Henry (Harry) James Rock
11° Battaglione Commando Royal Marines
After enlisting in 1939, Harry joined the Royal Marines, participating in several missions with the 11th Commando Battalion.
In September 1942, he set sail to Alexandria and reached Tobruk, where he was supposed to take part in Operation Agreement (13-14 September 1942).[1] However, this mission was ill-conceived and poorly organised and, as such, destined to fail. It was the Royal Marines who paid the price of such disorganisation. They landed on a spot different from the one agreed upon and were met by enemy fire almost immediately (the Germans were evidently aware of the operation). More than 300 marines were killed, while many more were captured.
We scrambled over the rocks and had to make our own decisions as to what was best to do at the time. In the action that followed, I suffered a wound in my neck; I remember vaguely holding a rag to my neck to stem the bleeding. I was losing a lot of blood and was eventually picked up by a German patrol and taken back to their base. My neck was attended to by an Italian Officer who claimed to be a Doctor! He said they were short of medical equipment and had to use a common knife to operate. He stitched my wound with a sewing needle – which has left a scar that I have still got today. After the usual spate of questions and evasive answers, I was told to prepare to move on to Bengazi to a special PoW Camp.
After two months in the Benghazi prison camp, tormented by hunger, filth, heat during the day and cold during the night, Harry was informed that he would be transferred to Italy. He was taken to Bari, where he was treated for a few weeks at the hospital because of the neck wound. Once healed, he was sent to PG 47, Modena.[2]. In the camp, he was reunited with other prisoners he had met in the Benghazi camp, including Jack Fallon, who became his escape partner. Together, they prepared a plan and executed it: «In the end, we escaped by mingling with some workers who were leaving the camp».
Together, they headed south, surviving by stealing fruit and vegetables from the fields and walking only at night. However, near Assisi, they were intercepted by a German patrol and sent to Perugia[3], where they were held for a few days before being transferred to Germany.
During the train journey to Milan, Harry and Jack tried to escape again, this time by cutting a hole in the wooden floor of their carriage. However, they were too slow, as they completed their work just as the train reached its destination. The Germans discovered the hole during a routine search of the train and threatened to kill all the PoWs in the carriage. The men were saved only by the intervention of an older officer.
We carried on our journey towards Germany, and on arrival, at a small wayside station on the German side of the Brenner Pass, we were all offloaded onto a siding. Jack noticed a train immediately opposite, which would have appeared to have been an Arms Train going South, and as at the time the Guard had moved away from us, we were able to slide down the siding and get underneath the armoured train, which left soon afterwards and took us non-stop back through the Brenner Pass to Italy. We got dropped off this train at a small town called Bolzano, and laid low in the undergrowth until dark, when we once more started our march Southwards towards Verona.
After many days of walking, they reached Cesena. Then, they arrived at the Sangro River in Abruzzo, where they ran into other escaped PoWs, who joined them for a while. After narrowly escaping recapture by a group of Fascists, they decided to split up again to be less conspicuous.
Harry and Jack continued their journey by crossing the Sangro and then headed inland to the Gran Sasso, hoping to cross the mountain range. However, they were captured by a German patrol and put to work on a nearby fortification. Later, they were transferred to PG 21, Chieti. A prisoner once more, Harry was determined to escape again.
During his stay in PG 21, Harry took part, with four other PoWs (including Len Cooper, who became one of Harry’s best “escape” friends) in the digging of a tunnel, which the prisoners completed in about two weeks. Harry and Len promptly escaped, ending up in the woods in front of the camp. They decided to go north-west to put some distance between themselves and the other escapees, who were all going south.
They followed the Pescara River to orientate themselves, trying to get as far away as possible from Chieti. After a few days, they decided to leave the river and reach the village of Scanno. Walking was becoming increasingly difficult since the ground was now covered with frozen snow.
We were both very-tired at this stage, and we made up our minds to search out a suitably isolated peasant farmhouse – for food and possible rest. As was usual on these occasions, the door was opened by the woman of the house, and from a distance, we made ourselves known as English escapees. She could not understand English, but in our own brand of Italian – which we had picked up along the way – we made known what we wanted. She seemed to understand enough to invite us in to meet all the family. After making our normal cautious approach, we were met with utter excitement and pleasure, and very quickly, we were provided with some food, and our wet outer clothing was taken and dried for us. Many of these peasant families were anti-German. We were then taken to the barn which, at that time, in most of these peasant farms, was immediately underneath the main house. Straw beds were made up for us in the cow mangers, where we spent our first night for quite some time – in beds of straw with cows breathing on us from above.
During their journey, they ran into a small group of escaped PoWs, guided by an Italian, who were trying to reach the Allied lines. Harry and Len decided to join them and discovered that the escapees, who had been in the area for quite some time, were waiting for an American airdrop of food and clothing. Indeed, the plane appeared a few days later, but the drop was imprecise, and its content was lost in the mountain. Moreover, a German patrol spotted the operation and, the next day, found and surrounded the escapees. Harry was again put behind barbed wire, this time in PG 102, L’Aquila.
The detention centre at L’Aquila was an old hospital that had been turned into more of a military barracks, and we were detained in a ground floor section at the rear of the building in one big room. We slept in wooden bunk-type beds, four men in each bed unit. Len and I got together some of the other occupants, and we started, once again, the painful process of creating a tunnel. We continued our tunnel for some days, and we were making relatively good progress until one morning, we were surprised when the German Commandant ordered us all out for a special roll call. We were all paraded in the yard outside for him to carry out an internal inspection. It was perfectly obvious that someone had informed the Germans about our tunnel, and it was found and blocked up. We were all subjected to pretty hard punishment – i.e. multiple roll calls in the middle of the night and very reduced food rations.
A few days later, Harry and Len were moved again, this time to a camp near Florence[4]. In only two weeks, the two managed to plan another escape, this time using the camp’s sewers:
In retrospect we were both quite pleased as we had reached the stage when we could not stand the filth and smell any longer. In fact, the smell lived with us for weeks afterwards.
This was Harry’s last attempt, as he and Len were tired and weakened by this point. Soon, they were transferred to Germany, to Stalag VIIA Moosburg, where they remained until May 1945. «I often ask myself now: Why did I risk so much by attempting to escape? It was a challenge, and it kept me sane».
I often ask myself now: Why did I risk so much by attempting to escape? It was a challenge and it kept me sane
Camps related to this story
Sources
Harry Rock, memoria privata, (1985), https://archives.msmtrust.org.uk/pow-index-2/rock-harry/
Note:
[1] The aim of this operation was to weaken the Axis’s effort in North Africa by destroying airfields, harbours, transport ships, vehicles and oil deposits.
[2] Harry erroneously labelled this as PG 45.
[3] Harry did not specify exactly where. Most likely, they were held in the city’s prison
[4] It was not possible to identify the camp ‘near Florence’ to which Harry refers in his memoirs.