Moran, a passionate yachtsman, actor and (after the war) a theatre director, enlisted in 1939 in the Yachtsman’s Reserve. In June 1940, he set sail from Ramsgate to reach Dunkirk and help with the evacuation of the British Army. Later, he became a submariner and was assigned to the HMS Tempest, whose mission was to patrol the Mediterranean. On 13 February 1942, the British submarine was intercepted and sunk by the Italian destroyer Circe, about 30 miles north-east of Crotone. The survivors were captured and sent to different camps. Moran, an officer, was transferred to PG 75 Torre Tresca (Bari).

Moran marked the poor conditions of the camp. The prisoners did not receive Red Cross parcels, and there were no comforts nor opportunities for diversions. Even though PoWs were often transferred from and to the camp, no one seemed to know how long Moran was supposed to be there nor his eventual destination. The food was also poor: a bowl of soup and a couple of raw cauliflower sprouts, accompanied by four or five pieces of pasta which tasted like cardboard. Moreover, he witnessed the unjustified execution of two prisoners who escaped and were recaptured.         
During the following days, Moran and his comrades were told that they would be moved to PG 38 Pioppi (Arezzo), where the situation was supposedly better:

However, Moran was quickly transferred again, this time to PG 35 Padula (Salerno), «in the majestic, vast and beautiful building of the Certosa». Through the cloister, the PoWs could access their rooms, nicknamed “districts”: each consisted of an entrance, two large rooms and a long hallway which led to the restroom. Each “district” also included a small garden, accessible through a flight of stairs.       
The camp, as Moran wrote in his memoir,  held roughly 500 officers. It was a mixed group, but Navy and RAF officers were the majority. There were also about 50 men of «other ranks» who worked as adjutants and in the kitchen.          
When Moran, an actor by trade, arrived at the camp, improvised concerts were the only theatrical entertainment available:

There were also plenty of escape attempts. In district 5, where Moran himself lived, a group of PoWs decided to dig a tunnel in the garden under the external wall. As some of them had taken up gardening, they began to work without arousing suspicions. The PoWs excavated the tunnel using only a spoon and used a tray, on which they had planted some tomatoes to resemble a clump of earth, to cover the entrance. However, they soon realised that the work was proceeding too slowly, that the tunnel was not deep enough, and the plan was therefore scrapped.
Another attempt was carried on by district 6. This time an opening was dug through the tiled floor in the bathroom. When the tunnel was ready, the PoWs who built it drew lots to decide the order in which  escapees were to use it. If the escape were successful, the others could follow them the next day. Moran was supposed to assist the first group of escapees by helping them enter the tunnel and the covering up the entrance. However, after the first 11 PoWs escaped, the guards quickly found the tunnel, which was flooded and walled up.
During his imprisonment, Moran wrote and staged theatrical pieces. At the beginning of April 1943, as he was busy rehearsing a musical comedy, the camp’s interpreter came to talk to him in the refectory/theatre and told him the camp’s commander wanted to see him. The news he received from the camp’s commander was astonishing: Moran and three other prisoners belonging to the Navy were to be repatriated.

During the following hours, the escape committee equipped them with tissue paper maps, compasses, and cocoa and butter cakes to allow them to attempt an escape if needed. At four in the morning, the PoWs arrived in the courtyard, as agreed. An Italian officer and four guards escorted them to the train station, and their train, to their surprise, headed east, not north: «as incredulous as we were, we started thinking it was not a trap after all».    
They reached Bari and boarded the hospital ship Gradisca with a large group of Navy personnel, all of them equally surprised by their good luck. At sunrise, they realised they were going east, en route to Mersin, Turkey. However, they were still afraid, as the British, suspicious of the German hospital ships, might torpedo the Gradisca. They reached Mersin two days later, and there they boarded an old ship with a red flag, the Talma.