Hargreaves, L
Driver Lawrence Hargreaves
LAWRENCE HARGREAVES
Driver Lawrence Hargreaves of the Royal Engineers was captured in Egypt in 1940 and was not released until 1945. He was imprisoned first in Italy and then at Lamsdorf.Campo PG 78 was situated at Sulmona in Italy, three miles East of the town at Fonte d’Amore. Sulmona served as a prisoner of war camp in both world wars. During the first world war it housed Austrian prisoners captured in the Isonzo and Trentino campaigns; during the second world war it was home to as many as 3,000 British and Commonwealth officers and other ranks captured in North Africa.
The camp itself was built on a hillside and consisted of a number of brick barracks surrounded by a high wall. During the second world war conditions in Sulmona, as in many Italian camps, were good, especially in the two officers’ compounds. Regular rations of macaroni soup and bread were augmented by fresh fruit and cheese in the summer, and food parcels from the Red Cross were distributed regularly. For recreation, the prisoners laid out a football field, and they also had equipment for cricket and basketball. There was a theatre, a small lending library, at least one band, and a newspaper produced by a group of prisoners.
In September 1943, as the Italian government neared collapse, the inmates of Sulmona heard rumors that the evacuation of the camp was imminent. They awoke one morning to discover that their guards had deserted them. On 14th September German troops arrived to escort the prisoners northwards, to captivity in Germany and Poland, but not before hundreds of them had escaped into the hills.
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