Italian Farm Labourers in Hampshire

During the Second World War, a large number of Italian prisoners of war were transported from the Western Desert to Britain. Many of these young men, who had been caught up in a war about which they cared little, were from the southern provinces of Italy; the agricultural areas.

During the war, my grandfather held a position in the Hampshire War Agricultural Committee as he owned and ran an agricultural engineering and contracting business. Amongst his claims to fame were the invention of the dimmer switch for hen houses which allowed the lights to be slowed faded down which did not worry the chicken (and hence egg production). The firm which bore his name was formed in 1922 and included a bus company (until it was nationalised) as well as early harvesting equipment which was contracted out to local farmers.

E Beaver and Sons was based in Kempshott, then a village outside the ancient Borough of Basingstoke, a market town between Reading and Winchester, now greatly enlarged and surrounded by roundabouts as part of the London Overspill Plan of the late 1960s. To make use of the Italian skill set of hard work and agricultural experience, especially after the country's surrender and change of sides in 1943, the PoWs were offered farm work and, I suspect, extra rations and some freedoms. My father, Norman, remembered they were hard and were very resourceful as many of them had lived off the land in Italy. They could source rabbits, hares, game birds and, of course, chickens. They were obviously homesick and the villagers of Kempshott-with-Dummer, took them to their hearts and tried to alleviate the pain of separation. There were parties, sing-songs and music nights in the huts which my grandfather had built at his premises in Pack Lane (now, of course, a housing estate).

The Italians repaid in kind by sharing their rations which, in true British style, reflected the Geneva Convention and, according to my father, were more generous than those allocated for civilians. My father had been injured in an incident in the English Channel in 1940 and invalided from his naval engineering work with Thorneycroft at Woolston near Southampton; he went to work for my grandfather and, incidentally, joined No 6 Platoon, Hampshire Home Guard at the same time.

My mother, Olive, had been evacuated from the Dibden Purlieu in the New Forest in 1941 and found herself in Kempshott where she met my father. When the Italians heard that she was to celebrate her 21st birthday, one of them called Giuseppe painted her portrait which I still have in my study in Hampshire. She had fond memories of the songs, the poetry and the gaiety of those young men so far from home. She would always think of Italians and Italy fondly, and often wondered what became of them when at last they were shipped home in 1946.