Morag Muego, (nee Reid)
In light of current geopolitical events around the world, with cruelties on every side, this may be a good time to remember the courage of ordinary people in a time of extreme danger. I probably would not be here to write this, if not for them.
I touched briefly on my dad’s wartime experiences in Italy, but there is much more to it.
He was captured in North Africa on 3rd December 1942 and shipped over to Italy, held in several POW camps as he was moved north. PG 66 Capua was a particularly bad camp, then John was in PG 59, Servigliano from 20.03.43 to 30.06.43.
John arrived in Mortara ( Pavia) on 30.06.43. This was the main camp PG 146 but it was just a transit camp. On the same day he was moved to PG 146/23 in Landriano
There were many work camps like Landriano with 70-100 POWs. It’s a small town of rice fields near Milan.
The prisoners were housed in the “the Castello”, actually an ancient tower formerly used as a farm, and their jailers were Italian soldiers of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. The POWs were put out to labour, helping in the rice fields during the day and locked up at night. As a result, they became friendly with the local farmers and were well treated by them.
My father’s drawing of the prison camp, from memory.
At the point of the Italian Armistice, on 8th September 1943, the jailers in the Camp left their posts and the prisoners walked free. The Germans, however, with the Italian fascist guards of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, began hunting them down, recapturing them, and sending them to camps elsewhere. From the 100 escapees from the camp, 21 men were recaptured by the Germans in the first days. Many others hid in the fields and in bothies. My dad revisited this one, although it was safer to lie concealed in a field ditch as he did. The downside of that was waking up to find a rat chewing on his ear….
The escapees had nothing, but several local farming families took men in, hid them, fed and clothed them and when safe, the men could help with the work. My father owed his life to Mauro Rozza, who searched for him and took him in.
The Rozza family and others in Landriano, circa 1943
It was during this time that my father made drawings of the family’s young girls and neighbours. He was frustrated at having to stay hidden, so they brought him some drawing materials. It was dangerous for the escapees, who if caught, would be sent to Stalags in Germany. But for the Italians who sheltered them, the punishments were severe – homes burned down, families evicted and sometimes, executions.
Despite this, there was a very active underground Resistance, which got Allied servicemen out to safety, across the Alps to neutral Switzerland. The town plan of Landriano, below, marks all the homes that hid the escaped prisoners
From Landriano, John was taken in a van to Milan and hidden in the home of Lina Crippa Leoni, in via Boccaccio, for a short time. She had been a professor of music until she gave up her work to become a Resistance agent. The La Scala Opera House had been bombed by the RAF in August 1943, but the basement cellars were intact and also much of the scenery and props stored there. It was used partly as an air raid shelter after the bombing. Perhaps because of her professional links, my father was taken there in a work party and put to work in the basement, stitching backdrop curtains and drapes. Her niece, Giuseppina Comelli, also escorted men to the safe house at Caldé.
When it was time to leave Milan, he had to follow one of the women and was told not to speak. He could barely keep up with her long strides. They took a bus and then a train to Caldé, where he and others were met by Signor Giuseppe Bacciagaluppi and his English wife, Audrey Partridge Smith. They had created the Allied Assistance Office of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale and worked together with Leoni, travelling to Landriano to pick up fugitive POWs. The men were hidden in their home until it was safe to start on the passage to Switzerland.
Giuseppe and Audrey Bacciagaluppi
Courtesy of: Archivio privato Carlo Locatelli, dal volume di Gabriele Fontana, Scampoli La Resistenza brembana tra spontaneita’ e organizzazione, Istituto bergamasco per la storia della Resistenza e dell’eta’ contemporanea, Bergamo 2015
Together they were guided onto the mountain “path” over the Alps to freedom. Sections of this pass were fitted with chain bolted into the rock for safety.
This is the testimony of a French POW, rescued and evacuated one day before my father, by the same method.
“On 10.09.43, the guards having left the camp, I got out and stayed in the fields, getting food from farms, until 13.10.43. I met a woman who spoke English and she arranged for train tickets from Milan to Varese. We reached Milan by lorry from Landriano and remained in Milan for two days. We left Milan about 18.00 hours and got to Varese at 20.00 hours. Here we took a train for about one hour towards Luino. Our guide took us to a house where we received some food and left on foot at about 21.30 hours. We walked for three and a half hours to reach the frontier.“
My father’s boots wore out and he ended up walking in bare feet, but is recorded as arriving in Switzerland on 16th October, 1943. He was housed with a farming family, possibly in the Ticino region, and was well looked after. Although there are several photographs of family groups, I have been unable to find the exact location. We know that he was interrogated by an official in Wald, Switzerland on 19th July, 1944, prior to repatriation. The escaped men were supported by the International Red Cross and the embassies of their countries. My dad’s official War Records are incomplete, with no reference to where he was staying, but he kept a few photos like this of the family. And of a fellow escapee Alfred Pennyfather, who passed through just two days earlier.
These photographs may be from the village of Turbenthal or the camp itself, in the Bernese Oberland, about 40 kms from Thun. It was a very open camp, with just a curfew at night – it’s possible that the family group pictured lived nearby. I’d love to know!
He recovered his strength and brought back a few items from his time there – prescription spectacles from a nearby town, where his German passed muster, enough to avoid suspicion. He also came back with a tiny German bible in Gothic script and a bakelite dynamo torch that had to be squeezed repeatedly to give a glow.
Possibly a Swiss family photo, and one of Alfred Pennyfather, in the same location
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Until Dougie and I took a school party on a working art trip to Venice in 1990, little had been said about my dad’s wartime experiences. Our visit stirred a desire in him to return to Italy to try to find the places he remembered. We made a family trip to Lake Lugano the following year but he was about 20-30 miles out in his memories and didn’t find anything.
In 1993, I had a month long art teacher exchange to Milan and before I went I got him to tell me everything he could remember. I also took a photo of him as a young man in army uniform. I had spent 3 years learning Italian, because of the school visits we did, and I was able to explain my story fairly clearly.
At Easter, I took a bus to nearby Landriano, the town he remembered. I set out to find the “Castello” and asked an old lady, working in her garden – she was angry and shooed me away and went indoors, maybe thinking I was begging. I turned back and found the Comune (council building) and told the receptionist my story. She couldn’t help but knew someone who might – a local teacher and historian. Five minutes later, Massimo Piacentini and I met for the first time. On hearing the story, he told me he had portrait drawings in his house. We went there and I met his wife Rita. They brought out two framed drawings of their aunts. I recognised my father’s hand instantly, but we opened up the back of one, and there was the signature “Giovanni 1943” in my father’s handwriting. All of us were in shock, but Massimo got the drawings scanned and we faxed them to my father – he confirmed they were his.
Enrica Cipolla (portrait made in Italy while a POW and sheltered by her Italian family)
The following weeks were a blur of family visits and stories. My father wrote to Massimo in Italian and spoke about his time there. He wrote down the melody of the song he remembered.
The Italians recognised it immediately as Chiesetta Alpina, a popular tune. Here is a small extract
courtesy of DUCK RECORDS S.r.L, Italy
The following year, my mother and father travelled to Landriano, where they were given a huge welcome. My dad was taken to the places he had hidden in and met some of the families who had helped him. He also met the subjects of those drawings!
Massimo, John and his wife Mary, my mum, at a dinner held for them in Landriano in 1994
Since then, Massimo has done a huge amount of research on the Resistance and the families who risked everything. He has identified the family who sheltered my dad, he found the house in Milan where he was taken and the house at the end of the train journey to Caldé, where another brave man waited to lead the way over the Alps. And best of all, he thinks the woman in Milan who escorted him to safety, was perhaps one of the most courageous Resistance figures of them all in his area, Lina Crippa Leoni,.
Leoni is a heroine of the Resistance, who is now completely forgotten. From October ’43 to 17 April ’44, the date of her arrest, she evacuated 50 POWs fom Landriano and other villages to Switzerland and she rescued more than one hundred Jewish fugitives.
Massimo is now completing his work on the period and my father’s story will feature on the first page. I have him to thank for all the information here. I will post a link to his work when I get it.
We were privileged to host eight members of Massimo’s family on a group visit to Scotland and tried our best to show them our gratitude. Really, we are family.
There is a separate very full and comprehensive account of the Resistance in this period here:
https://www.robertspublications.com/blog/april-25-liberation-day-anzac-day-on-the-milan-escape-route
A second source is here:
And this is the record: Pages 142 and 143 record the story of Lina Crippa Leoni, courtesy of this publication.
Lina was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and transferred first to an Italian prison, San Vittore, where she was tortured, then to Ravensbruck
concentration_camp and finally to Mauthausen concentration camp. She survived but at a terrible cost to her health. She refused to give any information.
One hundred and forty-nine Italians were recommended and approved for medals, including a George Medal. A decision by the British Government, made in late 1947/early 1948 denied those brave people their well-deserved medals, when it was decided that no British medals should be awarded to any Italian national. That was shameful.
Lina received 100.000 lire from the Allied Screening Commission and refused the money. She created a studio bursary instead for poor pupils and those of merit for her music school.
My friend Massimo and his community continue to keep their story alive and teach the school students about their history. Today finally, in Landriano, a new street was named after Professor Lina Crippa Leoni, who saved many people during the years of World War II.
