Love Amid Danger: When Villagers Protected Five Indian POWs from German Soldiers during WWII

Samarjeet and Bijal Salvi were tired and disappointed. For nearly an hour, they had been driving around the Italian village of Villa San Sebastiano without seeing any signs of life. Even the village’s only restaurant was shut.

The couple had come to Villa San Sebastiano on that Sunday afternoon in June 2010 on a very special mission. Nearly 70 years earlier, Samar’s late grandfather, Lieutenant Ramachandra Salvi, an Indian Army officer fighting for the British, had been captured by the Germans in World War II and incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in central Italy.

In mid-September 1943, Salvi and four other Indian POWs had escaped from the camp and a few hours later stumbled upon Villa San Sebastiano. Its villagers had welcomed them warmly and, risking execution or other savage punishments, had hidden, fed and looked after the five Indians for months.

From childhood Samar had been enthralled by this story, and yearned to visit the village and thank its residents for saving his grandfather. But now that he was here, he hadn’t seen a soul on the streets. He could, of course, knock on a door. But it was afternoon and Italians love their siesta.

Just then a car passed Samar and parked in front of a house. Two men got out. Samar immediately drew up alongside them.

“Excuse me, sir,” Samar said, jumping out of his car, and addressing the younger of the two men, “but do you know English?”

The man, whose name Samar soon learnt was Luciano Gargano, nodded. “A little,” he said. 

As Samar explained the reason for his visit, Luciano grew more and more excited. Turning to the older man—his father—and telling him in Italian what Samar had related, Luciano asked him if he’d heard the story of the Indian POWs. The old man shook his head—he hadn’t been in the village during the war. But the people in the house across the road had.

Unfortunately, the neighbours said, the villagers who’d helped the POWs were long since dead. And their children no longer lived here.

By now, totally captivated by Samar’s mission, Luciano promised to track them down. Samar, who had a copy of Whom Enemies Sheltered, his grandfather’s memoirs, presented it to Luciano.

In typical Italian fashion, Luciano hugged and kissed him. “What an enchanting gift!” he said. “It will be an honour to read it.”

It was now time to say goodbye. But before leaving the village, Samar and Bijal decided to take a look at its church. As they entered its courtyard, its bells began to ring.

Bijal felt goosebumps all over her—these were the bells that had guided her husband’s grandfather and his companions to the sanctuary of Villa San Sebastiano. It was as if Samar’s grandfather was acknowledging their presence!

From this vantage point, the Indians took turns keeping watch for any sign of the Germans.

Putting down their haversacks, Lieutenant Salvi and his four companions stretched out on the hard ground below a culvert. They were exhausted. It was dawn, and they’d been walking for four hours. They were about to doze off when they heard church bells ringing. There must be a village nearby. Perhaps they could shelter there that day.

All five Indians had been captured in June 1942. Salvi, a short, athletic 23-year-old, had been in the thick of the fighting. Going into battle, he’d just fired the first round of his anti-tank rifle when an enemy bullet blew out the brains of the driver sitting beside him. Had Salvi not been thrown back momentarily by his rifle’s powerful recoil, that bullet would have gone through his head instead. Shortly thereafter, his vehicle was hit by an enemy shell. Though he was flung into the air, he was unhurt. The following day, he became a prisoner of war.

For the next year, Salvi was shunted from one POW camp to another, finally ending up in a camp in central Italy. Then, one night in September 1943, the camp’s Italian guards put down their weapons and started embracing the prisoners. Italy, which until then had been fighting alongside the Germans, had signed an armistice with the Allies.

That’s when some Indian POWs used the opportunity to flee. But, next morning, German soldiers surrounded the POW camp and took control of it.

Within a few days, the Germans let Salvi and four other Indian POWs out of the camp—they’d been freed for 72 hours on the understanding that they would round up POWs who’d earlier escaped and bring them back. Salvi and his companions, however, had no intention of abiding by the agreement; they decided to get as far away from the camp as they could.

The five men would head north for Rome. They’d barely gone a couple of kilometres when they saw a railway line and began walking alongside it. But when the eastern horizon started reddening, Salvi called a halt. It would be too risky to walk near the line during the day. Until it became dark again, they’d hide somewhere nearby. They bedded down under a culvert.

On hearing the angelus, the five Indians jumped to their feet and walked towards the churchbells. On the way, they saw an Italian soldier coming towards them. Very light-skinned and with clear blue eyes, he was an attractive, friendly-looking youth of about Salvi’s own age. This is a man I can trust, Salvi sensed.

“Buon giorno,” Salvi said to him. Good morning. It was about the only Italian he knew.

The youth stopped and smiled. One of the Indians, who spoke fluent Italian, found out that the youth’s name was Romano Berardi and that he’d deserted his army unit and was headed for his home in nearby Villa San Sebastiano. Could he take them along? Romano agreed.

Romano, assuming the five were Americans—he’d probably never seen Indians before—took them to the hamlet nestling at the foot of a range of hills. It was Sunday morning, and villagers, dressed in their best, were flocking towards church. “Americani! Americani!” they shouted on seeing Salvi and his companions. Like Romano, they thought the five Indians were an advance party of the US army.

Taking Romano aside, Salvi and his companions confessed the truth and requested him to show them a safe place to hide during the day. After conferring with a few village elders, Romano led them to a clump of thickets just outside the village. He then left, saying he’d send some bread and coffee.

After about an hour, a teenager came up to the Indians’ hiding place. His name was Sirio Valente and he’d been sent by Romano. Sirio said his mother insisted that the Indians come to her house. After conferring with his companions, Salvi decided to accept the invitation.

Sirio’s house was crowded with villagers who’d come to see the Indians. While Sirio’s mother prepared breakfast, Salvi and the others shaved and bathed. As they sat down to eat, a stern-looking man appeared. He was Maestro Conti, headmaster of the village school and a staunch fascist.

“Who are you?” he asked the Indians. “Where are you going? Why have you come to this village?”

The Italian-speaking Indian explained who they were and said that they were on their way to the front lines to join the advancing Allied forces.

To Salvi’s huge relief—Italian fascists were otherwise normally sympathetic to the Germans—Conti seemed satisfied with this reply, and left.

As the Indians tucked into a hearty breakfast, Sirio, his mother and Romano urged them not to leave Villa San Sebastiano. Allied troops had already landed in Italy and the Germans were sure to be defeated. Until then, the Indians could hide in a disused stable in the village.

The stable’s loft had a small window from which the village’s main road could be easily scanned. From this vantage point, using binoculars given to them by Romano, the Indians took turns keeping watch for any sign of the Germans. And every night, they dined in a different house.

Early one morning, when Salvi was on sentry duty at the window, he saw two German trucks, loaded with soldiers and motorbikes, approaching the village. What was going on?

A very worried Romano came to see them that evening. “About 40 or 50 Germans have come,” he said. “They’re looking for houses to stay in and have already evicted some families.”

Even so, Romano and other villagers were against the Indians leaving the place. Winter was approaching, and the five would not be able to survive the cold on the open hillside.

Salvi got in and, crouching at the rear of the cup-board, told Adelina to replace the linen.

But as the days passed, Salvi began to think differently. Three more truckloads of Germans had arrived and were ensconced in houses throughout Villa San Sebastiano. Not only could the Indians no longer dine with villagers, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Romano or Sirio to bring food to them. There were days when Salvi and his companions remained hungry.

Finally, Salvi told Romano that it had become much too risky for the Indians to continue there. So Romano took them to an isolated shepherd’s hut high up in the hills above the village.

The five Indians woke up shivering after a cold, uncomfortable night. It was deadly quiet. They felt very alone.

As the days passed, it grew colder and colder. Salvi’s knuckles, toes, earlobes, and the corners of his eyes and mouth cracked and bled. After a heavy snowstorm, they didn’t eat for three days because Romano couldn’t come.

“We were all very worried,” Romano said when he finally showed up. “Sirio’s mother, especially. She was afraid you’d freeze to death. She kept telling me that you could all hide in her house.”

But how could they return? The Germans had tightened their grip over the village, and started night patrols. Nevertheless, Salvi decided they had no option. If they remained on the hillside, they’d freeze to death.

Meanwhile, Romano found different hideouts for each of the Indians. Salvi’s was in a cattle shed in the backyard of Adelina Piacente, a plump, serene-looking woman of 35 with gentle, expressive eyes. Adelina, whose husband had been taken prisoner by the Allies before the Armistice, lived with her mother in a two-room house in the centre of the village. The loft of their cattle shed would now be Salvi’s quarters. His new companions were a mule, a pig and a cow.

By now, another young villager, Ederlo Antonelli, had also grown close to the Indians. So when Ederlo got a job with the Germans, driving trucks to Rome, Salvi asked him if he would take a letter to the British Consul at the Vatican. Ederlo agreed.

On a small piece of tissue paper, Salvi wrote down the Indians’ predicament and asked the Consul what they should do. Then, taking out the tobacco from one of Ederlo’s cigarettes, Salvi slipped the letter in and repacked the cigarette.

The Consul soon sent back his answer. The advance of Allied troops had been slowed by the severe winter. But there was little doubt the pace would pick up again. Salvi and the others could try to make their way to the forest near the front lines. But their best bet would be to remain in Villa San Sebastiano for the time being.

Salvi began picking up Italian and as Christmas approached, Adelina and her mother urged him to spend the day with them rather than at the cowshed.

Early on Christmas morning, Salvi let himself into Adelina’s house. Mother and daughter were not yet up. Sitting near the hearth, he stirred the smouldering embers with a poker, added some firewood, and put a kettle of water to boil. As he sat gazing at the flames, he wondered where he would be the following Christmas. Would there be a Christmas for him at all? “Buon Natale, Salvi,” said Adelina and her mother, entering the room. Merry Christmas. The three drank coffee and Adelina and her mother left for Mass. After a couple of hours, Adelina returned to fetch water from the community pump. But within a few minutes, she was back, panting. Seeing Salvi, she heaved a sigh of relief.

“I heard that the Germans had just caught two prisoners of war in the village,” she said. “I was terrified thinking you might be one of them. So I ran back to check. Thank God you are safe!”

Salvi immediately wondered about his four companions. As he sent up a prayer for their safety, bugles sounded, and a voice announced that there was to be an immediate search of every house in the village and that everyone should stay where they were. Where could Salvi hide?

Salvi asked Adelina to remove the linen at the bottom of the large cupboard in her bedroom. He got in and, crouching at the rear, told her to replace the linen.

“Lock the cupboard and hide the key,” he told her. “When the Germans come, receive them politely. If they ask you to open the cupboard, tell them the key is with your mother.”

Ten minutes later, a German officer and two soldiers entered the house. Adelina wished them Merry Christmas, offered them coffee, and chatted with them as they drank. When they finished, they entered her bedroom.

Salvi heard their heavy boots approaching the cupboard. His heart sank.

“What’s in here?” the officer asked Adelina.

“Linen,” she replied, without turning a hair.

“Open it.”

“My mother has the key and she’s still in church.”

Providentially, they believed her. After seeing the Germans off, Adelina rushed back into the bedroom. Forgetting that the cupboard was locked, she banged on the door, crying, “Salvi, you can come out now!”

Only when Romano arrived late that evening, hours after Salvi had enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch that Adelina and her mother had made, did Salvi learn that all his companions were safe. The two men who’d been caught were Czech deserters from the German army, also hiding in the village.

Late one Sunday night in mid-January, Salvi was drinking coffee with Adelina and her mother in front of the fireplace when they heard the sound of army boots approaching. The boots stopped in front of the house. The three inside froze. The next moment, they heard a powerful kick on the door.

As he scrambled up the fireplace chimney—the only place he could hide in right away—Salvi heard two German soldiers come in. They wanted coffee.

Wedged inside the hot chimney, Salvi was soon in agony. But he suffered without making a sound for 10 endless minutes until the soldiers finally left.

The following week, Romano told the Indians that the Germans were going to leave the village. But before doing so, they were going to search every house once again.

The Indians immediately took to the hills. Luckily, by this time, the worst of the winter was over and they weren’t too uncomfortable that night.

“But thank God you left,” Romano told them the following day. “They searched Adelina’s house for an hour and a half. They ransacked the cattle shed, jabbing the hay with long pikes.” Salvi shivered. He could almost feel the pikes poking him. As soon as the Germans left, the Indians moved back into Villa San Sebastiano.

Early in February 1944 another German unit moved into the village. Word spread that it was looking specifically for the five Indians.

Once again, the Indians couldn’t risk remaining in the village. This time Salvi decided to take the British Consul’s advice and head for the forest near the battle zone, about 30 kilometres away.

Romano took them to an isolated hut up in the hills.

At 10:30 that night, Adelina and Salvi stepped out of her house. It was pitch dark. Salvi had discarded his army uniform, and changed into civilian clothes. He also wore a felt hat, which he’d tilted over his eyes.

Pretending to be a married couple, the two held hands and started walking. They’d not gone far when they heard boots approaching.

“Sit on that,” Salvi whispered to Adelina, pointing to a culvert.

As soon as she’d settled down, Salvi hid himself behind her long voluminous skirt. A German soldier appeared. Adelina wished him as he passed her. He wished her back without even glancing at her.

Adelina and Salvi reached a designated spot where Salvi was to meet the four others. From there, the Indians set off together. They reached their destination after a long, exhausting walk. The forest they were now in was at the foot of the Apennine Mountains. In the distance, snow-capped peaks stretched out against an azure sky.

When Romano met them a few days later, he said the Germans had searched the village again and found Salvi’s uniform and his army blanket in Adelina’s house. Fortunately, Adelina wasn’t at home, but they had arrested her mother. They were unlikely to hurt the old lady, but Adelina was sure to be harshly punished. So she was hiding in Sirio’s home. And to lull the Germans, Romano said, he was pretending to be friendly towards them. The forest, unfortunately, turned out not to be a safe haven. Twice, the Indians narrowly missed being caught. So Salvi decided they should return to the hills above Villa San Sebastiano and send word to Romano that they were back.

When Romano met them he said he would not be able to come again—the Germans were now suspicious of him and it was too dangerous.

The morale of the group steadily sank. One day, a shepherd boy told them that the Germans had caught Romano and whipped him, demanding to know where the Indians were hiding. But Romano refused to tell them.

For Salvi, this was the last straw. Confused and depressed, he gave the shepherd boy a note addressed to both Adelina and Romano telling them that he and his companions were fed up of being hungry and hiding all the time and were considering turning themselves in.Two days later, the boy brought Adelina’s reply. She’d been very upset at Salvi’s message, she wrote. Her condition was just as bad as his. Her mother had been taken away from the village. Adelina was in hiding and had little to eat. She was sending him half a loaf of bread—all that she had. She begged Salvi not to lose courage.

Salvi burned with shame as he read Adelina’s note. All thoughts of surrender vanished. On 17 May 1944, the Indians saw a glow on the horizon and heard the boom of guns. The Allies were finally getting closer. Five days later, after the Germans pulled out, the Indians entered the village. The Allies reached Villa San Sebastiano on 24 May. By then Adelina’s mother, too, was back home. But it wasn’t until July that Salvi received his orders to return home.

Addressing the villagers at a farewell organized in his honour, Salvi said he didn’t have the words to express what he felt for the people of Villa San Sebastiano. “I cannot ever forget you,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I will remain yours forever.”

For some years after he returned to India, Salvi—who left the Indian Army as a major in 1945 to join the first batch of the Indian Administrative Service—kept in touch with his Italian saviours. Then in 1965, he and his wife Hansa, whom he married after the war, journeyed to Villa San Sebastiano and met Romano, Adelina, Sirio and their spouses and children. Salvi’s eldest daughter Shubhalaxmi also visited the village in 1986. But after that, all contact between the villagers and the Salvis ended, until Samar and Bijal went there in June 2010.

Samar and Luciano Gargano began corresponding soon after Samar and Bijal returned to England, where they live. A 60-year-old widower, Luciano had been depressed since his wife’s death two years earlier. But now he felt life stirring in him again at the prospect of ensuring the success of Samar’s mission.

Luciano soon located Adelina, Sirio and Ederlo and the children of Romano. He also decided to translate Salvi’s war memoirs into Italian. While Luciano worked on the translation, Samar asked his parents, aunts, cousins and their spouses if they’d like to go to Villa San Sebastiano with him. And on 19 August 2011, a year after Samar’s first visit, a dozen people, loaded with gifts, descended on the village. They included two children, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild of Ramachandra Salvi.

Villa San Sebastiano received them with open arms. Three days of fraternizing, feasting, dancing and speech making followed. The Italian version of Whom Enemies Sheltered, translated by Luciano, was also released during this visit.

Members of the Gargano and Salvi families. Seated in the centre: Tulio, Luciano’s father; on the right in yellow T-shirt is Samar. Standing behind him, right to left: Bijal, Ranjeet, Luciano. Photo: Samarjeet Salvi

Before they departed, the Salvis left behind a memento that commemorates how much they owe to Villa San Sebastiano. Unveiled during a solemn ceremony at the village’s war memorial by Salvi’s son Ranjeet, his sister Gauri, and Romano’s widow Nielde, the plaque, which is in Italian, reads:

"In loving memory of the hundreds of kind souls of Villa San Sebastiano, led by Adelina Piacente, Romano Berardi, Sirio Valente and Ederlo Antonelli, who put their very lives on the line to give shelter to five POWs of Indian origin. Without your loving help to Lieutenant R. G. Salvi, we would not have existed.” —With gratitude, Family Salvi"