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Memories of an Italian Naval Signalman Part Three — The loss of the Colleoni and rescue by a British ship. Shipped to Alexandria and into a POW Camp at Geneiffa, Eygpt.

Part three one of an oral history interview with Mr. Artemio Ettore Torselli conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“When I got about half way along the ship, the Captain (Novaro) had got his quarter on the top deck there and I looked up and he came out of his quarter, he was bloodstained all over, he was in a poor way. He just had a look at the horizon like that and he went he went back into his quarter. So I thought, ‘ooh, he is in a poor way.’ I see there was a midshipman, a young Officer, he was lowering the flag, the flag was still on the mast, he was rolling the flag, he had lowered it, he was putting it around himself. I called him, Launaro was his name, I said, ‘The Captain, he’s all bloodstained, he’s gone back in his quarter. See if you can do anything.’ In a few minutes three or four of the chaps, I don’t know where they came from, they surfaced on the top deck and they got together. Hooked on the side of the ship there was a big floating system, so what they did they just pull the handle and launched that floating system and they lowered the Captain and put him on there and started waiting because there was the British warship in the area. Well, they were preparing the pick up the survivors but at the time when it was, the warship was firing and a couple of torpedoes they rolled me over, the wake of the torpedoes, what happened? The torpedoes, they sent them a certain depth and but I think from the British destroyer they thought the ship was lower in the water, they sent them a bit too deep and they went under the ship and they rolled me over, like that. Then they stopped firing with their guns because they come very close.

The torpedo exploded and the ship started going down but thank goodness I tried to swim and get away from it. But it had been flooding already and it didn’t cause any big bother and she went down. I got clear of the ship, the ship went down. I think there were 15 men, we had a sort of a meeting, ‘what shall we do?’ Well, what can we do? We had the Crete coast on view where some of our chaps, what they did, good swimmer, they took their life belt off and they swam. Some eventually found that one or two got ashore - then Greece wasn’t at war as yet, but there could be the chance that a number of them didn’t reach the coast and just perished like that you see.”

The Colleoni had sunk and there was a British destroyer not far a away, a couple of hundred yards away from us and we thought, ‘well, might as well be rescued now, like that.’ As we started swimming towards them they went off! They signalled us they will come back, well we said, ‘Lo, and behold we were going to get on board.’ They did return about half an hour later something like that and they started picking us up. The usual way, put rope nets overboard like that and a British sailor offered me a hand and I said, ‘No, alright I can manage.’ When we got on deck next to me there was somebody else climbed up the net and when he got on there I looked and it was the Chaplain. We had got a Chaplain on board and I turned to the English sailor and said, ‘He’s the Chaplain.’ I think what happened, he was led possibly to the Officers Mess or somewhere like that because I was put in a storeroom on a lower deck and I didn’t see him anymore so I think he was led to the Officers Mess. I think there were about 20 or 25 like that in this storeroom and I don’t know, half an hour or something like that the ship started sailing we heard the engine. Oh, perhaps half an hour like that and then all of a sudden the ship shook up like that, ooh dear, we all pray, ‘now what!’ And a sailor looked down, he said. ‘Your aeroplanes are bombing’ ‘well, blow them’ we said, ‘they would now, wouldn’t they?’ We thought ‘well, if the ship has been damaged badly we can’t get out, we are finished.’ This sailor said, ‘The ship has been damaged’ and the ship stopped and we were just hoping, wishing something, don’t know half an hour later or something like that and the engine started up again. ‘Ooh, Good Lord!’ What happened I guess at the beginning of the battle, we didn’t know what the position was, we couldn’t see the ships and I guess, I don’t know. Most likely the Admiral asked for air support because we didn’t see what we were fighting and they came after we had been rescued like that, would have been three or four hours late, something like that although they weren’t very far away. Three groups of them bombing like that. They hit our ship on the side but they managed to repair it a bit and we went off again. We thought ‘well, we have done it, we have made it by the 
 I don’t know.

I had got the trunks and well there was quite a number naked. Eventually the sailors gave us a pair of trousers, I got mine own trunks on and a sailor gave me a jersey, a football jersey, I was reasonable. When we arrived at Alexandria in Egypt we were, well they put us ashore like that and that was a bit of fun. I was lucky with the football jersey and the trunks, I was covering myself fairly well but there was quite a number of our chaps they’d got 
 some were naked completely and some had got given a jersey from sailors, they tried to cover themselves up. But as we went off ashore which the usual routine, I reckon in the Navy, we sort of stood to attention to salute the flag and there was the Captain and all the Officers there. Then they answered everyone and they saluted us and stand to attention like that and they couldn’t help, when they saw some of these chaps trying to cover up like that, they couldn’t help grinning. We then went ashore on the jetty, on the pier and there was a small vehicle, an Army vehicle with a machine gun on and there was a chap handling the machine gun like that, I remember a chap near me he said, ‘Silly soldier he keep on photographing us!’ I said, ‘Tell him to put the camera away and he will cut you down with the machine gun.’ ‘Oooh, is it?’ ‘Tell him and you’ll be chopped up in bits.’ He said, ‘Oooh dear, thank the Lord he doesn’t.’

And funnily enough an alarm warning came. We were two or three hundred on the pier and there was quite a number of Egyptians about and when the alarm went off they were carrying on blue murder, ‘Oh, Mussolini! We’ll strangle you and cut his head off’, like that. We thought, ‘Well, if they do bomb it what we can do? We can’t do anything.’ But eventually the alarm closed and some Army lorries came and they put us on board. When I think we travelled for about an hour, I don’t know where we where. Anyway we ended up on the coast, near the sea and there were some sheds, just a roof and walls, we were put there and at least we were sheltered from the sun, it was pretty hot. Then eventually we were issued with a blanket. They asked for some of us to go and help peeling potatoes, to get the cooking done. There was a couple, two or three English soldiers standing like that, when they saw them they said, they asked our chap, ‘What’s your position like that?’ ‘Ooh, I am a Petty Officer.’ ‘Alright, buzz off, we don’t want Petty Officers peeling potatoes!’ So they got somebody else, it was quite a bit of fun considering we were all shaken. I think the next day we were, late afternoon next day, we were all issued with a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of light trousers and a tee shirt and well, we were pleased actually. Then they sent in a couple of barbers to give us a shave up like that and that was the next day. Anyway they made a list of us, so I was called to be interrogated by the British Officer in an office and the Officer went in and he was quite a decent chap really because he said, ‘Sorry, you know the position, tell me what happened?’ He offered me a cigarette and a small beer which was most welcome and he asked me what was my international number and rank.

Now this Officer, I think I was the only Able Seaman signalman in that group or they were taken to other places, we were perhaps 150 to 200, they called our Petty Officers, interrogated radio operators and signalmen, I was the only one there. It was, how can I say, a simple sort of interrogation I guess, internationally agreed. He asked my name and then when he asked me, ‘Why were you an hour and a half late at the North Cape of Crete?’ ‘Ooh, I thought, cor’ blimey, this is a good, no kidding!’ Because nobody could know when we broke down, the steering system, because we were sailing there. It flashed through my mind ‘how the heck does anybody know that we were an hour and a half late at that place?’ There is only one answer, espionage! Because as I said, the night before by radio which was from Rome, all secret, everything, the wave length, well mainly, two numbers and I thought ‘how the heck is that possible?’ Of course I realised it is espionage, that is the only way because they knew we were an hour and a half late and they knew our time and the only way was espionage. Even then, later there was on board 
 we had some Air Force personnel to fly because the Navy hadn’t got any pilots, and they interrogated him and they said, ‘How come you that are on board?’ And he said, ‘why’ ‘you were supposed to be replaced at Tripoli when you were at Tripoli by another, but what happened?’ The replacement didn’t arrive there and you were left on board. When he said that we said, ‘Well, how the heck can you fight a war when the opposite side knows that a Sergeant was supposed to be replaced like that.’ In my case how did anybody know that we were a hour and a half late, that was the only way, espionage. Especially in sea warfare espionage can be a terror. The British espionage knew that we were sailing and they knew the whole position where we where all the time. By then they also knew where we were going but we didn’t! But they knew! You can’t get away from the fact that in those conditions you have a got a terrible disadvantage from the opposite side.

Well, we were in that place at Alexandria a couple of days I think and then we lined up. We were escorted by some British soldiers, we went to the station somewhere in Alexandria there and not very far away, a couple of hours journey and we ended up at a place called Geneiffa, somewhere in Egypt, I think not very far away from the Suez Canal. It was a military post. There was already some Prisoner of War camp and they were issuing orders as well there. There was desert where we where and there were some mountains, oh huge. Well, they were scorched out by the sunshine. There was no sanitation at all, the air! In the camp we had got one tap in the middle of the camp and it was there, you could use it all the time. Well, what we did when there wasn’t the crowd to wait we just got under the tap to freshen up a bit. They allowed some Egyptians, because we were issued with some coupons in camp, and they allowed some Egyptians to come up to the barbed wire and to sell some things. There was a small shop in the camp as well were they sold soap, shaving things and these Egyptians they used to sell fruit and some toiletries. We were in these round tents. Five of us in these round tents and we had got what you call a palliasse. There were boards on the floor like that and we had got one blanket each but as soon as the sun dipped over the horizon, oooh, talk about cold, the drop of temperature like that! You needed to put some of the boards on the floor together like that and then - put the distance round we used to sleep, everybody and put the five blankets on top to keep warm. You learn the tricks when it is necessary, like that. But I remember one day, next to our camp they were organising all the camps like that so they used to get some of us, a party, and go and pick up stones and put them in heaps like that. One day I was called myself, we were just outside our camp like that and all of a sudden a shot went off, a sentry in a sentry box at the corner of this camp, we heard the shot and what happened? Everybody dived down on the ground like that flat! I was the only one that stood up because as you can imagine our nerves were shattered to be sincere I felt, you know, quite calm shall we say. So I shouted when everybody went flat down the floor, I said, ‘Hey, you glorious heroes!’ I got some dirty looks. A party of an Officer and a party of men went check why this chap in the sentry box, he looked a damned fool, because somehow I think he was fiddling about with the gun and it fired! Laughter! Everything was back to normal, shall we say like that.

We didn’t like the position but we didn’t consider it was too bad altogether, like that. We were issued with food and we got a fair treatment shall we say. Next to our camp there was quite a number, I don’t know how many, of our troops from Eritrea, they were local black people, (Ascari) they were put in camps apart from us. We asked them how the treatment was, they say, ‘Oh, not too bad’. The treatment was fairly honest.

Because when we were captured on board the British ship there was quite a number that had been on board another ship in the Far East in Shanghai. There was another American and British Cruiser tied up in the middle of the harbour and some of them they said, ‘Why on earth did you come and fight us?’ And the answer was regular, ‘We don’t want to fight you brother, we have got a uniform like you and we are to carry out orders or else, like you, we would be declared deserters or traitors.’ Some of them, they had been out there, well we were out there a few months before, they say ‘Oooh, remember when we were in Shanghai and we were at such and such a dance hall, picture place 
 ?’ ‘Good old time, wasn’t it?’ ‘Today it happened to you, it may happen to us any day, that is war.’”

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