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The hospital at Mantova was a fairly modern building having been completed just before the war and was regarded as a showpiece among the locals. It was designed and built in the form of a horizontal wheel, the outer rim of which was the perimeter walkway with wards leading off forming the spokes, with the hub containing all the ancillary functions necissary in running and maintaining the the hospital such as the laundry, boiler room, offices, etc.

There were two floors as far as I could ascertain, with the upper floor containing consulting rooms, operating theatres, X-Ray, etc.

Although the hospital was a fine building, it was very poorly equiped due to the shortage of essentials caused by the war and the Allied blockade, the Germans giving preference for their military needs to the exclusion of all other considerations, wounded soilders being ignored completly. This resulted in no anaesthics for operations, no bandages or dressings, infact nothing at all was being replaced as supplies ran out, even life-saving drugs and medicines.

We as prisoners, although patients, spent much of our time rolling bandages which had been washed in the hospital laundry. When the fabric bandages became too threadbare to use, docters and nurses had to resort to the use of paper to dress wounds. In the face of all adversity, the Italian docters and nurses performed heroics, the docters performing minor surgery with razor blades and ordinary scissors, sterilised with whatever was available, and the nurses, all Red Cross volunteers, went about their duties in a cheerful manner. As well as medical and surgical items, food was also a scarce commodity. The catering was handled by nuns who had a convent and chapel in the spacious grounds of the hospital. Breakfast consisted of a bowl of coffee flavoured milk and a bread roll, lunch was a bowl of thin soup and another bread roll, whilst the main meal at about 6pm was a sumptious bowl of soup containing some vegetables and a few small pieces of unidentifiable meat which we conclude could possibly be goat flesh, plus a roll and a half. Needless to say we all lost weight. Again, because of the Allied blockade, we did not recieve any Red Cross parcels, so could not supplement our daily rations until some time later when the British soldier's inate cunning rose to the challenge.

One day, several new patients arrived to replace those that had moved on, among them a Guardsman who was put in the bed opposite me, the first bed on the other side of the ward. When he had settled in, we introduced ourselves and it transpired that he was a Liverpudlian and as I had been born and bred in Liverpool, we exchanged further information about ourselves and discovered we had attended the same school, although Mick, as we later christened him, was about three years older than me, he was in his last year as I was in my first. The school was St. Margaret's Anfield, a respected Church of England school next to a church of the same name. Mick's name was Francis Edwards and he was of Welsh origin, but because he came from Liverpool, he was recruited into the Irish Guards.

Mick was badly wounded in hand to hand fighting, when coming face to face with a German, he was shot, the bullet grazing his head just above the ear. Mick was knocked to the ground and as he lay there helpless, he was shot again, the bullet entering his right shoulder, leaving his back via his lung, luckily missing his kidney.

As soon as Mick was allowed out of bed we decided that we had to do something to improve our food allowance and spent some time checking hospital routines with specific relevance to our ward and quickly found that the rolls were delivered in the evenings ready for the next day and stored in a room opposite the entrance to the ward. This room was equipped with cupboards and was kept locked.
The first requirement was the aquisition of a key that would unlock the outer door of the store room and this was done more easily than we had feared.

By careful observation and a large slice of good luck, it was noted that the key we required was the key used to open the medicine cupboard which stood in the passageway that linked the ward with the main gangway off which the storeroom was situated. Soon we had hatched a plan which involved waiting until the medicine cabnet was unlocked and, as was the habit, the key left in the lock. Mick and our American associate positioned me in front of the cabnet then waited half hidden opposite. Soon a nurse came along and, telling me that I should not be out of the ward, took me by the arm and accompanied me to my bed. While this was going on, Mick accomplished the first and most crucial part of the operation.

Now that we had the key, and I had established myself as a good look-out and decoy, all we had to do was wait for the oppertune moment, sometime in the evening after the delivery of the rolls and during the gap between the finish of the nurse's day shift and before the start of the night shift. The next night, we commenced to put our plan into operation and I took up my position as look-out and decoy near the storeroom.
The plan worked wonderfully well and as agreed only enough rolls to supply each member of the ward one roll each were taken.

As we only took a small number of the rolls the thefts were not detected for about a week, but like all good things, it ended when some Italian workmen changed the storeroom's locks. However, we were never found out and all the patients in the ward benefited by the small increase in their daily rations.

Although we had no further access to the rolls, we still had the key to the medicine cabinet, but had no idea what other doors it would open for us.
One day, two nurses went to the cabinet, one of whom was carrying a largish parcel and, after unlocking the door, placed it on the bottom shelf before locking the door and removing the key. Keeping our ears to the ground, we found that the parcel contained a cake baked for somebody's birthday. This was an oppertunity to good to miss and we decided that we would take the resposibility of taking the cake and sharing it among the poor and needy, our fellow patients, not forgetting ourselves!

Removing the cake from the cabinet was easy as we had the key and only had to wait until the coast was clear between shifts, but we now realised we did not have a knife to cut the cake into the required number of portions.
Now we had to steal a knife, as for obvious reasons we were not allowed such potential weapons, and cutting implements of any kind were not left lying about unattended. The problem was solved by simple observation and resorting to our origional format of myself as decoy.

The two Italian medical orderlies allocated to our ward took their meals along the main gangway about twenty yards from the entrance to the ward behind a small partly glazed screen which extended at right angles for about four feet into the gangway. Here was situated a small table, the leading edge against the screen enabling their orderly who was sitting there, to see the entrance to the ward through the glass.

One day we waited until the orderly had collected his lunch from the kitchen and sat down at the table which was the signal for me to perform my lost patient, wandering past the seated orderly who promptly left his meal and took me back to the ward.

When the orderly with me in tow, had disapeared into the ward, Mick, who had been positioned stratigically near the screen, whipped the knife which the orderly had been using and, for good measure, pinched the orderly's lunch which consisted of a large portion of processed cheese and some bread rolls. This item was an added bonus and later thet evening, we divided the cake and cheese among our fellow patients as best as we could, which was very well recieved, while Mick was congratulated on his initiatives in procuring the cheese. Among the staff there was a very puzzled and hungry orderly. As far as we knew, the mystery of the disappearing lunch was never solved, and equally puzzled nurses may still be wondering what happened to their birthday cake.

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