Campo PG 112/1 Turin Ponte Stura

At PG 112/1 there were 75 POWs who had arrived in May 1943 from PG 60 Lucca. They worked on the surrounding farms until 8 September, when they dispersed throughout the territory coming up against the difficulties common to escaped POWs from the other camps: in part they fell victims of roundups and of Nazi-fascist repression, many were assisted by the local population as long was possible, after which they were escorted away from the Turin hinterland to join the partisan bands which were being formed in the mountains. The luckier ones managed to reach Switzerland or later, in the autumn-winter of 1944, France.

 

PG 112/2 Venaria Reale - La Mandria  (Cascina Peppinella)

On the Mandria estate, owned by the Marquis Giacomo Medici del Vascello, there were several farmhouses such as Bonini, Brusca, Cerbiatta, Bello and Peppinella. In the spring of 1943 a work camp was set up at the latter, employing one hundred British prisoners of war on canal construction, part of a hydro-electriciy project; the canal was excavated at the Bonini farmhouse in the hamlet of La Cassa in San Gillio. The prisoners were overseen by about thirty soldiers belonging to the Italian Army. They were treated fairly; the owner and the Estate Administration supplemented their diet with fresh food such as milk, fruit, tomatoes, wine and vegetables of various kinds.

 

PG 112/4 Gassino (Castiglione Torinese)

One hundred and twenty-six British prisoners of war¹ held in this camp at Gassino Torinese, were also assigned to excavation work: 'I was sent there as a guard. They were making a tunnel under Superga for Riv ² equipment… the British worked there', ex-partisan Giulio Giordano told the students of the “L.B. Alberto” of Luserna San Giovanni and Torre Pellice.³

Perhaps, with the passage of time, Giulio Giordano's memory had let him down somewhat, because the tunnel, near to where the POWs were working, did not run below Superga but instead, starting from Piana di San Raffaele, ran beneath the entire hill (and still does), emerging at Cascina Galleani (Castagneto Po). It formed the underground section of the feeder canal intended to transport water from the River Po, in the vicinity of San Mauro, to the hydroelectric plant at Cimena. That the British were working on the excavation of the surface section of the canal is confirmed by the statements made to the Allied military authorities by a number of former prisoners: «We were put on to canal digging» (supported by local testimonies).

"At that time, they were building the canal for the electricity board,'' Signor Giovanni Anselmino, from Gassino, told some Class 6 pupils in the town's junior school a few years ago - ''and we youngsters used to play inside the canal tunnel, it was great fun". The war emergency then led to that section of the tunnel being used as an underground refuge for the RIV factory (acronym obtained from the name of its first director, Roberto Incerti, and from that of the locality where it stood, Villar Perosa), a factory which made ball bearings, then owned by the Agnelli family and then linked to the Fiat group.

PG 112/4 was known as a "disciplinary camp - a punishment camp" (it had a punishment cell⁵) and prisoners were sent there when, for some reason (mostly linked to protests or insubordination in the previous camp), they had been blacklisted. In general, however, the prisoners did not find this camp so terrible, and often they considered it even better than those previously experienced, in particular PG 133 Novara from which many of them had come.⁶

 

PG 112/5 Castellamonte (locality Spineto)

Before the discovery of the list of prisoners detained at La Mandria in the Escape Report of sergeant Thomas John Powell,⁷ Spineto was the only working detachment of Camp 112 for which a complete list had come to light. The Allies obtained it from the former clerk to the camp, Signor Pietro Mattioda, in 1946 when the Missing Personnel Searcher Party went to Canavese to carry out research regarding the British soldiers who had died whilst trying to cross the Galisia Pass (Colle Galisia) into France in November 1944. At the end of the investigations the list was deposited in National Archives in London with the rest of the enquiry documentation.⁸

At PG 112/5 there were fifty prisoners, all of whom had come from PG 53 Macerata and, before that, from one of the transit camps (either PG 65 Gravina in Puglia or PG 66 Capua) where they had arrived after being captured in Libya at the time of the Axis advance in the summer of 1942, which forced the Allied troops to retreat to Egypt and take up position at El Alamein.

At Spineto they were lodged in a farmhouse in Via delle Scuole, behind the Villa Talentino.

One group of men worked at a leather factory C.A.I. (Conceria Alta Italia) belonging to the Giraudo brothers, another group was engaged in the excavation of a canal on the outskirts of the town of Canavese, and a few worked in the production of bricks at the Talentino factory, not far from the camp.

The S.B.O. (Senior British Officer), i.e. the senior British officer in charge of discipline, was Corporal James Sunderland.⁹

 

PG 112/9 Beinasco

Here is part of the testimony of corporal -major Raffaele Ferraris ¹⁰

On 19/7/43 I was in service as corporal-major at the 30 Reggimento di Fanteria Deposito, R.E.( 30th Infantry Regiment Depot, Royal Army ) in Rivoli Torinese, when I received the order to go as interpreter to Prisoner of War work detachment no. 9. (Fornaci Riunite, Beinasco, author's note).

I immediately found myself at home at this detachment, since all the prisoners of war, being well treated, spoke to me openly. On one occasion I received a letter signed by several of them, but following a search made in the room I was using at the Fornaci Riunite it disappeared, in what circumstances I have not discovered.

In the aforesaid letter they thanked me and mentioned the favours and generosity shown, which I had been able to extend to them with the permission of S/Ten Andreotti (the detachment commander, author's note), on the understanding that no one at Headquarters should get to know anything. Especially, on Sundays I left them free to play football and bowls in a meadow outside the perimeter fence, and in the evening they were permitted to listen to the latest political news and various types of music on the radio. I wish to point out that on these occasions Signor Giovanni Dalmetti, whose restaurant was nearby, always offered them between 15 or 20 litres of wine on Sundays with fraternal cordiality.