Long Journey Home: The perilous escapes of Anzac POWs from fascists in wartime Italy
Published by Allen & Unwin
Captured at Alamein, used as forced labour on farms in northern Italy, thousands of Australian and New Zealand diggers escaped their captors when Italy signed an armistice in September 1943, including the author’s father. Could they make it over the alps to freedom in Switzerland before winter set in?
After her father’s death, Katrina Kittel opens his old Globite suitcase, and finds tiny photos, postcards in beautiful handwriting from a mysterious Swiss woman, and memorabilia from his war.
Katrina Kittel’s father Col Booth was captured during the disastrous July 1942 attempt to take Alamein’s Ruin Ridge. He was among 80,000 Allied soldiers sent to camps in northern Italy as prisoners of war.
They suffered cruel punishments for petty offences, hunger and illness, and they were used as forced labour on farms. When news arrived of the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943, POWs escaped the camps, scattering across the countryside.
Col was among those who headed north, aiming for neutral Switzerland. Life in the camps had been challenging, but not nearly as nerve wracking as life on the run, as they dodged German soldiers, Royalist sympathisers and fascist loyalists, while scrounging for food and shelter, trying to reach the navigable mountain passes before winter set in. Kind Italians shared what they could, but for some impoverished mountain villagers, the 4000 lire German bounty for a captured POW was very tempting.
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Book release 30 June 2026
Katrina Kittel 