LACEY Mike

“Major Mike Lacey, who died aged 96 in December 2016, was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and assigned to 60th Field Regiment in 1939. As part of the BEF in France, the regiment escaped from the Dunkirk beaches after an encounter with some Stukas whose bomb aiming was, happily, inaccurate. Subsequent service took Michael through Syria and Iraq to tank warfare in North Africa. After the battle of Sidi Razegh, he was captured in November 1941. From his first internment camp at Benghazi, Michael was taken to Montalbo, Italy, until the spring of 1943, when he was transferred to Fontanellato, near Parma.

Following the mass escape from Fontanellato, shortly after the Armistice in September 1943, Michael set off south with two companions, later to be joined by a deserter from the German army. After six months, while trudging through snow in the Maiella mountains, he was ambushed and captured. After incarceration in Germany he re-turned to England in 1945 and continued to serve in the Army for several years, in both Australia and Germany.

In 2013, Mike was among 80 Trust supporters who celebrated the Armistice’s 70th anniversary at Fontanellato. He was given the notebook he had left behind at the camp and which had been picked up by a camp guard. He also met the grandchildren of the Ferrari family who had sheltered him. At the MSMT lunch that year, in a poignant meeting, Mike was introduced to Steve Dickinson, the nephew of Mike’s Signalman, Robert Dickinson. The two men had been captured together but Robert, after his own escape, had been killed in a skirmish. After the war, Mike followed up all his men and had been aware that Robert had not survived.“