216574 WO Douglas C.W. Mallett South African Army (Union Defence Force) On 28 January 1944, during World War II, the Orvieto North railway bridge at Allerona, Italy, was the site of the inadvertent bombing by the American 320th Bombardment Group of a train filled with Allied prisoners. Most of the POWs had come from Camp P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina, 35 kilometres to the north of Rome, and had been evacuated in anticipation of the Allied advance.
One of the men on the train, Richard Morris of the U.S. Army, wrote that the train was halted on the bridge over the river when the Allied bombs started to fall, and that the German guards fled the train, leaving the prisoners locked inside. Many escaped, Morris included, through holes in the boxcars caused by the bombing, and jumped into the river below.
Historian Iris Origo wrote that 450 were killed when the cars ultimately tumbled into the river.
He was captured at the Desert campaign. He survived the wreck with broken ribs with loss of blood from respiratory tract. He was previously at Camp 66 and was sent to Stalag 344 Lamsdorf.
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