The not so great escape.

[Lang]

Mike

There is an unintentionally hilarious book written about the German and Italian POW camps around the Shepperton area in Victoria.

The incompetence of the Australian guards (all Dad's Army types) allowed continuous prisoner adventures including a well used tunnel under the road between the German and Italian camps causing the German roll call to show 5 extra people and the Italian roll call to show 5 missing.

The Police Inspector at Shepperton told the Colonel that he had better things to do than chase regularly missing prisoners and for the Army to sort out their own problems.

Two German Navy engineers escaped, went to Melbourne and got a job in the Commonwealth Aircraft Factory posing as Poles.

The prisoners knew they could not get out of Australia, they were just bored.

This is a nice little article on just one of the Italian POW camps at Myrtleford in Victoria. You can see how effective the guards would have been "requiring no previous training or experience" before receiving a uniform.
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog...-la-dolce-vita


Probably the majority of Italian prisoners were sent out as farm labourers and general workers. They were on their honour, apart from the fact many of them never wanted to be in the Italian Army in the first place, and treated as everyone else in the community. Of course Australian farm girls could not resist a young flashy Italian living in the house so there were thousands of romances and innumerable marriages. Tens of thousands of Italians either stayed or returned from Italy after being repatriated, or just migrated as result of their soldiers' Australian stories, making our community so vibrant during the 40's and 50's.