Every once in a while, a story turns up that seems almost too remarkable to have remained hidden for decades in an archive. The escape story of Staff Sergeant Robert W. Nicholls is one of those striking accounts. Shot down over Italy on his twenty-sixth birthday, captured and taken to PG 59 Servigliano, Nicholls escaped from the camp after the Italian Armistice and spent the next month making his way across the Italian countryside toward the Allied lines.

Military historian Cristiano D’Adamo discovered Nicholls’ story during his research and created The Birthday Mission, his account of the experience based primarily on Nicholls’ own testimony, given to an Allied intelligence officer after he crossed the lines in October 1943. 

I’m grateful to Cristiano for choosing to tell this story through Camp 59 Survivors. Stories like this are why I continue to believe there is so much more to discover—and share—about the experiences of the men who passed through PG 59. Cristiano’s research has allowed yet another of these stories to be heard.

The Birthday Mission

By Cristiano D’Adamo

The morning of July 17, 1943, began the way most mornings began in the desert war: with heat, engine noise, and the particular quietness of men who had done the math on their own survival.

Staff Sergeant Robert W. Nicholls was twenty-six years old that day—born in Mina, Nevada, on this exact date in 1917—though it is unlikely anyone marked the occasion on the flight line at Benghazi.

Twenty-seven B-24 Liberators were being readied for a long haul north, across the Mediterranean, to Naples. It was the kind of mission that looked clean on a map. Robert’s ship had a name that carried its own contrary humor: Lady Fifinilla. The crew flew under 1st Lt. Curtis S. Griffin, with 2nd Lt. Joseph H. Potter Jr. riding as co-pilot, and a complement of men who had trained together, argued together, and now trusted each other with the absolute intimacy that only danger creates.

The aircraft experienced electrical power problems, and the thermal flying suits therefore did not work. The bombing run went well. Observers would note “good results.” The formation turned for home.

Then the flak found them. Lady Fifinilla shuddered, fell out of formation, and began to lose altitude. Almost immediately, German Me 109s arrived, swarming the wounded bomber, probing for the kill with the patience of wolves that know the wounded animal cannot run. According to Italian aviation historian Giancarlo Garello, the aircraft was shot down by Sergeant Gino Pizzati flying a Macchi C.204.

Somewhere in those frantic minutes, the interphone went dead. The last thing Robert Nicholls heard through his headset was his skipper’s voice giving the order to abandon ship. He jumped. His parachute opened. Below him, the landscape of Irpinia spread out in the summer haze. He landed near Avellino and was almost immediately apprehended by Carabinieri. It was an orderly capture, conducted within the bounds that civilized nations had agreed upon for such things, followed by a series of interrogations that pressed him but did not force him.