Where The Hell Have You Been? by Tom Carver

Author:Tom Carver [Tom Carver]
Language: eng
Format: epub

11.

IT WAS A CLEAR night with a full moon. They walked for six miles, guided by the sound of goods trains shunting through the darkness. Richard had decided to try and find a crossing point some distance away from the place where the others had attempted it. As they drew near, he sent a scout ahead to try to find out where the German guards were, but he returned having failed to get close enough to see. Hargreaves was then sent to try; after twenty minutes, a dog began barking furiously at a nearby farm. Worried that Hargreaves might have been captured, Richard told everyone to pull back. He then sent out a third scout who by luck managed to find Hargreaves in the dark. Hargreaves whispered that there was a German sentry less than twenty yards ahead. Unused to being on the run, it took the two of them a long time to crawl clumsily away.

Just before dawn, the twelve POWs managed to cross the road and the railway line. Exhausted by their efforts, they collapsed into a wood beside a small river near the village of Santa Margherita. They had travelled all of seven miles from the wood at Rovacchia. Like all the others, they had brought minimal amounts of food with them from the camp. As they sat in the wood it was obvious that they would never survive unless they were helped by the local Italians. The first encounters with the locals in Rovacchia had been positive, but how could they tell who were pro-Allies and who were Fascists?

They were desperate for water, but no one volunteered for the job of being the first to find out. Richard was hardly keen but he approached the nearest farmhouse and knocked on the door. “Avete un po’ di acqua?” he asked hesitantly, when a stout-looking woman opened the door.

Without saying a word, she indicated with her head where the pump stood in the corner of the farmyard.

“Grazie.”

Richard went back to the others and one by one the twelve of them went up to the farm to have a drink and wash under the pump, watched through the net curtains by the family. They waited until dark before leaving. Away from the road and the railway line there was little evidence of Germans, so Richard insisted that his group march in formation to maintain as much speed as possible. As they passed through a small hamlet, a group of Italians who had been sitting in the road ran away when they saw them approach, thinking they were Germans. Richard wrote in his diary:

It was only with great difficulty that I managed to coax them out. Then when they realised we were English they couldn’t do enough for us and wine was produced though it was near midnight. Halted at 0130 in a pretty little valley.

The next day, they decided to start walking in the late afternoon. Despite the nervousness of the locals the previous night, there was little sign of enemy presence away from the main roads.

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