Escape From Sulmona

Interviewer: After the Italians capitulated, what happened to the POWs? Well in our particular camp, we'd been guarded by Italians and they just took off. And we knocked a hole in the wire and the senior British officer was, wanted to march everybody down south, meet the armies coming up and we were supposed to take over so many men each and lead them through, and the Canadians wouldn't have anything to do with that. We, we broke off by ourselves, in groups of 2 or 3 and we all headed up over the hill. I guess they cleared the camp out and we just nicely up the hill and the Germans arrived and they were firing at us. So the next morning they came up and marched, a good most of them back down again, they, they spent one night out and they were completely lost, and we were good boy scouts we had our Red Cross parcels and we survived for a couple of months by killing sheep and stealing potatoes and begging food, and so about 20 of us Canadians, we all got through. Interviewer: Just to back up a moment, Mr. Spear. Why was it that the Canadians weren't going to go with the British? Well it just doesn't, they didn't think there was any hope of marching a big crowd, you know through the German lines, there, you know, they weren't really lines not like World War I, but they were all over the place, they had guns and they had tanks and they had jeeps, and we figured, if you're only going to get through, you gotta to go through 2 or 3 at a time, you know. Interviewer: So how many Canadians were there all together? About 20, I suppose. Interviewer: So you and roughly 19 other fellows... Broke up, just divided up. I was with two other fellows, the others were groups of 2 mostly or three. Interviewer: So these little groups... All found their own way out... through different, no two did it the same way, but we all made it. Interviewer: How did your group make it? Well what we did, we crawled up over this mountain behind the camp and down the other side and there's a little village there and we got talking to the people and they were friendly and they showed us a cave up in the woods, on the side hill. So we thought well, we had, we had a little food we carried out with us, we thought we could wait there because they kept saying, "Well, the Americans are coming, the Americans are coming." And we thought best thing for us to do is, rather than try and go through the lines, just sit here in this cave and some day they're going to arrive and so we did that for about 6 weeks. Then it started to get so darn cold, we knew we had to move. So in the meantime, we'd been going into the village occasionally and sometimes the ladies would bring out a pot of food out, and we had long ago used up our own food, of course. So eventually we decided, well we've got to get out of here so we started walking south. We walked three or four days, and at night mainly, and on the top of the mountains, keeping away from the valleys where the vehicles would be, and we had some close shaves, we were almost discovered two or three times but we managed to evade them. And eventually we got down, one night and almost dark we met this Italian farmer or peasant and asked him if there were any Germans around and he said, "No." He said, "the Americans are up in that little town, little town up on the hill." So we went up on the hill and there was a Bren gun carrier outside a wine shop, nobody in it, and we went in. There were 4 or 5 Canadians lined up at the bar. They were, they jumped right out of their skin, we started talking English to them. So they drove us back in their Bren gun carrier to where they were located. They were way out in front probing, to find out where the Germans were. After that we were, the first trip by mule, then by truck, then by train, then by boat back to England.

Mr. Spear recalls when the Italians capitulated, how the Canadian POW's in the Sulmona camp escaped in small groups as the rest of the POW's, who had congregated together to march south, were recaptured by Germans.

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.