Life as a POW: Sulmona, Italy

I was sent up to one about as far north as Rome, but closer to the other coast, a place called Sulmona. And that was our first, sort of permanent, first and last, permanent prison camp. Interviewer: Can you describe the prison camp at Sulmona for me? Well, it was a...maybe a mile or so from the railway town, the railway station, on a side hill and there was a big mountain overlooking it. And half way up the mountain, there was a monastery. You could see the path going up to that. It was all enclosed in a brick wall and it was divided into compounds and the upper, upper-most compound was the officer's compound where I was. And below that, there would be NCO's and then other ranks. At the very foot of the whole thing, there was a big field where they used to be able to play soccer and we used to get a chance to play softball and so on. And there was, the first building I was in was a long barrack-type thing with cots down either side. There might have been maybe thirty people in that barracks. There was a washroom at the far end of it and it wasn't heated. And then later on, just before Italy capitulated, they started shipping out prisoners to Germany. So they were moving the British ones first and the upper compound, there was almost like a motel; rooms with two people in it. So, when they moved those people out, we kind of moved up and took over that part, which was a lot nicer. But we ate in a... we had a common mess and we had a catering officer who... British Army type, I guess. And the British ran everything, the senior British officer. So we used to get Red Cross parcels when things were going right, Canadian parcels with milk and meat and biscuits and things like that in it. And a lot of this stuff, we put in to the mess to go along with the rations we were able to get from the Italians, things like greens, vegetables, and so on. But we never saw any fresh milk or fresh eggs. And so we would have, I guess maybe one meal a day at the mess and the rest we would sort of cook up. We made little stoves out of tin cans. We would boil water in them and have our tea and stuff like that. And we used to get a ration of bread a day that was about the size of a, oh, a mini loaf maybe. That was given to us by the Italians. Every man got one of those. Interviewer: So in the run of a day, the average day, you would have one of these mini-loaves of bread and what else would you normally have? Well, they would probably make some soup, but it was pretty thin stuff. And then they might have a slice of ham or pam and if there were any vegetables. And they would make what they called a sweet. Be some kind of little dessert, you know. We were, at one time, the Red Cross parcels couldn't get through. They were apparently coming from Switzerland and, I don't know, the passes were plugged up with snow and instead of one parcel a week per man, we were getting one for two men and then one for four men. And so we were getting way down on our food and we had a, we had a English doctor had been taken prisoner. He recommended we stop doing any, taking any exercise. We were getting about 1,000 calories a day, you know, just losing weight. We had, but in the good... summertime when we were able to, good weather, that is, we were able to go down and play softball maybe once a week and we had a, in our own compound, we had a basketball ring set up and we used to play, throw a ring over this net and (inaudible) something. We used to play a game and we used to take a fair amount of exercise, walking, and played an awful lot of bridge and read. And there were courses being given. I took my first bookkeeping course there, called the Scott CA.. There was language courses and, just something to keep ourselves occupied.

Mr. Spear recalls life as a POW, describing the camp at Sulmona, Italy and how the availability of Red Cross parcels greatly affected the POWs diet.

Allen Maxwell Spear

Mr. Spear lived in Sussex, New Brunswick, before attending Business College in Saint John - he worked in Bathurst, New Brunswick, for a number of years before joining up. Mr. Spear had not enjoyed his Army camp experience in high school and was attracted to joining the Air Force, particularly as a fighter pilot, because of the recognition the Air Force was receiving in the Battle of Britain. He joined as soon as the Air Force lowered the education requirements to high school which allowed him to qualify. After much basic and initial flight training, Mr. Spear was excited to begin Spitfire training in England in fall 1941. In early 1942, he was stationed to North Africa. The camp locations changed often as the RAF and German Air Forces leapfrogged back and forth across the desert. A few months later (July 1, 1942), his engine gave out during a mission. He landed his plane behind German lines, was captured as a POW, and was shipped to Sulmona, Italy for internment. In September 1943, when the Italians capitulated, the POWs at the Sulmona camp escaped. Mr. Spear, along with two other Canadian POWs managed to escape by travelling along the mountains, avoiding the valleys where they were more likely to run into Germans, until they met up with other Canadian troops in November 1943. After being shipped back to England, Mr. Spear was returned to Canada to serve as a Staff Pilot at a Bombing and Gunnery School in Mountainview, Ontario. A post he held until the end of the War, at which time he was discharged.