Lawrence Thurgood

In 1948, Robert Thurgood wrote an account of his imprisonment as a PoW in Italy and his subsequent escape for Froth, the Newcastle Breweries magazine. He entitled it “Scappata” (Escape).

In 2014, with Robert no longer living, his son Lawrence was curious to discover more. He did some research on Google and established that the PG53 camp mentioned by Robert had been at Sforzacosta, in Le Marche. He then matched up a skyline near the villages of San Lorenzo and Sant’Angelo, mentioned by Robert, with one of the photos Robert had left in a shoe box. There were also photos of Italians, but without their full names. On the back of a photo of a man shouldering a rifle, with his wife and a dog, was the name Luigi, mentioned in “Scappata”.

From this point onwards, events moved surprisingly swiftly for Lawrence. He contacted MSMT and learned that the Tenna Valley Freedom Trail in 2014, jointly organised by MSMT and the WW2 Escape Lines Memorial Society, run by Roger Stanton, was shortly to take place and that there was just time to join it. The base, at Servigliano, was a few miles south of where Robert had stayed hidden.

Lawrence Thurgood takes up the story:

“What a coincidence! And so my adventures began. I found that everything was fully organised; all I had to do was book the flight. Roger even organised my transportation from my house on Tyneside to his in Yorkshire, then on to the airport. He and MSMT also had a contact, Ian McCarthy, in Servigliano. Ian traced the family, named Martorelli, who had helped my father, using the photos. There were two members of the original family still alive and still at the same farm.

So, a couple of days into the Trail, at a rest stop after a particularly gruelling hike, with a cold bottle of coke in one hand and a half-finished gelato in the other, I was told by Ian: ‘Right, we’re off to visit the family now!’ I quickly guzzled the coke and wiped away the residue of gelato from around my mouth as I followed him to his car.

Thirty minutes later, I found myself walking down a narrow, white-gravelled track towards a small farm, situated atop a valley, which fell away to my left, with that very same skyline from that 1948 photograph as a backdrop: the same track my father must have travelled many times.

We were welcomed at the gate and invited in. In the farmhouse I was introduced to Giovanna, who had been the little girl standing on a chair in one of the photos, and Romolo, now aged 95, who was one of the sons of Luigi. Romolo, who remembered my father well, said I was sitting in the same spot where my father had slept.

A few more locals appeared, presumably to see the Inglese person. For a while to me, it seemed like “surround sound” Italian, with everyone talking at once while Ian translated.

However, time was short as I was then to be whisked off to the prison camp that Dad had left behind all those years ago. As I was leaving, Romolo asked if I would like to return for lunch on the Sunday, an invitation that I readily accepted.

It had been a whirlwind day for me, one that I will never forget, thanks to MSMT and ELMS.

On returning to the Martorelli farm for Sunday lunch, along with Ian’s wife Gabriella, who kindly offered to help out with translation, Romolo showed me a farm that had belonged to a man called Vincenzo. According to Dad’s memoirs, he had stayed there on a number of occasions. The farm was still owned by Vincenzo’s descendants but was only used in the summer.

Over an excellent lunch we got to know our histories a little better. Unfortunately, time again was our enemy, as I had to return to the hotel for the Trail’s last-night dinner.

So ended my short adventure into my father’s past, a past that seemed to have given me a behind-the-scenes helping hand. It was good to see that the “kindly, warm-hearted, hospitable host of Italians” mentioned by my father over 70 years ago, had remained the same.

Postscript, written in 2026: I visited the Martorellis again in September 2015, when Giovanna took me to the grave of Romolo, who had died in March that year. I am sad to say that Giovanna herself died in 2018.