Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Additions will be checked before being published on the website and where possible will be forwarded to the person who submitted the original entries. Your contact details will not be forwarded, but they can send a reply via this messaging system.
216546
L/Cpl. Harry Clark
British Army 2nd Btn. Wiltshire Regiment
Harry Clark was Captured at Garigliano and was on his way from Camp PG 54 to Stalag 344 Lamsdorf on 28 January 1944 by train. Whilst crossing the Orvieto North railway bridge at Allerona, Italy, they were subjected to an inadvertent bombing by the American 320th Bombardment Group hitting a train filled with Allied prisoners. Most of the POWs had come from Camp P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina, 35 kilometres to the north of Rome, and had been evacuated in anticipation of the Allied advance. One of the men on the train, Richard Morris recalled that the train was halted on the bridge over the river when the Allied bombs started to fall, and that the German guards fled the train, leaving the prisoners locked inside. Many escaped, Morris included, through holes in the boxcars caused by the bombing, and jumped into the river below. Historian Iris Origo wrote that 450 were killed when the cars ultimately tumbled into the river.