Charles Edward Gray

Number: IA 102; Highest Rank: Lieutenant Colonel (Commander); Regiment: 3 Gurkha Rifles

Charles Edward Gray (“Charlie”) was a veteran of the First World War. When he was called up, he was in Scotland with his wife on leave. After a brief stop at home in Norfolk, he left his wife at York railway station and headed into the unknown. They would not meet again for five years.

Charlie was initially deployed in India and later in Persia along the Persian Gulf, where he witnessed the surrender of the Persian troops. However, German forces continued to threaten the region from the west, and the risk was that the enemy could break through into the Middle East and seize the region’s strategic oilfields. As a veteran of the Middle Eastern theatre in the First World War, Charlie was well acquainted with the area. Consequently, he was transferred to Damascus and later, in 1941, to Tobruk with his battalion, which was deployed on the Libyan front.

After the fall of Tobruk, the British forces retreated to Cairo. During this manoeuvre, General Auchinleck ordered Charlie’s brigade to hold the position of Deir El Shein at all costs. Soon afterwards, the brigade was heavily attacked by German Panzers and, after 24 hours of siege, Charlie and his men were defeated and captured.

After an interrogation in the presence of General Rommel, Charlie, who refused to give any information to the enemy, was loaded onto a plane to Italy. His first stop was Bari, and then he was sent to the prisoner camp in Chieti, where he became the Senior British Officer. Part of his job in this role was to organise and manage the PoWs. After one year, he was sent north, to Veano (PG 29), near Piacenza. It was in this camp that Charlie learned about the Armistice between Italy and the Allies. The camp’s doors were opened, and all the PoWs escaped without encountering resistance. Charlie, with two Indian officers, headed to La Spezia, where he believed the Allies would land from the sea. However, he soon realised this was not the case, and the group decided to head back to the nearby hills.

At first the Germans were not organized but they soon had all the main roads patrolled. As I and my friends were climbing up a small track, we turned a corner and there was an Italian peasant in front of us, we stopped dead not knowing what was going to happen next, the peasant gave us a look and then said in English “Kut morning” and when we were taken back by this greeting added “I hokey pokey man in Cardiff for many years”.

What the farmer meant to say was that he had worked many years in Wales as an ice cream seller. The man, named Cordoni, led them to his farmhouse, where Charlie and his companions were greeted by the whole family, who had gathered there to decide whether it was a good idea to hide the escaped PoWs.

Some of the men were not sure whether it would be wise to shelter us, but an old woman stepped forward and put a stop to all that, she told one man to go up one hill and keep watching, another to go to another hill and then she turned to us who incidentally were still in khaki uniform, to follow her into the house. She was a wonderful woman, full of humanity; wars meant nothing to her.

The woman welcomed them inside and lovingly prepared them food, apparently unfazed by the fact that the Germans were conducting heavy reprisals against Italians who sheltered Allied escapees. During the following months, Charlie lived in a hut used by local coal miners, getting food and help from nearby farmers. From time to time, he was also able to sleep at their farmhouses.

One day, the Italians told him the Germans were patrolling the area and said he should move into a cave above the miners’ hut and not leave it.

We watched the Germans make their way up the hillside, and then, without warning, threw several hand grenades into the hut. This was not my idea of war, very different from my treatment of the Afrika Korps.

During that period, the local partisans managed to transfer Charlie to a hotel in the valley during the night. He and his companions were taken to the second floor and greeted by jubilant partisans, who put their hideout at their disposal.

The laughter below got louder and louder and I always said this was one of our worst moments. The danger was as men started drinking vino and bragging about the Englishman they were helping to escape, someone who was in the pay of the Germans might split on us.

Charlie’s anxiety grew as he noticed a German car stopping nearby and enemy soldiers entering the hotel room, locking the door. He and the partisans were soon outside, but it was still dangerous as they were now using the very same German car that the enemy had incautiously left in front of the hotel. At the various checkpoints they encountered, the Italians claimed they were taking the car to Piacenza for repairs, according to orders they had received from the German Command. Once in Piacenza, Charlie and his companions received civilian clothes and were taken to a flat in the town’s centre.

We were given food and drink and then left. We found we were able to listen to the BBC. The first we heard for over two years so now we heard how the war was progressing. We stayed in the flat all that day, then the following night caught the milk train to Milan. There were many Germans on the platform in uniform, Italians always said they could tell an Englishman from a German, they held themselves differently. At this point I always said that the whole matter of escape was luck, just sheer luck.

In Milan, Charlie got on a train to Como, where he was again sent to a local hotel. There, a young boy, about fourteen years old, met him to guide the PoWs to Switzerland. The boy stuck with the group for most of the journey, leaving only near the end, as he feared they could run into the Germans. Nonetheless, Charlie and his companions managed to reach the border, where a Swiss sentry stopped and questioned them. Once their status as British officers was cleared, the guard allowed them to enter the country.

In Switzerland, Charlie learned about the American landings in Provence and decided to cross into France to rejoin the Allied forces and request an airlift to return home to the United Kingdom.

Finally, Charlie was able to reunite with his wife at the train station in Bath, after five years during which the only news she had received was of his MIA status and, later, his capture by the Italians.