I now also know that it was a building! And it wasn’t just my Dad who was there! Yet more disconcertingly….

“It was a large, three storeyed building with a sham classical façade, so unstable that if anyone jumped up and down on one of the upper floors, or even got out of bed heavily, it appeared to wobble like a jelly.”

So, was it still there? Now I really HAD to find this place. It was at this point that I started trying to figure out if our carefully planned route through Italy could squeeze in an interloper. It wasn’t long before I worked out that our route from Lucca to Verona HAD to go in a certain direction. A quick check on Google Maps meant that our journey would no longer go via any of Florence, Bologna or Modena but instead go via Spezia, Parma, Cremona and Brescia. And only 40 minutes added to the planned 3 hour drive to our next destination!

Lunch in Fontanellato was on!