ANON. plus DE CLERMONT, Patrick Howard Voltelin

I don’t recall exactly what Google Search string I entered on that day in April 2025, but fortuitously one of the results drew my eye as it was entitled “Anon” that had been published under The Pegasus Archive, but I had never come across this site before so I was intrigued.

Having opened the link it soon became obvious that the reason it had been entitled Anon was because there was no name associated with the Author of the text. However, the Author of the page had offered the following introduction to the text:-

“The following are notes that were written by an unknown prisoner of war in exercise books, concerning the events at the time of Italy’s surrender and the mass escape into the countryside of the 600 prisoners at P.G. 49. The notes were written in several exercise books, many pages of which are devoted to a summary of news reports obtained concerning the progress of the Allied armies around the world. The first names of the prisoners who eventually sought refuge with the Ponzi family are Robert, an Englishman, and Patrick, an Irishman.“
If you are able to help identify the author of this narrative, please write to pegasusarchive@googlemail.com.

The photos are the Copyright of Ambrogio Ponzi

But contained within the text extracted from these “Exercise Books” were some important clues as to the people involved in this particular story, and I was hopefull that I could make some sort of effort to trace who this mystery writer was.

• The most important bit of information that jumped out at me was a letter, towards the end of the story, that referenced a Major P. De Clermont who could possibly be contacted at The Cavalry Club, Piccadilly, London.
• It also provided the Address of the letter writer (presumably the Author of the text?) as being 31, Union Road, West Croydon, Surrey, England.
• All through the text it referenced the initials of people with whom the Author was in contact. Namely S.S., L.W. and J.B. plus other South Africans G.L. and V.G. Bros and later a G.P. (“Getto” Ponzi?) and F. (Franca?) C. But I’m struggling with all of them.
• I also did a search for Griffiths but I wasn’t able to find one in my Roll Call. Nor for Les Woodward and John Rogers. Although there was a Captain N.C. Rogers?
• But, at the end of the page, the Author had issued the following credit – “My thanks to Ambrogio Ponzi (“Getto”, as mentioned in the above letter) for this account” and so the Exercise Books appeared to have been left by this POW in the care of G.P. along with the following photographs that provided further clues.

On looking through my Roll Call page for British Army Officers I straight away found Captain De Clermont, P.H.V. (50859) of the 8th Hussars and a subsequent Google Search unearthed an Obituary for a Patrick Howard Voltelin de Clermont of the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, Royal Armoured Corps. Could this possibly be the “Patrizio” identified in the letter who could be contacted at the Cavalry Club in London?

But who is “Getto” and why is the name Vajenti that is associated with a number of the photographs not coming up with any results on the N.A.R.A. website holding records of the Allied Screening Commission? I’ve got some work to do!