Bugle Call to Freedom : Monte San Martino Trust : 9780957610217 : 08 Sep 2020 : It was midday on September 9 1943, the day following the announcement of Italy's surrender to the Allies. At PG 49, a prison camp at Fontanellato, in the Po valley, a bugle sounded three short blasts, the signal for the biggest mass escape by Allied PoWs in Italy during the Second World War. In camps elsewhere in the country there was confusion. Many prisoners of war, obeying orders from London, stayed put, only to be swept up by the occupying German army and sent to Germany, long before Allied forces could reach them. At PG 49, however, the Senior British Officer and the sympathetic Italian commandant came to an agreement. The wire was cut and 600 PoWs marched out of the camp into the countryside, in the nick of time before the Germans arrived. The prisoners were free but facing an uncertain future. Should they go north to neutral Switzerland or walk hundreds of miles south to Allied lines? Either way,