Campo 78 – The Aussie Camp
Gabriella Di MattiaPG 78, a POW camp for Allied POWs in Italy is located on the northern outskirts of the town of Sulmona, at Fonte d’Amore. During WW2 it was ‘home’ to many Allied POWs, the bulk of whom had been capture
- Author
- Gabriella Di Mattia
- Publisher
- Accademia delgi Agghiacciti, Sulmona
- Published
- 2015
Campo 78 – The Aussie Camp by Gabriella Di Mattia
PG 78, the prisoner-of-war camp on the northern outskirts of Sulmona at Fonte d’Amore, housed thousands of Allied prisoners during the Second World War. Many were members of the “Desert Army” captured in North Africa; around 500 were Australians taken at the fall of Tobruk. As with most escapers and evaders, luck shaped their stories.
Di Mattia recounts one small incident with lasting consequences. In the summer of 1943 a six-year-old girl in Sulmona offered fruit to a hungry Australian soldier outside the camp. Years later, after poverty in the Peligna Valley drove her family to emigrate to Adelaide, she met him again. While shopping in the 1960s she noticed an Australian man watching her. When she challenged him he replied, “I know you… you were the little girl who gave me fruit outside Fonte d’Amore in Italy.” They embraced in tears. The soldier, Burt Boucher, had never returned to Italy, but for the rest of his life he treated Anna Mastrangioli and her family as his own.
The book charts the Australian prisoners’ lives inside Sulmona, their escape attempts after the Italian Armistice in September 1943, and the support they received from Italian families. Presented in two parts—Italian first, English second—it preserves vivid memories of courage and compassion.
Published under the auspices of Accademia delgi Agghiacciti, Sulmona. ISBN not available.