The story begins in 1942 when my father, Dennis Preston was serving in the British Army. He had been posted to North Africa and was captured at Tobruk (along with many others) on 21st of June 1942 by the German Army led by Rommel.
The British Army had lost 80,000 men during the fruitless rear-guard action they had been fighting. The prisoners were moved to Benghazi in Libya and taken by sea to Italy, where they landed at Brindisi.
The Prisoners of War were taken to a camp in Southern Italy where they were kept for several months before being moved north to another POW camp near Ancona.
After some time there my father and a few others broke out and escaped from the camp. They went on the run although some were recaptured, and some were shot. My father was wandering the mountains and was finding it hard going because he was weak before the escape as it was.
Coming down from the hills and looking for food he was taken in by an Italian family, the Familia Rafaiani. He was with them for about ten months and the local population was not very happy about it because the Germans were threatening serious reprisals against anyone found harbouring escaped prisoners.
The family had very little food, but they shared what they had with my father and two other escapees who were on the run. Sometimes they would have to run in to the hills and hide if the Germans were on patrol. Occasionally, if the enemy arrived without warning other measures were called for such as hiding in the cellars or the cornfield. During one of the cornfield episodes, the Germans sprayed the field with machine gun fire and although my father could hear the bullets hitting the ground all around him, he was untouched.
He would also wear women's clothing when working in the fields so as not to attract attention for the German pilots who were not above using Italian farm workers for target practice.
On another occasion, the men in the family took my father down to the old village. They were sat outside a pavement cafe when suddenly a group of German army officers came around the corner and sat at the next table. Everyone had to sit and sweat it out because to get up and leave too soon would have attracted unwanted attention. My father never went to the village again.
After a while the allied forces came within reach of the village and plans were made to smuggle three POWs out to the allies. They were hidden under a hay cart for the journey but when they arrived my father thought they had been betrayed when he heard guttural German sounding voices. Actually, they were Polish officers attached to the British Army and everyone was safe. Eventually, my father was repatriated and in due course came home.
Towards the end of 1945, my father received a letter from Italy asking for news but for whatever reason, the letter was never answered. I presume that the war had affected my father quite markedly. Not only had he seen many friends die but also, he had been away from home for a long time.
And that was the end of the story for nearly 45 years.
One day in 1989, my father began to reminisce about times long past and this included the events of the war years. On my next visit, he dug out his old war papers. These included such things as leaflets dropped by the air forces of both sides, army records, Geneva Convention rules etc and most interesting of all, an old faded letter and some photographs. The letter was the one from 1945 and the photos were from Italy. I had heard a very sketchy account of this Italian family but did not know until that moment the full extent of their involvement in my family history. I borrowed the necessary items and set about trying to find The Italian Connection. This proved much harder than I at first thought.
All I had to go on was the name and village, Domenico Rafaiani, San Ginesio. The village was easy to trace on the map, only it had become a big town now! I posted various letters addressed to Domenico Rafaiani of San Ginesio, but they kept being returned by the Italian Post Office. I expected the old man to have long since died but I had hoped in vain that someone may have known him. I sent letters addressed to the family in general, mentioned the war and 1945 etc but to no avail.
On further investigation I was led by a friend to an Italian just twenty miles away. He translated my message and I used a larger envelope, drew a sketch map on the back along with the message for the post office and sat back and waited. Amazingly, I received a phone call from Italy just a week later. It turned out that the area had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1952 but someone in the post office was a distant relation and knew the old story of English soldiers from the war years. The family had moved north in 1952 but my message had reached them, and I had received a phone call from a young lady, the old man's granddaughter. Well, letters and phone calls were exchanged and finally in June 1991, the two families were reunited after a gap of nearly 50 years.
The old man Domenico had died two years previously but his wife, Elvira was still alive at 85 and an exciting and emotional gathering it was. The children who were 8 and 11 when my father was in Italy were now of course middle-aged, but they still remembered the events of the war. We sat down 10 to a table to most meals (and oh! what food and drink there was laid out before us). The whole family still lives in the same town but now it is in Meldola near Forli. We stayed with them for 4 days after a hectic drive across Europe.
