OUR recent series on the Second World War in Powys prompted reaction from many parts of the world – including Italy.
Paolo Panizza, who lives in Florence, was researching his father Carlo’s time as a Prisoner of War in Presteigne when he stumbled across one of the articles online.
Paolo offered pictures – apologising that they had been damaged in the Florence flood of 1966.
But more intriguingly he said his father had written a journal – and offered to translate it for us.
Paolo told the County Times: “On May 28, 1942, an Italian arrived in Presteigne and entered the new prisoner of war Camp 48, named Greenfield Farm.
“That man was the corporal telegraphist Carlo Panizza, from Florence, PoW no.15859, captured in Northern Africa one and a half years before. On the spur of the moment, he wrote down in his diary the following note: “Camp 48 with tents but nice place on a hill. Huts under construction. Bad weather. A lot of rain.”
The following day Carlo was allowed to write home. “My dearest, as you can see, here is a new and – I hope – final change. By now, we are accustomed to often get our suitcase in hand.”
Carlo, then, spent four years in Presteigne. A few months before his repatriation, he wrote a longer letter to his parents, in which he recapped his war experience.
“Before I came here, I had always been on the move, but it’s in this camp that I have finally settled down. I’ve been living here for more than three years.
“You know the place by the letters I sent you; the village – just a handful of houses – is called Presteigne.”
Carlo was immediately involved in turning the cluster of tents in to an organised structure: “When we arrived here, the camp was under construction and in the early days I worked like a builder!”
A few weeks later he was recruited in the Interpreter’s Office. In the same letter he describes his work: “We used to go to work in farms and due to my rank I was the crew chief, sometimes I worked too. Many times the trip was longer than the actual hours of work.
“The main activity consisted in going around from farm to farm where Italians were placed. Setting out in the morning and coming back in the evening could be tiring, but at the same time this was a sort of recreation for me and I enjoyed it as it was useful as well. I’ve learned a bit of English, so that I can speak and write it, enough to get by, but it is not as good as I would like.”
Carlo expressed some general consideration about camp life and British psychology.
“I think that a camp is a miniature reflection of a state: there are the same intrigues you can find in governments.
“I haven’t much to say about the way we are treated here.
“The English are terse, always placid and never in a hurry. If they have to plant some cabbages, they use a tightened wire to be sure they place them in a straight row; fields are divided by perfectly straight-lined hedges and all this is reflected in their character, which is very different from ours, they are quite cold.
“Perhaps this is the reason why our more hot-blooded temper usually endeared us to most people.”
After Italy’s surrender in 1943, Carlo – like many of Greenfield Farm’s prisoners – joined the so-called ‘co-operators’, prisoners who chose to acknowledge the status of co-belligerency with Allies. Did this improve their conditions?
“As long as we were simple prisoners everything was going right, but when we became co-operators we felt a hostility. Actually it was rather a generic attitude based on a matter of principle, as people that used to contact us personally kept liking us.
“As co-operators, we enjoyed some more freedom but not a complete one. We could walk freely but we were not allowed to use public transport; we were not allowed – not even now – to enter a canteen.
“In actual fact it is not that fraternisation was forbidden.
“We are paid 10 s. a week, that means the possibility to smoke 10 cigarettes a day or to buy some indispensable articles, like toothpaste, shoe cream and so on.”
As Italy went through its most dramatic period of the war – when the front was advancing from south to north and overthrowing almost the whole country, tragically involving many civilians – Carlo’s mail bag from Italy was empty.
“The worst period was when I had no news from you and I couldn’t know what was happening there.
“I was particularly worried when Florence was under the Germans, just after the armistice and the following short time of freedom, I didn’t know what might have happened to my dad and to my brother.”
On May 26, 1946, exactly four years after his arrival, Carlo boarded the Strathmore in Southampton. The ship, probably sailing for the Far East, called at Naples to drop off some hundred Italian ex PoWs.
“Carlo was finally back home,” said Paolo, “In September he married his sweetheart who had been waiting for him for seven long years. He died in 1989.
“If I were to guess what Carlo would have answered if he’d been asked about the gist of his story, I think he would have pointed out a badly erased note in his diary, dated 29th May 1942, written when he had just arrived in Presteigne: “On strike for the canteen”. Most likely we’ll never know the exact event this note refers to.
Certainly, in spite of his prisoner’s condition, this 24-year-old Italian – educated in a Fascist environment – could contemplate such a thing for the first time, or even dare to imagine that it was possible. I believe living in Great Britain, at that time, was an important opportunity for him, even as a prisoner of war. He could take back with him the idea that any community can develop not only thanks to the respect for rules but also for the respect of rights. In a word, the idea of democracy.”