Generals Free

When Italy surrendered last September, three high British officers were glumly killing time in a prisoner-of-war camp near Florence. Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd had been captured late in 1940, when his transport was forced down in Sicily. Lieut. Generals Sir Richard Nugent O'Connor and Philip Neame, V.C., had been crudely kidnapped by a Nazi motorcycle patrol which stumbled across them in a stalled truck convoy near Derna, Libya, on a spring night in 1941.

General O'Connor's capture was a particularly bitter blow; he was field commander of the North African Army and General Wavell's right-hand man. When next heard of, Air Marshal Boyd was commanding the camp carpentry shop, Generals O'Connor and Neame the chicken yard. In the wild confusion of Italy's debacle they escaped, vanished into the Italian countryside. This week London announced that they had reached the Allied lines. They were together through the long trek; their route was secret.

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