Robert Walter Calvey
(1922-2011)
Trooper, 46th Reconnaissance (Recce) Corps
Robert Calvey, a trooper in the 46th Reconnaissance Corps, landed in Salerno on 9 September 1943. He was captured only a few weeks later while his unit was attempting to reach the River Garigliano
About 20 yards from the bunker, I heard the sound of a rifle bolt being rammed home; seconds later, a shot rang out. I hit the ground instantly and let out a blood-curdling scream as the two grenades came together in my trousers pockets, the only place I had left to carry them. I heard someone shout, “Old Calvey’s had it”. As I rose painfully from the ground, cursing the bloody hand grenades, two Germans with fixed bayonets escorted me up to the riverbank to a concrete gun emplacement, where the remainder of our patrol stood unarmed and dejected.
He was immediately taken to Frosinone and placed in some decommissioned barracks used as a temporary prison camp.[1] He spent roughly two months in these conditions. Later, he was transferred to PG 54 Fara Sabina. Wanting to get better food rations, he volunteered to work as a builder for some work the Germans planned to do on a nearby farm.
His stay in this camp, however, was short. After about three weeks, all the PoWs were gathered at the gates and escorted to a railway line. The Germans had decided to move them all to Germany.
On 28 January 1944, while the convoy was passing a bridge near Allerona, it was struck by an American bombing raid.
Suddenly, there was a violent explosion, and the train came to a shuddering halt, throwing us higgledy-piggledy to the floor. We had just disentangled ourselves when another ear-shattering explosion rocked our truck on its tracks, rendering us helpless again back on the floor. Shrapnel had torn a jagged hole in the roof, and the blast had ripped the door completely off. Coming to my senses, and through the smoke and choking straw, dust and other debris, I saw daylight filtering through the doorway.
Untangling myself from a heap of bodies, I made for the door without hesitation, others were desperately pushing from behind. I just managed to save myself [from] being pushed into a sheer drop of some 150 feet. We were perched perilously on a viaduct most of which had been demolished. […] Our truck was balancing precariously on the very edge and could have gone over at any minute. It was a ghastly, unbelievable sight.
It was the right moment to flee. Robert scurried along five carts until he found a place where he could safely jump on the ground. He rolled on the dirt and ran away into the hillside, where the trees were thicker. While hiding in the bushes, he ran into two other PoWs who, just like him, had decided to escape: George (Gibson) and William (Geordie)[2].
Like me they were both pretty exhausted, so we moved to the most dense area of our hiding place and sat down. After a short rest we discussed our next move. We knew the Germans would take a roll call of the dead, the injured, and the remaining prisoners, the start a full-scale search of the area. Our final decision was to move south in the hope of meeting up with the advancing Allied troops.
Robert Calvey(Source: J. Dethick, La lunga via del ritorno
)
Robert, Geordie and Gibson headed south. It was already winter, and the weather was variable. Geordie, who could speak Italian, became their interpreter. They traversed the countryside, as they were informed by a farmer that the Germans still occupied the nearby town of Orvieto. Each night, they were sheltered by a different family. One night, they spotted some unidentified figures approaching their hideout. They hurriedly escaped from their hut and wandered in the night. At dawn, they discovered they had run for several kilometres in a northerly direction, the opposite of what they wanted to do. Therefore, they decided to hunker down and wait for the Allies to overrun them in their advance.
As they reached a village, hungry and thirsty, they entered a local inn. Here, they were approached by a man who spoke English and suggested they abandon the place because it was a Fascist gathering spot. He offered them help and asked them to wait for him to return from the toilet. As time passed, the escapees grew suspicious and decided to leave, but it was already too late:
We got up and moved casually to the door and out onto the street and stopped dead. Strung out across the road at both ends of the village, about 150 yards apart, was a line of armed men and youths […]. Within a very few seconds, the bistro door behind us opened, and our English-speaking friend of a few minutes ago stood there with half a dozen cronies.
Their escape attempt failed, and they were all captured by the group of Fascists. The English-speaking Italian, head of the local blackshirts, informed them that they would be shot immediately since they were wearing civilian clothing, did not have any documents and, therefore, they could be spies. As they reached the spot designated for the execution, the firing squad was interrupted by the village’s priest, who managed to stop the Fascists. As Robert recalled sarcastically, they looked at the Italians with defiance, as they had won that little battle: «the priest apparently held more sway in the village than the Fascist movement.»
In February 1944, Robert and his companions were moved to PG 77 Pissignano:
About an hour’s more driving brought the lorry to a halt at what first appeared to be a small chalk quarry and possibly had been at one time. An area of hillside had been cut back to produce a vertical wall of earth and chalk, some [feet] high, with a base area of about seventy-five yards square. The compound contained six moderate-sized wooden huts but no lookout towers or searchlights; it was apparently a temporary transit camp for Pows.
They were transferred to PG 82 Laterina at the end of the month. The camp was, at that point, at its maximum capacity. Robert was soon informed that, in recent weeks, many PoWs had been able to escape and thus began to plot his escape with Gibson and Geordie. One day, after a few delays due to indecision, he discovered that his companions had escaped without him. Thanks to Geordie’s perfect Italian, the two pretended to be Italian workers and walked out. He concluded that they did not involve him because the maintenance teams that visited the camp were comprised of only two Italian workers, and, moreover, his hair was blond, which could have raised the guards’ suspicions.
In the following days, he abandoned his escape plans and waited to be transferred to Germany. He thought that, once there, he would find it easier to escape since his fair complexion would not be an issue «in a country of predominantly fair-haired people».
A week later, after morning roll call, the entire camp was mustered in the compound, and after a brief search of personal belongings, in my case nil, we were marched to a nearby railway siding. Accompanying us were heavily armed guards with ferocious-looking guard dogs. We were en route [to] Germany.
Unfortunately, Robert could not escape from Stalag IVB Mühlberg or Stalag 11A Altengrabow, where he was later transferred. He spent his last days as a PoW in Arbeitskommando 544/9, Magdeburg, until the end of the war.
Camps related to this story
Sources
R.W. Calvey Name, Rank and Number The Book Guild Lewes, Sussex, 1998.
J. Kinrade Dethick, La lunga via del ritorno. I prigionieri alleati in Umbria (1943-44), Morlacchi Editore, Perugia, 2018.
Campo PG. 82 Laterina -Testimonies – https://powcamp82laterina.weebly.com/testimonies.html
Note:
[1] Most likely, it was the Fraschette prison camp. The camp was created to hold PoWs but was used during the Second World War as an internment camp for civilians. At the end of the war, it became a sorting camp for foreigners and then a refugee camp for Italians expelled from North African countries.
[2] They were George Arthur Gibson, 46th Recce Regiment and William ‘Bill’ Blewitt (Geordie), Sherwood Foresters.