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Oral history recording with Agostino Crisaffi. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part 2 of 4 (AV 11384-11387)

00:00:01 The interviewer asks Agostino to recall when he was first taken prisoner of war. He went to camp 310, every day they crossed the Suez Canal to Palestine to carry out work there. They then travelled to Glasgow where they were fed well; one friend joked that it was to make them strong for volunteer farm work. Some Italians saw working for the British as betrayal to Italy. He got on well there though the pay wasn’t good; they got a pound a week, but his bosses gave him more in secret, and they socialised with other Italians.

00:08:00 From Africa the prisoners travelled to Scotland on a ship for two months, many of them were sick and some died. They were kept below deck; he thinks there were thousands of them on the ship. They travelled to Carmarthen by lorry from Glasgow. Every month checks were carried out; whether the prisoners needed food, clothes, boots, how they were etc. Once his boss ‘Jenkins’ asked to get him some trousers; he got on well with his boss and they taught him Welsh.

00:17:00 Agostino would meet Italian prisoners of war in a nearby town; they would chat, meet girls, go to the cinema and go back with fish and chips. They got on well with the Welsh people; he was invited to dinner at peoples’ houses. In the camp in Africa German and Italian soldiers would mix once a week to play football, otherwise they wouldn’t mix, he recalls feeling bored in the camp. Checks were carried out every morning; taking a register, checking beds. No one did escape; they had nowhere to go. They drank tea in the morning and rice in the evening; that was the only food they ate in that camp.

00:27:00 Agostino recalls his time working in a farm fondly; he describes a typical day there. He was able to write to his family to say that he was well. He worked with a Welsh worker on the farm. Agostino describes the changed to post war Italy; Reggio Calabria wasn’t bombed very much, yet his family evacuated to the country during the war, food was scarce. He describes the town he grew up in; it was small and by the sea.