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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Pat’s daughter (Rachel Irven), a volunteer from Three Counties Action, on behalf of Pat, and has been added to the site with her permission. Pat fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I can’t recall the actual dates of what follows, perhaps it was after 1942, when I left home to train as a Junior Draughtsman at Reading aerodrome.
My sister, Nora, was still in the Land Army and was working on a small horticultural holdings in Calne. Also working with her were two Italian prisoners of war who had been captured in North Africa.
Nora was well-trained by this time, and was ‘in charge’ of Marcello (then about 19) and Vasco (a bit older). They were a pleasant enough couple of lads, not over keen on heavy land work, but Nora soon realised that, by working hard, she could encourage them to learn by example. She was kind, but firm and regarded the lads as the brothers she had never had and, in turn, Marcello and Vasco looked upon her as their ‘sister’ and they all worked together amicably. The lads were billeted in their own tiny flat, as they were regarded as ‘trustworthy’, and rode about locally on old bicycles. They only had to report infrequently to camp.
Marcello always told the story of his capture, saying that he had done NOTHING in the war (none of us entirely believed this!). He had trained as a paratrooper, jumping out of his plane to land in, what must have been, the only puddle in the North African desert — about 6 inches of water. This surprised him somewhat, and after stowing away his parachute he was even more surprised to be invited to surrender by a gruff Briton.
I suppose it could have happened that way, it made us all laugh anyway.
The boys were eventually repatriated to Italy after the war and Marcello wrote to Nora about his marriage to Bryna, and Vasco of his family life too. Their correspondence continued over many years, Nora married and raised her own family. After Vasco died, his widow and graduate family visited Nora on the Isle of Wight.
Sadly Nora died about 15 years ago, and her husband Jack asked me to write and ‘tell the Italians’. This I did, and received interesting letters of condolence from Marcello and from Vasco’s family. By this time Marcello had become a councillor in his home town, near Milan.
Since then I have regularly received cards at Christmas and Easter time, though I have never met Marcello since those far-off Calne days. He still recalls the fraternal affection he felt for Nora because of her kindness and tolerance while he and Vasco were so far away from their native Italy. He writes that they used to call her ‘The Boss’.
A long friendship — perhaps one day we will meet again. This has been very much in my mind recently because, after the July bombing in London, Marcello and Bryna sent a card to me with this message of encouragement to Londoners:
“We love England
STAY STRONG LONDON.
WE ARE NOT AFRAID”.
It is good to know how they feel about England. I guess some good comes from war time experience.

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