The backcloth of an unfinished family portrait alongside the Italian Resistance

My grandfather was given to hiding things around the house. He was one of the 80,000 prisoners-of-war, who had found themselves in Italian prisoner-of-war camps during World War Two. Katrina Kittel’s vignettes of their attempts to escape after the Italian armistice reveal the generosity of spirit and ingenuity of the locals and resistants, and guards, who helped some 4,000 soldiers escape either to Switzerland, in the case of Harry Collins, my grandfather, or down to the South of Italy, where the Americans were gaining ground. I highly recommend “Shooting Through” for its attention to detail and the affection that Katrina Kittel has been able to show for the men like her father. The history in the book itself makes for an unexpected descent into what it would have been like to make do in an unimaginable situation, on the other side of the world. Living so close to Italy myself, I would hope that Italians would read these accounts and that some of them might be translated.