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Escape From Mussolini's "Castle of The Eagles"

Discussion in 'WWII General' started by GRW, Apr 2, 2017.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    I actually thought this was fiction at first, because of the intro-
    "In the 1980 war adventure film The Sea Wolves David Niven, playing a British reserve colonel in India, tries to persuade Gregory Peck, a British intelligence officer, to find some use for his ageing Territorial Army regiment and its cast of retired soldiers.
    Peck raises one black eyebrow but Niven gently presses him to consider the Calcutta Light Horse for any odd job Peck might think suitable.
    “We’re a little thin on top and thick in the middle,” says Niven’s character, “but I guarantee you every one of these fellows would pull his own weight.”
    This line could be easily applied to another group of middle-aged Britons who were engaged in their own unlikely wartime struggle.
    And like The Sea Wolves, Hollywood has already picked up this new story, Castle of the Eagles, for the feature film treatment.
    In my book on which the film is based another band of fine middleaged gentlemen hatch a series of increasingly daring plans to escape and get back into the war.
    It’s a real-life tale with a cast of characters no fiction writer would dare create - a baker’s dozen of middle-aged and even elderly officers who refused to be kept prisoner and set about hatching escape plans that would have taxed the energy and nerves of men half their ages.
    They were pitted against Vincigliata Castle, a seemingly impregnable fortress with eerie echoes of Colditz about its gloomy Gothic façade, located in the foothills above Florence. It was chosen by Mussolini to hold all 13 of the British and Commonwealth generals the Italians and Germans captured in North Africa in 1940-41.
    But the Italians seriously under-estimated the sheer resourcefulness, pluck, determination and obstinacy of men who refused to let age, injury or disability stand in their way and eventually pulled off one of the war’s most daring escapes."
    How middle-aged generals staged a daring escape from Mussolini's colditz
     

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