Sheet by: Costantino Di Sante

General data

Town: Vetralla

Province: Viterbo

Region: Lazio

Location/Address: Mazzocchio Basso - Vetralla

Type of camp: Prisoner of War camp

Number: 68

Italian military mail service number: 3300

Intended to: NCOs – Troops

Local jurisdiction: XVII Army Corps

Railroad station: Vetralla

Accommodation: huts

Capacity: 4000

Operating: from 01/07/1942 to 03/01/1943

Commanding Officer: Col. Alfredo Mercurelli (1 July 1942 – 3 January 1943)

Brief chronology:
April 1942: the construction of the camp resumed.
2 July 1942: the first British PoWs arrived from Sulmona.
22 December 1942: the camp was closed, and the PoWs transferred.
3 January 1943: the camp was definitively closed.

Allied prisoners in the Vetralla camp

Camp’s overview

The original project to build a PoW camo in Vetralla dated back to 1940. However, construction was soon halted as it could damage the pipes of the local aqueduct in the selected area. Only in April 1942 did construction resume after the military engineers guaranteed that the pipes would be relocated and the local population would experience no problems with their water supplies.
PG 68 Vetralla (Viterbo) was opened on 1 July 1942 while still in construction. Two days later, 202 British prisoners were brought to the camp from from PG 78 Sulmona. These had been selected among several volunteers as capable of doing construction work. Once finished, the camp was supposed to hold 4,000 PoWs.
In November 1942, roughly 2,000 (mostly) British PoWs were transferred to the camp and housed in the available huts. For two months, the PoWs were forced to live wearing the same clothes with which they had been captured in Libya and there was very little space at their disposal for the mess hall and the military shop. When the camp was closed in December 1942, probably because the huts were assigned to refugees, building had not been finished.
On 5 October 1942, PoW Albert Edward Penny, a sergeant of the British Navy, managed to escape dressed as a peasant. He stole a bicycle from the camp and reached Vatican City, asking to be received by the British minister at the Holy See. After a few days, he was handed over by the Vatican authorities to the Italians.
When the camp was closed, between 26 December 1942 and 3 January 1943, the PoWs were sent to other camps: 500 to PG 52 Pian di Coreglia (Genova); 850 to PG 57 Grupignano (Udine); 500 to PG 65 Gravina-Altamura (Bari); 500 to PG 73 Fossoli (Modena), and 500 to PG 70 Monturano (Fermo). A further 100 PoWs were sent to PG 10 Acquapendente (Viterbo) to build the local PoW camp.
After the PoWs’ departure, the huts were given to war refugees. After the Armistice in September 1943 and the area’s liberation in June of the same year, the local population took some of the camp’s materials. In spring 1945, the Ministry of Interior decided not to restore the camp, given the high costs (roughly 110 million lire at the time).
The 64 huts that made up the camp were abandoned. Today, only 13 still exist, and few traces of the camp and its inhabitants still remain.

Archival sources

• Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza, A5G, II GM, bb. 116, 117
• Archivio Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, N1-11, DS bb. 667, 740, 840, 843
• Archivio Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, H8, b. 79
• Archivio Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, L10, b. 32
• The National Archives, WO 224/129

Bibliography

• Bassetti S., Acquapendente. Campo di concentramento PG 10, Vignate, Lampi di stampa, 2020
• Insolvibile I., I prigionieri alleati in Italia 1940-1943, tesi di dottorato, Dottorato in "Innovazione e Gestione delle Risorse Pubbliche", curriculum “Scienze Umane, Storiche e della Formazione”, Storia Contemporanea, Università degli Studi del Molise, anno accademico 2019-2020,

Online resources

• https://campifascisti.it/scheda_campo.php?id_campo=359 , in campifascisti.it

Stories linked to this camp

Bert Martin