Katrina Kittel: Researcher of POW in wartime Italy | Public figure

Katrina Kittel: Researcher of POW in wartime Italy

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25.01.2022 Thank you Harry and team at Dymocks Bendigo for stocking Shooting Through. If you're in the Bendigo region, with a rainy forecast looming for the weekend, many good books await you at the store! Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute Military Museum #POWs #WW11 #secondworldwar #militaryhistory Bendigo District RSL The Bendigo Advertiser #bendigo #history #loveyourbookshop Love Your Bookshop

23.01.2022 Thank you to the team at University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) for your dedication to collection accessibility. What a joy to be guided through your fascinating trove! Hear my comments & thanks (about 4 minutes into the video). The late Bill Rudd, who generously supported UMA, would have loved to be sending his congratulations too.

20.01.2022 Another review! In the current issue of the Australian War Memorial's quarterly magazine Wartime, Dr Duncan Beard offers his thoughts on Shooting Through. He writes of two 'minor criticisms' but also this: 'Selections of war diaries, letters and personal interviews have been carefully curated to present the reader with evocative pictures of the characters and places involved, as well as demonstrating their complexity and diversity.' Thank you Duncan for taking time to do thi...s review. I am delighted. Wartime magazine is sold in newsagents and held many public libraries. Thank you AWM for stocking the book in War Memorial Shop. (Photo: 2018 Last Post Ceremony for Private Les Parker at AWM. Les's story and that of his mate Ian Sproule is briefly mentioned in the book. I joined with Sproule and Parker relatives for this moving ceremony) Australian War Memorial Family, Friends and Supporters of the 2/15th Battalion AIF Descendants of the 2/24th Australian Infantry Battalion #Wartime #bookstoread #bookrecommendation #AustraliaReads #debutbook #bookswillsave2020 #writingcommunity #warstories #wargraves #truestories See more

20.01.2022 I enjoyed being In Conversation with Karen Crofts (Hunter Writers Centre) for Lake Mac Libraries History Illuminated at Rathmines Theatre Monday 7 September 2020. #historyilluminated #hunterwriterscentre #history #authortalks #ww2 #pows

18.01.2022 A few words by Rick McQualter:

16.01.2022 To ABC Goulburn Murray listeners this morning, I shared stories of a few of the POWs from NE Victoria area, one 2/23rd Battalion POW and three of 'Wangaratta's Own' 2/24th Battalion men. When Italy changed sides in the war in September 1943, these POWs escaped to the northern Piedmont region in Italy and beyond, and to varying fortunes. Born in Albury, New South Wales, Australia, Patrick O’Rafferty and his wife were in Yackandandah area when he joined the 2/24th. After he lef...t Campo 106 he walked north and trekked the high Swiss alps from Macugnaga to neutral Switzerland via Monte Moro pass. Eleven months later, just as the Australian POWs who'd reached Switzerland were being prepped to come home to Australia, he tragically fell out of a second-storey window to his death. Fred Tabram, also born in Albury, had also wanted hoped to reach Switzerland after his escape. Multiple attempts were thwarted, guides did not turn up and weather was unsuited. He joined the Italian Resistance and British Special Operations (SOE) in their sabotage operations to harass the German occupying forces. He survived but a less fortunate POW Douglas Smedley, a woodcutter from Berringama, Victoria, Australia, was shot by fascists in April 1944 and is now buried in Milan’s war cemetery. The first-hand accounts of POWs and Italians weaved in Shooting Through speak of tragedy and of humour, and of the brave response of Italian civilians to help the POWs. The book is sold at Booktique Wangaratta and available as signed copies from Katrina ([email protected]). Wangaratta Chronicle also took a keen interest in this history this week: #wangaratta #albury #truestories #passomoro #SOE #ratsoftobruk #ABC #writinghistory #POWs #vercelli https://www.pressreader.com//wang/20201012/281668257444800 See more

16.01.2022 25 April, Liberation Day, Italy. Shooting Through's heart beats with stories that reveal a spectrum of resistance activity. In various ways, Italian civilians risked their lives to assist escaped Allied POWs. Joining partisan bands, Australians and New Zealanders added to the sabotage and subversion efforts, their personal contributions leading towards the liberation of Italy in 1945. https://katrinakittel.com.au/shooting-through/ #resistenza #partigiani #anniversariodella...resistenza #festadellaliberazione #25aprile #25aprile2020 #anpi #pow #partisans #prisionersofwar #italianhistory #ItaliansinAustralia #australiansinitaly #kiwisinitaly Monte San Martino Trust #TheItalyStar See more

16.01.2022 Not all escaped POWs made it back home to their loved ones, as you will read in Shooting Through. Ross Mudge, fleeing a round-up in the northern Piedmont region of Italy in November 1943, was shot in the leg. Ross died in a hospital. He was 23. I wonder whether, two years earlier, Ross's last farewell to his father, before leaving Australia for overseas service, was outside the house where his father lived in Laurel Ave Lismore. In 2020, 100 years on from Ross's birth, I pass...ed through Lismore in north-east NSW. I drove along Laurel Avenue - an avenue of trees. In 2013, I placed a poppy at his resting place in Milan's Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery. Ross is one of 10 Australian POWs who were killed in Italy and who are included in my book ‘Shooting Through: Campo 106 escaped POWs after the Italian Armistice.’ The graves of these men are in Udine and Milan CWGC sites. https://katrinakittel.com.au/blog-feed/ #CWGC

14.01.2022 75 years ago, on May 8,1945, two Australian POWs stewed in a prison cell. Ted and Jimmy's war ended with a frightening jolt. They'd made it through 19 months on the loose in northern Italy. Ted had pitched in with Special Operations Executive's anti-scorch operatives in the months prior to his arrest. On 8 May, sitting alongside Jimmy below a tiny cell window, backs rigid against the prison door, they hear approaching voices. The cell window flings open. Sub-machine guns thru...st in, fire blasts above their heads, killing three other internees huddling on the cell's single bunk... For many years to come, Ted and Jimmy fired off telegrams to each other to commemorate their VE Day's lucky escape. Read more about Ted and fellow POWs in Shooting Through: https://katrinakittel.com.au/shooting-through/ #VEDay #SOE #POWsItaly #luckyescape VE Day 75 See more

14.01.2022 Talking today with Jenny Seaton at Curtin FM Perth, from 12.20pm WA time, 2.20pm EST. https://www.curtinfm.com.au/livestream/

13.01.2022 Booktique is such a cool name for a bookshop! Thank you Michelle at Booktique Wangaratta for your promo of Shooting Through. Spot the photo-bombing koala! Lost Wangaratta Wangaratta RSL Wangaratta Chronicle Descendants of the Rats of Tobruk - Australia Association Inc

12.01.2022 Read more about Syd Shaw's experiences as an escaped POW as well as other Australians and New Zealanders in 'Shooting Through: Campo 106 Escaped POWs After The Italian Armistice'. Syd trudged the Alps to Switzerland; others were not so fortunate... Grab a copy of Shooting Through at Dymocks Books, Harry Hartog Bookseller Angus & Robertson #AustralianWarMemorial and online sellers. For signed copies, visit: https://katrinakittel.com.au/... #AustralianWarMemoriall #anzacday2020 #secondworldwar #soldier #militaryhistory #prisonersofwar #katrinakittelauthor Aussies & Kiwis for ANZACs #Anzac #Campo57 #ItalianResistance #Freedomtrails #Tobruk #Alamein #prisonersofwar #Italy Shrine of Remembrance

12.01.2022 MacLean's Booksellers in Hamilton NSW has supported Newcastle and Hunter region authors for more than 20 years. Here’s Shooting Through, a little book about war and strife, sitting alongside books about a working class warrior and a Mayfield girl! #loveyourbookshop Love Your Bookshop #POWs #WW11 #secondworldwar #buylocal Small Press Network Hidden Hamilton #shoplocal

12.01.2022 Early in 2020, I fired away Shooting Through to my favourite magazine Country Style. The September issue carried this generous review! Grateful for the advice by Benjamin Law, during a writers workshop at ACT Writers Centre about promoting one's work to readers beyond the topic. https://katrinakittel.com.au/ #bookreview #ww2 #POWs #warstories #writinghistory

12.01.2022 'Shooting Through' faces out proudly; finding excellent company on the military history shelves of Dymocks Rundle Mall, Adelaide. Dive in to find the stories of escape and evasion of South Australian soldiers of the 2/48th and 2/43rd Battalions who were fed up working Italian rice farms as POWs in 1943! I'm very proud that Professor Peter Monteath, Flinders University, wrote the book's foreword and also launched my book in Melbourne in February. RSL South Australia War Widows' Guild of Australia - South Australia Inc #loveyourbookshop Love Your Bookshop Goodreads Adelaide Writers' Week https://katrinakittel.com.au/blog-feed/

10.01.2022 From April 1943 New Zealander POWs, ex-Campo 57, sweated under hot sun alongside Australians at Italy's rice-growing fields (Campo 106) while the wider war hotted up. Read what happened to these NZ POW escapers in a new-release book (details below): Norman Allen, Stanley Avery, Leslie Batt (murdered by fascists), John Bonner, Frank Bowes, Percy Bremner, John Clark (murdered by fascists), David Conlon, Henry Harrison, Darcy Henderson, Adam Heka, Thomas Hodgson, Robert Hohaia, ...Leslie Holemby, Lionel Hood, 'Lofty' Johnson, George London, Roy Lunn, William Martin, Syd McFarlane, Lewis 'Lou' Moir, Gerald Neame, Harold Pattinson, Harold Sanderson, Eddie Scanlan, Arch Scott, Charles Watkins, Peter Watson Bates (photographer of POWs). Within book’s appendix, a list of 101 NZ POWs who reached Switzerland. ‘Shooting Through: Campo 106 POWs After the Italian Armistice’ by Katrina Kittel, available online sellers and selected bookstores. For signed copies & to ask questions, contact Katrina: https://katrinakittel.com.au/shooting-through/ New Zealand Military Historical Society Aussies & Kiwis for ANZACs ANZAC 2020 LIVE RSA National #anzac Campo 57 #Campo57 Veterans' Affairs New Zealand #Campo106 #Vercelli #POW #prisonersofwar See more

09.01.2022 77 years ago today, about 400 Australian and New Zealander prisoners of war, POWs, wake to a new phase of their captivity. The barracks for this first cohort of farm recruits are secured within old Italian farm buildings and courtyards (administratively dubbed Campo 106), dotting the rice-growing plain between Turin and Milan. As the first-hand accounts by POWs and Italians reveal within ‘Shooting Through: Campo 106 Escaped POWs after the Italian Armistice’, POWs meet and cha...t with farmers sympathetic to the Allied cause and with itinerant mondine labourers drafted from nearby towns. Unlike seasonal workers in Australia and New Zealand, the assiduous Italian mondine are mostly female. ‘It was very pleasant to watch them lined up across the paddy,’ Tom delights, ‘heads down, bottoms up and skirts hitched high’. Don quips: ‘You can imagine the eyes of twenty or so blokes that were girl-starved for about two years.’ All prisoners listen for news of watershed events that will soon change the war for them and for the Italians they befriend, or distrust. New Zealand Army Community Shrine of Remembrance ANZAC 2020 LIVE Aussies & Kiwis for ANZACs Hidden Italy Walking Tours #Freedomtrails #Campo57 #prisonersofwar #Anzac Descendants of the Rats of Tobruk - Australia Association Inc #Tobruk #Alamein #Italianhistory #Campo106 #Vercelli #ItalianAustralians #Greatescapes

08.01.2022 Books and cafes and music...Not everyone is able to go to cafes these days so excuse my gloat (on two fronts) that recently I was lucky to meet with, and receive a signed copy of The Lost Boys from its author, Paul Byrnes. (Can you help? Paul seeks information about underage soldiers WWII for a follow-up book - email [email protected]) Also, with good fortune I enjoyed choc brownie and tea while my books were propped up for display at Ballina Book Shop. Treat yourself, wherever... you are, and source a copy of The Lost Boys about WWI underage soldiers. And - wow - look what’s on shelf below Shooting Through in the shop window: new books about Paul Kelly and Archie Roach! https://katrinakittel.com.au/ #shoplocal #books #loveyourbookstore #warbooks #supportlocal #Australianmusiclegends #read #Australianveterans #newrelease #Australianauthor #military. #covidreading #2020books See more

07.01.2022 A natter with Fiona Wyllie, ABC Statewide NSW, about these buffed-looking prisoners:https://www.abc.net.au//nsw-state/campo-pow-book/12193526

03.01.2022 I’ll be participating in History Illuminated 2020: https://library.lakemac.com.au//Shooting-Through-Campo-106

03.01.2022 In recent months I’ve been privileged to be commissioned to assist a professor to identify, obtain and summarise sources related to the WWI experiences of her Aboriginal family veterans. Her grandfather served in WWI; her father became POW of the Japanese in WWII and was one of the Thai-Burma railway slaves. I knew very little about the context for POWs under the Japanese. I have cried while summarising first-hand accounts (what to leave out or include?); I read of sharp cont...rasts and subtle similarities between the POW cohorts. Today as I decided on extracts from a library-held memoir by Gordon Nelson, another POW of the Australians detailed to ‘A’ Force, I read of mid-August 1945 for him and the POWs around him as they digest the news from an officer that ‘war is over’. Today too I look back to what I wrote in my epilogue of Shooting Through, penned before I learned more about the POWs of the Japanese. My conclusion on page 270 is unchanged: ‘Rustling amongst the war books in Berkelouw Book Barn in Berrima in 2016, I strike up a conversation with the man alongside me, a major in the Australian army. I tell him of a POW’s concern and frustration about a dominant paradigm: a perceived heirarchy of POW suffering that laddered POWs of the Japanese at the top, Germans in the middle rung and and Italians at the other end. I share the major’s belief that such a heirarchy is simplistic. The major emphasises that for every soldier, for every POW, there are individually felt privations and suffering.’ https://katrinakittel.com.au/shooting-through/ http://honesthistory.net.au//stephens-david-now-i-am-beco/

03.01.2022 Talking to Christine Layton this morning WA time 8.45am ABC PERTH about ex-POW Harold Davis, a Noongar man. On the east coast, Newcastle Herald's Mike Scanlon writes for today's Anzac Day: (on page 32 of print edition) https://www.newcastleherald.com.au//home-front-battle-fo/ ANZAC 2020 LIVE ANZAC DAY 2020 #POW #Campo106 #Freedomtrails #Indigenousveterans #EscapestoSwitzerland New Zealand Veterans in Australia

02.01.2022 When I tear up a little while reading a historian's review of my first book Shooting Through in a way that I know he spotted strengths and weaknesses for me to learn from and to feel boosted by, I am very pleased. Seaumas Spark is an Adjunct Fellow at Monash University. He has researched and written about Australian POWs. Thank you Seumas for honestly stating your 'quibbles' and also for these words: 'Careful and determined research informs the narrative...Kittel deftly avoi...ds tired caricatures of diggers...This is an important work'. #diggers #campo57 #fascistItaly #AustralianPOWs #writerslearn #newwriters Aussies & Kiwis for ANZACs #campo106 #Australianmilitaryhistory #KenInglis Descendants of the Rats of Tobruk - Australia Association Inc https://insidestory.org.au/behind-fascist-lines/ #Italiansoldiers COASIT - Museo Italiano, Language & Cultural Centre #bookaholic #booksofinsta #BooksAreEssential #booklover See more