The uniform, the disruptive, & from Colditz to Mt Kenya

That’s the essence of The Colditz Story, as described by PR Reid in his 1953 book of that name and its sequel, Men of Colditz [link is to double volume]. And I was fixated on Colditz and other World War II escape narratives for a boyish year or two thereafter.

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Decades after that obsessive interest of mine in military escape literature had faded from view, I ran across another tale that fits the genre: Felice Benuzzi‘e extraordinary 1953 No Picnic on Mount Kenya.

Benuzzi was an Italian POW in a British camp in Kenya, with little to no prospect that even if he could escape the camp he’d be able to avoid recapture:

The idea of escaping is a vital factor in the mind of every prisoner. On our arrival in East Africa I had as a matter of course carefully considered the chances of reaching the nearest neutral territory, Portuguese East Africa; but I had concluded that, for me at least, this would be impossible. The distances one had to cover were enormous, one needed a frightful lot of money, the opportunity of getting a car, knowledge of the country and of the main languages, and faked documents…

But imprisonment is appalling boredom, and boredom didn’t suit Benuzzi’s temperament. One night he saw Mt Kenya from the camp for the first time:

an ethereal mountain emerging from a tossing sea of clouds framed between two dark barracks — a massive blue-black tooth of sheer rock inlaid with azure glaciers, austere yet floating fairy-like on the near horizon. It was the first 17,000-foot peak I had ever seen.

I stood gazing until the vision disappeared among the shifting cloud banks.

For hours afterwards I remained spell-bound.

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Escape from boredom was imperative, climbing Mt Kenya would be Benuzzi’s return to life.

Fortunately, Bennuzi had a map:

Admittedly it was just the label from a can of “meat and vegetable rations” — but beggars and prisoners can’t be choosers, necessity is the mother of invention, and a meat rations can was what they had.

The dangers they faced were real enough. From the introduction:

“In order to break the monotony of life (in prison) one had only to start taking risks again,” Benuzzi writes as he and his comrades design their escape. The risks are real. Sneaking out of camp, they may be shot. For the first two days they must travel at night, across fields and past settlements. Once in the forest, away from what Benuzzi calls “the human danger-zone,” they will enter the “beast danger-zone.” Finally they will escape into the relative safety of the alpine tundra. Every mountaineer and outdoor person reading this tale will feel kinship to Benuzzi here, when he writes that “all the landscape around us reflected our happiness … green-golden sunrays filtered through the foliage … bellflowers seemed to wait for the fairy of the tale who would ring them. We were now into a world untainted by man’s misery, and bright with promise. Other dangers undoubtedly in store for us, but not from mankind, only from nature.”

Benuzzi avoided the worst that humans and beasts could throw at him, scaled Mt Kenya’s Point Lenana (16,300 ft), with equipment scrounged from around the camp, returned, surrendered himself to the British and to solitary confinement — knowing himself a free man — and lived, as they say, to tell the tale.

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So what do we learn?

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