TWO YEARS IN ITALY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21113, 5 June 1943, Page 5

TWO YEARS IN ITALY

AUSTRALIAN SEAMEN

CAPTIVES OFTEN HUNGRY IBy Telegraph Press Assn. —Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (10 a.m.) SYDNEY, June 5. Two Australian sailors released from an Italian prisoner-of-war camp have reached Sydney. They are Ordinary Seamen Charles Harris and Neil Quincey, both of Sydney, who were captured when the British destroyer Herevvard, on which they were serving, was sunk by Stuka dive-bombers on May 28, 1941. during the evacuation of Crete. They are the only Australians among 800 British servicemen so far released from Italy under the prisoner-of-war exchange agreement. The Italian authorities would not let the men bring out written messages from any other Australians and New Zealanders. Seamen Harris and Quincey spent the last 12 months at a prison camp 40 miles from Genoa. They saw bomb (lashes during the Royal Air Force raids on Genoa and heard explosions from the raids on Milan and Turin 90 miles away. The Italian guards became “noticeably distressed” during these distant attacks. The men said that they were well treated but were often hungry. No one could possibly realise what the Red Cross parcels meant to the prisoners.