Location of PG70, Monturano

[Grahammack]

Hi
I have attached the citation for my Father's MM which refers to to Camp70 and then goes on to refer to his actions in Italy for which he was awarded the medal. There are a number of dates and other facts which you may find of interest.
Whilst he said he would take my mother to Italy they never went abroad before he died in 1969. He never really talked about his time in Italy more about selling lemonaide to other troops in Palestine before the war!!
I have thought about trying to find out more either here or in Italy but it a long time ago. However if anyone has any ideas I would be very gratefull

[Anydogsbody]

The description of the exit from PG70 fits better with what my father recalled than some other accounts. He used to talk about getting out of the camp and hiding in a maize field pending the arrival of the allied troops from the south. As a stratagem it didn't work too well because he spent he rest of the war at Stalag 11B, Fallingbostel!!!

Your father deserved his MM, what a great story. I'm always fascinated by the initiative and resourcefulness of folks when the chips are down.

Incidentally, the citation mentions escape from rail trucks in transit to Germany. Some certainly tried that but were shot for their trouble so, according to my father, that was regarded by most as something of a disincentive to escape.

[Grahammack]

I am glad you found this of interest. As I said my Father never really talk about it and when I downloaded the citation a couple of years ago I was amazed what he had done. I think it is partly that he had a very bad accident in 1955 where he lost one leg, had plates in the other and had over 150 stitches in his body and was very lucky to survive. This must have changed him as that the medal citation does not fit in the man I remember. After he died my mother could not find the medal and we think he must have taken it to work to show someone and lost it.
I am framing the citation and hanging it with our family trees. Apart from that I think I leave it there as service records appear to be £30 and I not sure what else it will give me.

[Anydogsbody]

When I first started this thread I did not know where PG70 was but now, thanks very largely to the efforts of contributors on Rootschat, I not only know where it is but have been there and photographed it.

However, although I had many reasons to believe that my father had been in PG70 I struggled to find the last piece of evidence that would clinch it. That was until last week.

My father's sister, aged 99, died and amongst her personal papers we came across a picture of my father and, written on the back, his address in Italy.......P.G. 70, 2nd compound together with other postal details. So, there is now no real doubt where he was.

It's good to have brought the quest to a successful conclusion. I now need to discover a plan of the camp and see if I can discover where Compound 2 was

[Cosy0123]

I to have been trying to locate PG70 because I have in my possession an embroidered white handkerchief that was created by someone in the PG70 camp. My father was the owner of the handkerchief and inscribed on it was the names of the people who were prisoners of war from the 68th HAA Regiment, Royal Corps of Signals, who where captured at Tobruk in June 1942. My father, after the capture of the Italians, was moved to Stalag1VB, I will also be looking into that camp also.

I am in touch with the Royal Corps of Signals Museum for information.

I will send you, a copy of the handkerchief for you to view, when I scan in the image.

Also, I am researching other avenues re PG70 and Stalag1VB.

Hope this is of interest to you.

[Anydogsbody]

Yes, I would be interested to see that. I hope you found the rest of the thread of interest and you now know the location of PG70.

[Cosy0123]

Apology for the delay in sending you the image of handkerchief, I can only compress the image to 650KB, over the limit of the site, any suggestions I have a Mac.

Regards,

Frank

[Anydogsbody]

You could send it by email but I don't want to put an email address in the open otherwise I'll get spammed to death. I'll try and send you a PM with an email address but I don't know whether we'll get away with that until you've got a few more posts. Hopefully you can receive a PM and respond even though you won't be able to initiate PMs yet.

However, that doesn't get the image where everyone can see it. I don't know what image editing software you have. I have the full version of Photoshop on my Mac and in that you can save an image at a higher level of compression by clicking "Save As" then following the instructions. Select JPEG as the format and then when prompted choose your compression level to produce the relevant file size. You can download free trial versions of Photoshop Elements for Mac which I think will function in exactly the same way

Also, I don't know the resolution of your original scan. If your scanner is set to a higher scan resolution than , say, 72ppi then you will produce an image with an unnecessarily large file size with a resolution which can't be displayed on an LCD screen.It may help if you reduce the PPI setting of your scanner.

[millymcb]

Hi Frank, Welcome to Rootschat

You will need to have a total of 3 posts in order to send or receive Private Messages - if you post a reply to this then Anydogsbody will be able to PM you

Milly