Messages Home Via the Vatican

Here are some other interesting images.  The first one is a slip of paper that must have been tucked into the envelopes of letters from all the British POWs in Italian camps, having gone through London via the Vatican delegations in Rome and Lisbon.

The ink has faded quite a bit, but I was able to correct it enough to make it legible.  All images can be clicked on to enlarge them here too.

Below are images of both sides of a post card to my Grandmother from her brother, Donald Greed.   Now, I can see what camp he was in: PG-54.  There it was in writing all along, waiting for me to discover.

This camp, PG 54 ( Fara Sabina), was located in what is now the village of Borgo Santa Maria.  Not only was I able to find it at last, but there are multiple websites providing the history of the camp, so we can even speculate with a degree of certainty about Uncle Don's foiled escape now, and how he ended up in Stalag IV-B.

I've embedded the map from the website linked below, which can be zoomed in and out to see more, or to see where in Italy it was.

According to this website (click on this link to open it in another page), Campo PG 54 Fara Sabina, many Allied prisoners escaped into the Apennines in the ensuing chaos after the Italian Armistice on September 3, 1943.  The Italian Army had not been informed what actions they were to take and guards simply deserted.  Then:   

Shortly after the armistice German troops arrived to take control of the camp and immediately set about trying to recapture the POW’s who had fled from the camp. As the POW’s were rounded up they were brought back to the camp to await transportation to Germany.   

Increasingly the camp was used as a collection and transit camp for Allied POW’s captured by the Germans further south...

From the camp the POW’s were marched to Fara Sabina railway station at Passo Corese where they were loaded onto trains, often 40 or more men to an enclosed cattle truck and transported north to Germany, via the Brenner Pass, and many more months of captivity in German POW camps. 

 [https://sites.google.com/site/camppg54farasabina/history, Retrieved 04/03/2020]

The Germans had issued an order that any Italians caught harboring POWs would be shot and their houses burned down, so the men on the run that had been sheltered by locals who had no sympathy for the fascists, had to leave and hide anywhere they could in the forest and mountains.  The Allies were advancing from the south and some escapees tried to get to them.  No doubt, some turned themselves back in as well.  What happened to Donald Greed specifically in all this is still unknown.