24-05-2025
Amid 'terrible' POW conditions in Italy, these WWII Anzacs made a daring alpine escape
When Simon Tancred left Australia to guide hikers through Italy's medieval mountain trails, he never expected it would lead him to a little-known chapter of Australian military history.
But when the family of World War II gunner Carl Carrigan approached Simon to retrace the 100-kilometre Italian escape route used by Anzac prisoners of war (POWs), he became fascinated by a story of survival and endurance.
After enlisting in 1940, brothers Carl and Paul Carrigan and their two mates, Ron Fitzgerald and Lloyd Leadingham — all from Moree, in country New South Wales — were deployed to Libya in northern Africa.
After four days in the trenches, the men were taken prisoner near Tobruk and shipped to Italy as POWs.
As winter closed in, the men were held in harsh conditions in Campo 57 in northern Italy among 5,000 other Anzac POWs.
"They nailed together these pretty, shabby temporary accommodations … and the winds from Eastern Europe would sweep through," Simon told Richard Fidler on ABC Conversations.
Under the sadistic fascist leadership of Colonel Vittorio Calcaterra, food was scarce in the camp and summary executions were the norm.
"Just out with a gun and [the guard would] shoot someone there and then," Simon said.
After two and a half years, the situation for the Moree men improved when they were relocated to Vercelli to work in the rice fields where they were treated sympathetically.
"Conditions were a lot better because in that part of Italy, they weren't fascist sympathisers. In fact, there was a lot of anti-fascism," Simon said.
A few months later, when the Italian leadership signed a treaty with the Allies, the POWs were freed, but danger still loomed as Germany seized control of Italy's north.
The boys from Moree joined a group of 100 POWs and were led into the mountains by Italian partisans — members of the resistance.
The group scattered when a patrol of German soldiers arrived, and the boys hid in a barn near Vermogno, where they were helped by a young woman, who spoke no English, to board a blacked-out tram through Nazi-occupied Biella.
Still in their prison uniforms, and feeling they "stuck out like sore thumbs", the men nervously followed the woman's instructions.
"[The tram] went through Biella, which by then had been locked down by the Nazis," Simon said.
"Carl actually mentions in his memoir that he peeped out the window, and the place was full of Germans, which must have been absolutely terrifying."
The woman then smuggled the men into her apartment.
"[Her] mother freaked out, of course, but they fed them," Simon said.
"They had the best feed they'd had in three years.
"They had wine and they slept the night on the floor."
The next day, with no maps or guides, the men set off on an eight-day hike to reach the safety of Switzerland.
Simon, using Carl's memoirs and old military maps, retraced their journey.
"I was experiencing the same big climbs, the same rocky scrambles. It's very exhilarating," he said.
Fearing capture by the Germans, the men kept to the overgrown but safer mountain trails.
The terrain was unforgiving — granite peaks, glaciers, and plunging valleys — and the men, weakened by years of imprisonment, had no food and inadequate gear.
When they arrived in Riva Valdobbia in the upper valleys of the Alps, after days of brutal climbing at high altitude, the men were "absolutely shattered", Simon said.
"They hadn't eaten for three days. They'd slept outdoors," he said.
"They were debilitated anyway — they had two and a half years in prison camps."
However, the valleys were anti-fascist so considered "friendly country" and the men were warmly welcomed.
"School kids came out and cheered them," Simon said.
"They set up tables in the square, and they gave them … lots of delicious macaroni and wine."
They were given a lift by road workers to Alagna at the foot of Monte Rosa — home to one of the highest peaks in western Europe — and a local shepherd led them to his hut to sleep for the night.
"Carl was very strong and fit, and he could keep up with this guy, but the other three were really suffering, they were really debilitated and quite weak, but they eventually made it up there," Simon said.
After leaving the shepherd's hut, the men zigzagged their way to the top of the Turlo Pass, to an altitude of 2,700m, skirting the eastern flank of Monte Rosa.
Far from the goat track he expected, when Simon walked the trail, he found an engineered military-built road that was constructed in the late 1920s to protect against a possible threat from Germany and Austria.
"Mussolini, in his paranoia, was worried that the Germans might attack," he said.
"He had these stone roads built up at these strategic mountain passes so the Italian army could get cannons up there to hold off the Germans."
Ironically, it was never used by the Italian army — only by partisans, allied POWs, and Jewish families fleeing Nazi persecution.
From the summit, Simon looked down into the pine forests of the Quarazza Valley below.
"It's the most wonderful view," he said.
"There's a little emerald lake at the very end, and then a big wall of mountains and these jagged ridges — and that's Switzerland."
After the men's arduous journey through the mountains, there was just a one-day "final climb" up the Monte Moro Pass to reach the protection of Switzerland.
"You can imagine these guys after two and a half years in POW camps, and then this enormous hike that's taken eight days," Simon said.
"But of course, they could see the end. So that would have been what kept them going."
In the valley below, they met a teenage boy, Angelo, concealed among the trees who offered to guide them to the border in exchange for their watches and winter coats.
Angelo took the men over the river and around the village, which was occupied by the Germans, and up the steep, 1,800m track to the Monte Moro pass.
"It was a long, hard climb," Simon said.
"Carl was able to keep up with the guide, but the other guys were really falling behind … and were at the end of their tethers."
But, out of fear of being seen by soldiers in the village below, Angelo stayed under the cover of the pine forest.
"His brother had been killed by the Germans a short time before that … leading other soldiers to their safety," Simon said.
"So it was extremely dangerous. As they reached the edge of the tree line, the boy hung back.
"He said, 'Switzerland's up there … I can't go any further'."
It was a steep, hard hike with a 1,000m climb, but the men reached the border and crossed into Switzerland, where they were greeted by Swiss guards.
It was October 1943 and the men were among about 500 Anzacs who were able to escape into Switzerland before winter descended and the route was shut down by the Germans.
"By the arrival of March, they'd locked the whole thing down so that it was no longer an escape route," Simon said.
"So these guys got over just in the nick of time."
Once inside the borders of Switzerland, the men learnt to ski, were able to work, and many Anzacs fell in love, returning to Australia with Swiss brides.
For Carl, after just under a year of freedom in Switzerland, he and his brother and their two mates returned to Australia.
"Carl married … he had 10 children, and then he moved to Armidale so that his kids could have a good education," Simon said.
"He had a number of grandchildren, and he died at 77, which is a little young, but he had a very fulfilled life."
Listen to Simon Tancred's full interview on the Conversations podcast on the ABC listen app.
