Castle of the Eagles Read online

  Two bearded young soldiers dressed in Italian uniforms stripped of insignia waited in silence on the prisoners as they sat at the polished mahogany dining table. Boyd was immediately suspicious, worrying that his captors might be able to speak English and listen in on his conversations with Leeming, perhaps hoping to glean some intelligence useful to the Italian war effort. Leeming took the initiative and decided to conduct a test, asking one of the mess waiters for something in English. He was stunned when the man replied without a hint of an Italian accent – rather it was a soft Scots burr that greeted his question.

  ‘So you do speak English,’ said Boyd, startled.

  ‘I ought to, sir. My name’s McWhinney. Sergeant, RAF.’5

  McWhinney quickly introduced his serving partner, Sergeant Ronald Bain. The tough-looking Bain grinned, explaining that he was an observer and had been shot down over Libya. There was a third RAF sergeant, Baxter, also at the villa, cooking for the prisoners. An air gunner, Baxter had ended up in the sea when his Sunderland flying boat had been shot down. McWhinney had been a member of Baxter’s crew. The three men had been plucked from Campo 78, a large prison camp at Sulmona that housed 3,000 British and Commonwealth officers and men captured in North Africa. McWhinney and his comrades had been taken up to the villa to act as domestic help for the new senior officer prisoners.6 It was soon apparent that the three RAF sergeants were keen to assist with any escape attempts, and possessed some useful skills that Boyd and Leeming were to utilise in the near future.

  *

  Though ornately decorated, the Villa Orsini had stood empty for years before it was commandeered as a POW camp by the Italian government, so Boyd and Leeming spent the first few weeks of their imprisonment rehanging doors, unblocking taps and generally trying to make the place habitable. ‘The Italian Government owes us a large bill for repairs,’7 commented a grinning Boyd to Leeming when the work was finally complete. But at least the views were splendid, with a backdrop of tall mountains to the east and very high hills in all the other directions.8 A high wall bounded the garden, with a pleasant terrace in front that looked out over the valley below, and the high mountains in the distance.9

  The situation of their confinement was a little strange. Two British officers and three NCOs were held inside the large villa, guarded by two dozen Italian soldiers under the command of a man whose surname was so unpronounceable to the Brits that Boyd and Leeming took to calling him Colonel ‘Mazawattee’. The word, which they felt was a close approximation phonetically, was borrowed from the brand name of a colonial tea, and was derived from a conjunction of the Hindi word mazaa (‘pleasure’ or ‘fun’) and the Sinhalese vatta (‘garden’). The commandant’s single goal in life was peace and quiet, and not the hefty responsibility of guarding senior officer prisoners for Il Duce. Rome kept a weather eye on both the commandant and his charges, and the commandant felt the pressure keenly. But it appeared that Rome had appointed the worst possible officer for the task, as Boyd and Leeming soon discovered that Mazawattee was both idle and muddle-headed.10 Were it not for the calm organisation and tactful diplomacy of Lieutenant Ricciardi, there would have been no surprise if tensions had escalated between the more Fascist elements of the Italian guard and their British captives.

  Leeming took charge of the house, organised the orderlies and made sure that Boyd was properly looked after.11 His natural flair for organisation, coupled with his good working relationship with Lieutenant Ricciardi, meant that things ran relatively smoothly.

  Boyd was distinctly unimpressed by Colonel Mazawattee, and he began to demand all sorts of changes to the villa and to the prisoners’ standard of living, demands that simply piled more stress on to the fat little man’s already sagging shoulders. Mazawattee was slovenly in appearance. The Britons observed that he was often exhausted by having to waddle up the hill to the villa from his quarters nearby and would arrive at the sentry post by the gate mopping sweat from his brow and his meaty jowls with a soiled handkerchief. He could barely summon the strength to return the sentry’s salute, until there came a time when the sentries simply stopped saluting him altogether. Ironically, the guards were punctilious about saluting Boyd and Leeming, much to their secret delight.12

  The relationship between Mazawattee and Boyd was not helped by Boyd’s disconcerting habit of speaking his mind. Mazawattee operated on a system of agreeing with everything Boyd said or suggested, usually with a huge and unconvincing grin plastered across his sweaty face, without actually following up with any firm action. When Mazawattee failed to deliver, Boyd would write him a sharp note, to which Mazawattee would reply, claiming that he had been called away on important business or was on leave in Rome. Relations became so difficult that Mazawattee, when he was compelled to visit the villa for some reason, would tiptoe beneath Boyd’s bedroom window in the hope that the Air Vice-Marshal wouldn’t see him and confront him with yet more complaints or demands. Such comic-opera behaviour did little to improve Boyd’s opinion of either Mazawattee or the Italian Army in general.

  But the flip side to Mazawattee’s strange behaviour were his excruciating attempts to curry favour with Boyd.

  ‘Perhaps you would like some pet to occupy your time, no, Generale?’ he asked Boyd one day, completely out of the blue.

  ‘Perhaps a little bird in a cage, no?’ he continued obsequiously, mopping his face with his soiled handkerchief. Boyd declined gently, both he and Leeming thinking that a caged bird was about the least appropriate gift to give to a prisoner of war.13

  Eventually, a form of tranquillity descended upon the villa when Mazawattee realised that it was best to leave the day-to-day needs and complaints of the prisoners to Baron Ricciardi. Boyd and Leeming had both grown to appreciate ‘Gussie’s’ attentiveness, and they had both taken to the Baron’s stunning white puppy, Mickey. A cross between a St Bernard and a white sheepdog, Mickey accompanied them on the daily constitutional walks that Ricciardi arranged for the prisoners in the local vicinity, and as he grew into a huge dog he was a friend to both the Britons and the Italians in equal measure.

  *

  The unreality of life at the Villa Orsini was summed up by the ‘incident of the machine gun’. Some official in Rome decided that the villa’s guards needed heavy firepower to back up their rifles and pistols in the unlikely event of Boyd and Leeming attempting to escape, as they had at Catania, and so they sent Mazawattee a crated Fiat-Revelli 35 tripod-mounted machine gun. The guards were thrilled to be sent such a powerful weapon, and chattered away like excitable schoolboys around the opened packing case containing the oiled and wrapped gun parts. But there was one big problem: none of the officers or men guarding the prisoners had the slightest idea of how to assemble their new toy. The next day Boyd and Leeming were summoned to see Mazawattee in his office.

  ‘I have a rather difficult problem, Generale. Perhaps you can help me,’ said the commandant rather sorrowfully to Boyd. He asked Boyd, with a hangdog expression on his face, if the prisoners could help the guards to assemble the machine gun. Boyd, straining to keep a straight face, assured the commandant that of course he would help and that he was sure one of the British sergeants had the necessary skills. Mazawattee’s face lit up and he clapped his hands together with relief, loudly proclaiming his thanks in Italian while Boyd turned to Leeming and raised his eyebrows, Leeming struggling to maintain his composure.

  Sergeant Baxter, a trained armourer, was detailed by Boyd to remove the machine gun parts from their packing case, clean them of grease and assemble the weapon. Several Italian guards stood around watching Baxter work, fascinated and excited as the gun took shape on blankets spread out on the ground. When Baxter was finished the mean-looking black metal machine gun sat on its tripod with a box of ammunition belts ready beside it. The guards clapped Baxter on the back or shook his hand, loudly proclaiming his genius. Baxter strolled over to Boyd, who was leaning against a wall watching proceedings. The guards took no notice; attention was focused entirely on their ne
w gun. Baxter took a grease-stained hand out of his pocket and opened his fist as he passed by Boyd, revealing two small springs in his palm.

  ‘Good man,’ muttered Boyd under his breath, ‘lose them.’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Baxter, a conspiratorial grin creasing his face. If the Italians ever tried to fire their new machine gun, they were in for a surprise.

  *

  Boyd and Leeming soon discovered that there were two types of Italian that guarded them: sneering Fascists and men who were either neutral or sympathetic to the British. Fortunately, the soldiers who were simply doing their war service and had no personal or political animus towards the British heavily outnumbered the hardened acolytes of Mussolini. The Britons learned that the way to get rid of the Fascists was through their mail. The authorities in Rome were always concerned about fraternisation between the guards and the prisoners and monitored the prisoners’ mail carefully, so the Britons would write in glowing terms about a particular Fascist guard in their letters home, praising his decency and generosity. It usually only took two or three notes written in this vein by the five British prisoners before the authorities in Rome quietly posted the offending soldier somewhere else, quite often to the front line in Libya.

  Two English-speaking Italian NCOs, Warrant Officer Maresciallo and Sergeant Conti assisted Baron Ricciardi with keeping an eye on the prisoners. The 60-year-old Maresciallo soon impressed Boyd and the other prisoners as essentially harmless: ‘a really lovable old rogue’ was how Leeming described him.14 Maresciallo had spent his working life in a travel company. Leeming suspected it was his long years of dealing with agitated and tired travellers that gave him his reassuring manner. A great raconteur, Maresciallo enjoyed telling risqué stories.

  Sergeant Conti was only 21, and had been raised under the Fascist regime. He could quote Mussolini verbatim, and talked a lot of rubbish about an Italian master race, but neither Boyd nor Leeming thought him much more than a brainwashed and essentially harmless youth. The highlight of his week was Wednesday morning, when his Fascist military magazine arrived. He would sit reading the stories, his lips silently moving, before getting worked up at the manufactured heroics and accosting one of the prisoners with lurid tales of battlefield heroism.15 No one took Conti seriously. Leeming thought that he was ‘a decent, kindly boy, willing to help anyone. All the Fascist education had done was to confuse and muddle his mind, leaving his fundamental nature as it was.’16

  *

  The routines of imprisonment at the Villa Orsini provided the prisoners with the first notion of escaping. Their guards had settled into predictable activities. Lieutenant Ricciardi, though watchful, was not hostile to them, and Boyd and Leeming in particular were afforded some freedoms within the grounds of the villa that could be exploited for their own purposes. It was also apparent that the Italians did not expect an air vice-marshal to attempt to escape. After much thought, Boyd briefed Leeming on a plan that he had been working out.

  ‘As you know, during the day the sentries are stationed outside the garden,’ said Boyd in his room that night. ‘It is, of course, impossible for anyone to pass unnoticed through the cordon of sentries in daylight.’

  Leeming agreed, pointing out that the sentries were close together and there was scant cover.

  ‘We know that every evening the sentries close in, coming into the garden and forming a cordon around the villa,’ continued Boyd, warming to his subject. ‘Right now they are only a yard or so from its walls.’17

  ‘It does mean that at night anyone leaving the house will be seen immediately, sir,’ said Leeming, his brow furrowed in thought.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that. As it’s impossible to pass through the line of sentries by day or by night, we need to let the sentries do the passing.’

  ‘Come again, sir?’ said Leeming, nonplussed.

  ‘Each evening we will walk in the garden, wearing our raincoats,’ said Boyd. ‘We’ll carry on like that for a couple of weeks, so that the Eye-ties get used to us. We will always begin at dusk, just before the sentries march in to the garden and close in for the night.’ Boyd paused and lit up his pipe.

  ‘The scheme is simple, John,’ said Boyd, puffing contentedly. ‘One evening, instead of going as usual into the house at the end of our walk, we climb over the garden wall.’ Leeming nodded, seeing where Boyd’s thinking was going.

  ‘Once over the wall, we won’t attempt to go any further, otherwise we will run in to the line of sentries. Instead, we lie quite still beside the wall. I noticed a spot where there are quite a few shrubs. We probably won’t be seen in the fading light.’18

  ‘And then we wait for the sentries to march into the garden and take up their customary positions around the house,’ said Leeming, nodding.

  ‘Precisely,’ replied Boyd, smiling. ‘There will be no guards between us and open country.’

  ‘It’s so simple,’ said Leeming. ‘It could work.’

  ‘Just think about it, John. The sentries will assume that we are back inside the villa. No one will be any the wiser until breakfast thirteen hours later. A thirteen-hour head start!’

  It was decided that Boyd and Leeming would remain concealed in the shrubbery until it was fully dark, then walk to the local railway station about two miles away. Their ‘escape dress’ would consist of their blue RAF uniform trousers, black shoes, civilian raincoats and black fedora hats, the latter having already been kindly provided by the Italians since Boyd and Leeming had salvaged so little of their personal kit from the crashed Wellington on Sicily.

  ‘The streets will be dark, and I’m positive that our escape get-ups will pass muster in the poor light,’ said Boyd.

  ‘There is the bother of purchasing tickets to consider, sir,’ replied Leeming. ‘I mean, we’d have to have a stab at the lingo.’

  ‘Due biglietti per Roma per favore,’ said Boyd in halting but reasonably passable Italian.

  ‘So it’s Rome?’ said Leeming.

  ‘Yes, Vatican City, the British Embassy there.’19

  For the next two weeks Boyd and Leeming made their preparations. They exercised in the garden as agreed, lulling the sentries into a false sense of normality. Then, every night, Leeming would creep out on to the villa’s roof and lie concealed, watching the sentries and taking note of the patches of cover and the light and darkness, watching the state of the Moon, monitoring wind and rain, and trying to work out the optimum time for their escape. Through seemingly innocent ‘chats’ with unwitting guards, Leeming also gained an idea of train times to Rome from Sulmona station, and even managed to persuade a guard to show him a map of Rome, whereupon he swiftly memorised a route to the neutral territory of Vatican City.20

  Another consideration was money. They needed Italian lira, and began negotiations to obtain some during their fortnight’s preparation. It was complicated, but the Italians permitted officer POWs to effectively draw a portion of their normal pay through the Italian government, which would then be reimbursed by London.21 One day in April 1941 the lira finally arrived. It was a Monday. But that night Leeming judged that the position of the Moon was not right: there was too much light to make proper concealment successful. It would be a serious risk to ignore this important point. Boyd and Leeming reluctantly agreed to postpone the escape for one week. But both men remained upbeat – all that was needed was the correct light conditions and they would be away.

  *

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Adrian Carton de Wiart on being handed a glass by an officious Italian officer.

  ‘Whisky and soda, General,’ the officer replied. De Wiart glanced at the drink as though it were poisoned and banged it down on the table before him untouched.

  ‘I thought all Englishmen drank whisky and soda, no?’ said the officer, smiling unconvincingly.

  ‘Well not this one,’ replied De Wiart gruffly.22

  Along with two Italian officers, a German field police captain was in attendance. Although De Wiart was an Italian prisoner, t
he Germans insisted on being present at his ‘interrogation’ in order to glean anything useful for the Reich.

  If his interrogators were hoping that a pleasant drink might loosen the old general’s tongue, they were sorely mistaken. ‘I detest whisky,’ wrote De Wiart of the encounter, ‘[and] it availed them nothing …’23

  The Italian and German officers conducting the questioning changed tack and tried to glean some idea of what De Wiart had been tasked with doing for the Allied war effort, though all their gambits were met with the same answer from their prickly subject.

  ‘Carton de Wiart, Adrian, Major-General, British Army.’24

  *

  The interrogation of Brigadier Edward Todhunter was less confrontational, though no more successful. Remaining in Derna, Libya when Neame and O’Connor were taken on their abortive Berlin trip, he had been moved to a barrack block there along with several other senior officers, including Lieutenant-Colonel George Fanshawe, lately commanding officer of The Queen’s Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) and Brigadier ‘Rudolph’ Vaughan, who had commanded the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade under Gambier-Parry’s 2nd Armoured Division. General Gambier-Parry and Colonel Younghusband were to join them later.25 The prisoners slept on bunks and were well treated and fed.