The International Red Cross Committee  (IRCC)

The National Archives, London, hold just one file on the conditions in the camp - WO 361/ 1895. Unfortunately the original reports  are not present in this file and the two telegrams it contains provide  the only proof that  the camp had in fact been inspected.

 

The first visit appears to have been made on 16 September 1942:

Telegram:    0103/4498 (P.W.2.a.) 13.10.1942

Report visit 16 September Camp PW 60 Italy opened 6 July (Note that Italian soures give the opening date as 7 July)

From: International Red Cross Committee, Geneva                                                             To: Delegate, London

Sent: October 6th                                                                            Received: October 8th

 

Strength: Section One 1400 South Africans  Section Two 2500 English    Transfer forecast soon

 

-Lodging:  Low tents for 20 men

                 Paliasse bed on earth itself one blanket per man

                 Earth damp insufficient drainage mediocre sanitary installations

 

-2 doctors (PW) 3 Italian doctors 10 PW medical orderlies working in infirmary of country camp beds

180 sick malaria evacuated Italian medical commission enquiring into conditions hygiene

-Food regulations minimum

-One wagon clothing 2 wagons foodstuffs British Red Cross recently arrived one of which in bad state

-Representative has no control

-Urgent need cigarettes toilet articles soap blades towels

-Correspondence 3 cards 1 letter in 7 weeks

-Religious services celebrated

-Request for: Bibles, books, prayers, hymn books, grammars languages,games, gloves for boxing, musical instruments, tin-openers,

bandages, sticking plasters, sulphanide (bromides? illegible), iodine, disinfectant for? swamps

-Attempted escapes 2 wounded one killed

-Mailing pressing applications for dissolution Camp 60

 

The second visit was made on 15 October 1942

0103/5496 (P.W.2.a.). 17.11.42

K.W.16/29 (Foreign OFFICE)

DEPARTMENTAL NO. 1

From Berne to Foreign office                                                                                                 Mr.Norton, D. (Untimed) November 10th, 1942

                                                                                                                                                    No. 3083 R. 11.20 p.m. November 10th 1942

My telegram No. 2659

In report on camp No.60 Italy visited 15th October, representative Swiss Legation, Rome, states that prisoners are accommodated in tents as since July this has been used as transit camp. Tents have no lighting or heating. Food, clothing medical attention, toilet facilities satisfactory.

 

Following prisoners died in hospital during August:

4975984 Private C.L. Warner
5879272 Sergeant C.H. Jones

2928797 Private W. Murray

 

The only other document in the file is a note of December 1942 which refers to the camp closure:

 

BM/1602 (PW2) 10.12.42

 

Prisoner of War Camps in Italy

The I.R.R.C. have informed the B.R.C.S. (British Red Cross Society) that no British prisoners of war are now left in C.C. 55 and that C.C. 60 and C.C. 87 have been closed.

(N:B: CC is short for Campo di concentramento per prigionieri di guerra - concentration camp fpr prisoners of war.)

 

WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATION FILES

 

Private Warner, Sergeant Jones and Private Murray, whose deaths are recorded by the IRRC,  are buried in Florence War Cemetery together with other prisoner of war casualties, most of whom had died in the prisoner of war hospital in Lucca, H202. 

With them was the victim of a war crime, Guardsman Simon Sidney Fawcett, who was killed on 2 September, 1942.

 

Source: cwgc.org

War Crimes

The National Archives, London, holds three  files on war crimes alleged to have been committed inside PG 60.  The surname of Guardsman Fawcett is erronously recorded as Forsyth:

 

TS 26/777: Lucca: murder of Guardsman Forsyth and others

WO 311/1190: Shooting of a British prisoner of war at Camp PG 60, Lucca, Italy, September 1942

WO 311/123: Ill-treatment of prisoners of war at Camp PG 60, Lucca, Italy, July to November 1942

None of these files has been read to date due to the current shut-down of The National Archives (March 2020).  The following document, found on the Italian website produced by  the Comune di Capannori,  gives the bare facts.  A request for a death certificate was sent from the camp commandant to the Commune of Capannori on 25th September:

 

Translation

… on the 2nd of the current month, at 21.30 hrs, at Colle di Compito in this commune, a prisoner of war, Fawcett Simon Sidney, son of Sidney and Hilda Raine, of Baldersdale, England, met his death during a violent action.

 

Two South African servicemen have given the following testimonies:

 

Bombardier Ronald Philip Abercrombie Myburgh, 4th Battery, 2nd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment  SAA:

One man went off his head and rushed at the barbed wire and a sentry shot him dead

 

Bombardier Harry Rose-Innes, 5 Battery, 2 Anti-Aircraft Regiment, SAA:

...an alarm sounded. Ta, Ta-ta, t a-ta, ta-ta - the staccato notes of the bugles resounded with a particular urgency in the stillness of the night, and excited shouts re-echoed amid the silence of the hills. A prisoner had escaped !  I listened to the bugles, to the shouts, and to the barking of dogs, and closing my eyes in the darkness I whispered, 'Good luck !', for I thought I knew whom it could be. He would need all the luck I could wish him; the last two had been killed as they tried to escape.

From all available evidence to date it would seem that only one had been killed, Guardsman Fawcett, and the other wounded.