Bates, P

Peter Bates

Family/Last name:
Bates
Forename(s) and initial(s):
Peter
Military Unit:
British Army
Place of capture:
El Alamein, North Africa
Date of capture:
22/7/1942
Camp
PG 51 Altamura, Villa Serena (Bari), PG 57 Grupignano
Data sources
Other Sources (Relative's report)
View a commemorative certificate for this prisoner

Information provided by John Bates:

British Army
Captured in North Africa

My uncle Peter Bates was captured at El Alamein on 22nd July 1942, arrived in Italy on 14th September 1942 and was initially sent to PG 51 Altamura Villa Serena, Bari – Transit Camp, moving on to Camp 57 at Gruppigrano just North of Bologna on the 9th October 1942. He remained there until about the 28th April 1943 when he was sent to work on a farm north of Milan.

His diaries show him being shipped from Benghazi on the 9th September 1942 arriving at a place his diaries call ‘Avanti’ on the 11th September 1942. He escaped to Switzerland on the 9th September 1943 where he spent time in a number of locations until he was repatriated through Naples on the 6th to 11th October 1944 arriving in Wellington 22nd December 1944.

I can’t find a port in Southern Italy called Avanti, which may have been some sort of code name given to POWs, but I do know the route taken by the ship was via the Corinth Canal in Greece. I assume it wasn’t Bari as his diary notes that the camp was near Bari and so he would have given the port as such.

In my mind it could be either Brindisi or Taranto as both are close the Altamira.

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