Guardsman Francis (Frank - Lofty) Livesay

From Peter Livesey. 27/05/24

As my father’s second son, I have investigated his wartime experience via his regiment, the Coldstream Guards, who held practically no information of his whereabouts from joining up in 1940 until his demob in 1945, a huge gap.

In discussion with friends and family, I have tried to join as many dots as possible to create a better understanding of my father’s wartime experience. This led to a visit to Lucca in an attempt to discover the site of PG60 if possible.

As a result of my travels, the following article below was published in the Coldstream Gazette, 2019:

From the horrors of World War 2 to the beauty and tranquillity of Tuscany-a Guardsman’s journey

It is often the case, so we are told, that PoW’s reveal little of their experience of battle, escape and survival, and so it was with my father, Coldstream Guardsman 2661572 Francis Livesey, who joined the Coldstream Guards in May 1940 to fight for King and country and was not seen again by his family until July 1945.

As his second son, I was too young to appreciate what war really involved and meant, and cared little for the detail of the stories he told of his wartime experience. It was only as I passed from childhood to adulthood that I came to realise the impact that his war had had on both my mother and father and how little detail I possessed of his journey through the war years. When did he leave for North Africa? What was it really like to experience the horror of The Knightsbridge Box? When captured, how did he get to PG 60 in Castelvecchio, Italy? How long did he stay there? When did he escape, and how long did it take him and two friends to reach Switzerland? Who helped them along the way? And how did he get home? So many questions and, now, no-one around to answer them.

So, in August of this year my wife Jan and I set off in search of my father’s Prisoner of War camp in Italy.

Dad left home in May 1940 to join the Coldstream Guards in Blackburn, Lancashire. Conventional wisdom at the time said that the war would be over in 6 months, and it was an opportunity for adventure for a lad who had never before been out of Lancashire.

After initial training at Pirbright Dad was sent to North Africa, was taken prisoner on 20th June 1942 at the Battle of Knightsbridge Box near Tobruk, was then shipped to Lucca in Italy and was not heard of again for many years. He was “missing, presumed dead” from his departure in 1940 until his homecoming in 1945.

Sometime during their incarceration in PG60, Dad and three other prisoners somehow managed to acquire a map and plotted their escape northwards over the Alps to Switzerland. They did, indeed, escape but one of the group was shot dead during their escape so Dad and his two fellow prisoners made their way eventually to a ”Camp d’Evades” in Adelboden in neutral Switzerland, some 350 miles away. But how did they get there and when did they arrive? How long did it take? And how did they spend their time for the years that they were there?

My investigations into Dad’s wartime adventures revealed that he was detained in Camp Colle di Compito PG60 near Lucca in beautiful Tuscany, but where was the site of this camp? Did it still exist? After much online searching, we decided that the only way to find its location was to visit the area, so that is exactly what we did. And we were not disappointed. We eventually found the exact site of Dad’s PoW camp in Castelvecchio di Compito by the side of Lake Gherardesca in the rolling Tuscan countryside. Nowadays it is a protected conservation site with rare species of grebe, coot, greater white heron, cattle egret, cormorant and otter living peacefully in this delightful setting, a world away from the horrors of the war that it hosted almost 80 years ago.

Dad finally returned home in July 1945, just in time for his youngest sister’s wedding. He was penniless and without a job, but reunited with his fiancé, Dorothy, to whom he had become engaged in 1940 before leaving for Pirbright for his initial training. Mum and Dad were married on 7th June 1947. My brother was born in August, 1949; I followed in October 1950 and my sister in December 1955. Unable to afford a home of their own, they moved in with my maternal grandparents in their two-up, two-down terraced house in Great Harwood, Lancashire until they could afford to buy their own home in the same town some 5 years later. We all moved in on my second birthday, 26 October, 1952. It was there that Dad died in December 1991, aged 71, and also where Mum died in September 2001, aged 80.
Jan and I are planning our trip to Adelboden sometime next year. Lest we forget.

Dad was known as Lofty – he was 6’4″!