
Ten years ago, in August 2013, I wrote a post on this site, “Peter Grillo—Surgery ‘Sans Anesthetic,’” concerning a harrowing operation P.G. 59 prisoner Peter Grillo had for appendicitis. At the time, Peter’s son Roy and I knew that after Peter had been interned in P.G. 59, he eventually ended up in Stalag 2B Hammerstein, from which he was liberated at the end of the war. (See “Liberated Comrades-in-Arms.”)
What we weren’t sure of until recently was his actual dates of internment and where Peter’s surgery had been performed. We weren’t even sure whether the operation was in Italy or Germany.
I discovered the missing details recently through accessing Peter’s Italian POW card on the U.S. National Archives (NARA) website. (These identity cards were created and maintained by the Italian Ministry of War during the war as a way for the Italians to maintain records on the prisoners—and to meet basic requirements of the 1929 Geneva Convention.)
From Peter’s card I learned that after P.G. 59, he was held in three additional locations in Italy.
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