PG 78 Sulmona

Sulmona is a city and comune in the province of L’Aquila, Italian region of Abruzzo.

PM 3300

Campo 78 at Sulmona served as a POW camp in both World Wars. During World War I, it housed Austrian prisoners captured in the Isonzo and Trentino campaigns; during World War II, it was home to as many as 3,000 British and Commonwealth officers and other ranks captured in North Africa. This camp remains intact.

In September 1943, as the Italian government neared collapse, the inmates of Sulmona heard rumors that the evacuation of the camp was imminent. They awoke one morning to discover that their guards had deserted. On 14 September, German troops arrived to escort the prisoners northwards, to captivity in Germany, but not before hundreds of them had escaped into the hills. One such escapee was the South African author, Uys Krige, ​who described his experience in a book titled The Way Out (1946).

The nearby Villa Orsini was used to house senior British and Commonwealth officers including Major-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame, Air Marshal Boyd, General Sir Richard Nugent O’Connor, Brigadier Reginald Miles, and Brigadier James Hargest.

External link:

• https://travelitalythewriteway.com/campo-pg-78/

More information including images of the camp and prisoners on this link:

https://campifascisti.it/scheda_campo.php?id_campo=216

Translation for Campi Fascisti main page:

Sulmona – Camp for prisoners of war n. 78
Sulmona (L’Aquila) – Italy
Camp type: Prisoner of war camp from August 1940
Source: DPG27
History: Campo PG for officers, NCOs and enlisted men.
Capacity 370 officers 2930 NCOs and rank and file (barrack)

In Fuga da Sulmona, the ex p.g. Briton Donald I. Jones locates the large camp of Sulmona five miles from the town in Abruzzo, exactly in the hamlet of Fonte D’Amore (p. 9). See very brief description of the camp on page 10.
Some British generals are prisoners at the Villa Orsini (AC02056)
– May 1941 goes into operation (DPG27)
– March 15, 1942 (PGAQ03) sending of 50 prisoners to labor camp no. 102 L’Aquila
– 22 March 1942 (PGFI01) order to transfer the Yugoslav prisoners of war officers from the PG camp to Sulmona. 83 of Fiume (Rijeka). (On this see also the testimony of Radovanovich M. Spasoje reported in Renzo Amedeo, The Slavic Officers Prisoners at the Miramonti di Garessio REN01. This testimony also speaks of a German camp commander and a prisoner who died after a protest).
– 28 April 1942 (DPG46) order to transfer the Indian and Australian officers present in the Padula and Moltalbo camps to Sulmona.
– May 12, 1942 (PGAQ01) sending of officers to the P.G. N. 102 of L’Aquila (barracks construction)
– June 15, 1942 (PGVA02) Water shortage in the camp and Swiss Legation inspection
– July 17, 1942 (PGVA04) censored British officers and hygienic conditions in the camps
– October 1942 According to the essay by Renzo Amedeo (2001) p. 98, the former Yugoslav officers present in Sulmona are transferred to the PG camp. No. 43 of Garessio
– 2 June 1943 (AC02060) an 18-metre long tunnel dug by the Australian PCs in an escape attempt is discovered
– 2 July 1943 (AC02059) two escaped English officers are captured at the railway yard of Sulmona
– 16 July 1943 (AC02058) an 18-metre long tunnel built by Degaullist prisoners is discovered

Note: Research into the Italian prisoner of war camps is still ongoing. The information reported here is mainly taken from documents conserved in the Historical Office of the Army General Staff and concerns only the period from March 1942 to March 1943. The data on this sheet are therefore incomplete and still to be verified.

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PG abbreviation

The full title is ‘Campo Concentramento di Prigioniere di Guerra’ (prisoner of war concentration camp). They were not concentration camps in the normal sense of the word. Camps were normally prefixed PG, but could be referred to as CC, Campo or Campo PG. The exception was the 2 Dulags and 1 Stalag within Italy, which were German controlled transit centres for POWs being transferred to Germany. The camps were originally known by their place names, and numbers were not introduced until early 1942. There are some camps with no numbers, perhaps they closed before early 1942?

PM abbreviation

Camps in Italy were divided into postal areas, each area designated ‘PM [number]’. PM translates to ‘Posta Militare’, meaning ‘military mail’. The number indicated the central postal reception area for the camps’ mail.