Emilia Publishing

This book provides dozens of individual stories of daring escapers and their brave Italian helpers. In September 1943 fifty thousand Allied prisoners of war fled their camps after the Italian Armistice and Surrender. The Allies had landed in the south. The Germans occupied the rest of the country and brought back Benito Mussolini as head of a puppet Fascist republic. The escapers were aided by a secret army of Italian civilians and members of the Resistance. They included the author's mother and grandparents who helped twenty British and South African soldiers in the Apennines of northern Italy. Over seventeen thousand escapers followed the mountain trails to Switzerland or through the enemy lines to Allied forces. The country tracks became paths to freedom.