in Europa la II guerra mondiale. Rimase sconvolto dal fatto che lui

in Europa la II guerra mondiale. Rimase sconvolto dal fatto che
lui non era con Montgomery quando i generali tedeschi si arresero.
Scrisse a sua madre che si trovava in un “campo di prigionia per il
busto italiano, Ospedale per i tedeschi; dove sarò per i giapponesi?
Manicomio o la tomba?”.
Pur essendo finita la guerra in Europa, Tony Dobson è rimase in
Germania, tra le diverse località si ricordano Amburgo, Brema, Hannover e Bad Oyenhausen. In questo periodo fu impegnato anche ad
organizzare il suo matrimonio con Nellie Homberger che ebbe luogo
il 10 novembre 1946 a St Helens, nel Lancashire, dopo non poche
difficoltà con le autorità dovute ai visti, all’organizzazione del suo
rimpatrio e ad altri ostacoli. Una volta sposato ritornò in Germania, lasciando la moglie da sola a Londra in attesa dell’opportunità
di unirsi a lui in un alloggio adatto. In proposito c’erano vaghe
promesse da parte del governo che la riunificazione sarebbe stato possibile nel corso dell’anno, ma l’unica possibilità che questa
coppia aveva di incontrarsi erano i congedi occasionali o qualche
incontro di lavoro nel caso Tony fosse stato richiamato a Londra.
Anche una gara di sci militare a Chamonix, in Francia, non lontano
dal confine franco-svizzero, fu occasione per un incontro tra Tony e
Nelly. Touch-and-go, tocata e fuga. Le cose sarebbero potute andare
diversamente se il visto francese per Nellie fosse stato pronto in
tempo (infatti la donna prima dovette ottenere un passaporto britannico a suo nome quale coniuge di un cittadino britannico) anche
se in questo periodo le modalità di viaggio erano molto complesse...
transitare in treno per tutta la Francia in inverno inoltrato. Ma
tutto, comunque, fu coronato dal successo di un abbraccio pieno di
gioia nuovamente in quelle Alpi dove si erano incontrati la prima
volta. Nello stesso anno, nel mese di agosto, trascosero un’altra vacanza insieme in Svizzera. Il racconto del viaggio di Tony, da Bruxelles a Basilea, è interessante. Del viaggio in sé vanno ricordati
non solo alcuni piccoli aneddoti (un treno lento con frequenti soste
prolungate che hanno comportato ben 17 ore per completare il tragitto) ma il modo in cui lo stesso Tony descrive come è riuscito ad ottenere una riduzione sul prezzo del viaggio. Un’autentica impresa:
“Io compro un biglietto fino alla frontiera lussemburghese in franchi
belgi, a metà prezzo per i militari. In Lussemburgo, per qualche motivo, non mi sono mai posto il problema di acquistare un biglietto.
In Francia faccio invece un biglietto per Basilea in franchi francesi,
un quarto di tariffa per i militari, in modo che l’intero viaggio mi è
costato meno del 30% in prima classe! Consiglio, a chiunque vada
in Francia o in Belgio, di investire in un secondo battledress mano!“
(il 30% in meno equivale a £ 1.50 nei prezzi dell’epoca, circa £ 90 ai
valori odierni).
Nellie finalmente riesce a raggiungere Tony nel mese di dicembre
del 1946 e poterono, quindi, vivere insieme. Rimasero in Germania
fino al 1950, traslocando in diverse abitazioni, e avendo tre figli in
15
un battibaleno.
Tornato in Inghilterra hanno comprato una casa a Guildford,
nel Surrey, e Tony, in seguito, ha lavorato presso il Ministero della Guerra della Direzione Manpower, quindi nell’estremo oriente
dopo ll’emanazione del disegno di legge “Manodopera” per la guerra
di Corea. Nel 1953 è stato promosso a colonnello e con la famiglia
è stato inviato a Hong Kong per tre anni dove ricoprì l’incarico di
Ufficiale Comandante di un reggimento di “Field Engineer”. Il loro
quarto e ultimo figlio è nato lì.
Tornato nel Regno Unito, nel 1956 entra a far parte del personale
dell’Ingegneria in capo al Ministero della Guerra. Nel 1959 è stato
promosso a Generale di brigata e ha preso la posizione di Chief Engineer - Command HQ Orientale con sede a Hounslow. Nel 1962
stava per essere trasferito a svolgere un incarico di lavoro simile a
Gibilterra quando si rese libero un posto vacante nell’esercito britannico presso la sede sul fiume Reno nel Mönchengladbach. Quale
Vice quartiermastro generale fu impegnato nella revisione complessiva dei piani amministrativi per la guerra in conseguenza di decisione della NATO di adottare una strategia offensiva. Si occupò
anche di vagliare un programma di opere necessarie per organizzare le forze militari in Germania. Nel 1964 fu promosso Maggiore
Generale nel doppio ruolo di Ingegnere Capo del Gruppo Esercito
del Nord della NATO e di BAOR, sempre a Mönchengladbach. Nel
novembre del 1967 si ritirò dal servizio attivo, ma è rimasto nella
lista dell’esercito il colonnello comandante della Royal Genio, incarico che ha mantenuto fino al 1973. Al suo ritorno in Inghilterra,
dopo il suo ritiro, ha acquistato una casa a Farnham, Surrey. Tony
Dobson, nato il 15 dicembre 1911, è scomparso il 12 marzo 1987,
compianto dalla sua famiglia e dai suoi colleghi sparsi in tutto il
mondo.
Tra i suoi riconoscimenti e medaglie ricevute:
- Commander of the Bath (CB). Awarded 1968.
- Order of the British Empire (OBE). Awarded 1953.
- Military Cross (MC). Awarded 1944.
- 1939-45 Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces who saw active
service between 1939 and 1945.
- Africa Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces who served in north
Africa between 1941 and 1944.
- France and Germany Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces for
service in northwest Europe between June 1944 and September 1945.
- 1939-45 War Medal. Awarded to full-time personnel of the British armed
forces who served a minimum of 28 days between September 1939 and September 1945
È stato anche menzionato due volte in dispacci: luglio 1941 e giugno 1942.
16
Sopra e nella pagina accanto: medaglie e riconoscimenti militari conseguiti ed attribuiti dal Maggiore Tony Dobson durante il suo lungo periodo di attività sotto le armi con l’esercito britannico.
Sotto: tessera di appartenenza alla 52^ Brigata Garibaldi “Luigi Clerici” appartenuta a Marco
Bonzi. Fu solo grazie alla cooperazione con i partigiani e con altre persone attive con il Comitato di
Liberazione Nazionale che il Maggiore Dobson ed alcuni suoi commilitoni riuscirono a raggiungere
la Svizzera sani e salvi dopo essere fuggiti dal campo di internamento di Veano Piacentino presso il
quale erano stati rinchiusi dopo la loro cattura in Libia avvenuta nel mese di aprile del 1942.
17
Cartina del
Monte Bisbino con le
diverse località che
videro protagonista
anche il Maggiore
Tony Dobson
nell’autunno del
1943 nella sua fuga
verso la Svizzera.
Le luci dell’alba
sul lago di Como dal
Monte Bisbino con il
massiccio del Monte
Rosa sullo sfondo.
18
Il paese di Moltrasio dove Dobson arrivò con un battello
partito da Como.
Sulla strada per il
Bisbino lungo i sentieri che ancora oggi
conducono dalle rive
del lago alla vetta.
La scalinata
che ancora oggi,
dai sentieri che di
inerpicano lungo il
monte, partendo da
Rovenna, conduce al
Santuario del Monte
Bisbino .
19
Le acque del lago
di
Como
increspate,
solcate dai battelli da
Como verso Cernobbio
e Moltrasio.
Il verde della montagna, la calda luce
dell’albo e l’azzurro
del lago di Como:
tutto questo colpì il
Maggiore Dobson che,
pur in fuga, ebbe la
prontezza di apprezzare i luoghi che
contraddistinsero la
sua precipitosa fuga
dall’Italia nell’autunno
del 1943.
Veduta della Valle
di Muggio dalla vetta
del Monte Bisbino,
luogo di salvezza per
tanti, soldati, profughi,
ebrei, che fuggirono
dal comasco verso la
Svizzera durante i
drammatici anni della
II guerra mondiale.
20
In questa pagina
alcune immagini delle
sale del Piccolo Museo
del Bisbino che, tra le
tante sue testimonianze
storico-naturalistiche
del monte, ha restituito
alla memoria anche la
vicenda di Tony Dobson.
Un altro particolare
delle sale al piano terra
che raccolgono anche gli
attrezzi e gli oggetti di
vita quotidiana di un
tempo che resta vivo solo
nei nostri ricordi.
La vasta collezione
di fossili ospitata dal
I piano del piccolo
Museo, donata dagli
eredi dell’appassionato
comasco Flavio Ferrè.
21
Another history related from
the Small Museum of Bisbino
T
22
he small Museum of Bisbino is located on the Italian/swiss border with in the complex of the sanctuary B.V. of Bisbino , destination of pilgrimage since the Middle
Ages aside in habitants of towns of Cernobbio (Rovenna e Piazza S.Stefano), Maslianico, Moltrasio, Vacallo, Castel S. Pietro. Born for a promise made to a guy that from
up there close to the sky I would like to listen to all these life stories.
The Small Museum wants to collect the many pieces of personal stories, the peasants
objects, the pictures of the past, the stories of those who fled from the war, the stories of
smugglers, of artists who here are inspired.
The Small Museum has a book where the many visitors leave their mark of their presence
with small writings, their thoughts, their memories their stories.
In July past by reading the messages left one caught my attention, was written in French
and said so: “my husband the Major Dobson in the October 1943, he escaped from the war
and passed from the mountains helped by Italian smugglers. Thank you, Nelli Dobson.
The Major Dobson passed from Moltrasio” in 1943.
Following in the written, the addresses of his daughter in Switzerland and of son in England.
I’m then succeeded to contact his family and his son Mark in London, who gladly sent the
father’s story (verbalized at the English military command in 1945) about his escape the
September 8, 1943 from the prison camp of Veano Piacentina , his arrival in Como and
Moltrasio, the passage of the border on Bisbino between the Bugone and Murelli, the arrival in Cabbio and Chiasso (in Switzerland) and the period of internment before returning in the ranks of English army from Geneva in France.
Is so initiated my quest to find the places, events, people from him encountered so as to
give explanation to what he described in his story in those days of 1943, find out how
his story has been crossed with the stories of Corrias, Bonelli, Costa, Del Vecchio, Riva,
Saints, of Mirka, and many others as Lt. Bonzi Marco Moltrasio “partisan commander
among the first and courageous” of which thanks this story has been given his card partisan, and how it was possible for him (as for many other allied prisoners and Italian
military) thanks to a network of aid and cooperation between antifascists, people who
simply wanted peace, various partisan groups, who also did it for money... leave piacentine campaigns get to Milan, then to Como, Cernobbio, Moltrasio and other countries of
the lake and through the trails how it was possible for him to reach Mount Bisbino and
cross the border to salvation.
Franco Edera
The story
of Major Tony Dobson
T
ony Dobson was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers
in 1931. At the begin-ning of the Second World War he was in Iraq,
having been seconded to the RAF to assist in surveying duties. He
was then posted to Egypt where he served in the HQ of the Middle Eastern Command. In April 1942 he was promoted to Major and was
seconded to the 150th Infantry Brigade on the Gazala line in Libya. At the
end of May the Afrika Korps under Rom-mel attacked the Gazala line and
he was captured and became a prisoner of war of the Ital-ians. He was interned in Campo PG29 in Veano near Piacenza. On the capitulation of Italy
in September 1943 the camp gates were opened and all the inmates walked
out. After a few days hiding in the countryside nearby he and a handful of
other officers settled in a farmhouse where they organised an escape line to
Switzerland with the assistance of local partisans. Finally he decided that
it was time for himself to make his way to freedom.
In his own words:
“An organisation was set up by, I think, a chap called Colonel Boddington
… who was a sap-per colonel, to feed away the large number from our particular camp, who had done exactly as we had, found their way into farms
dotted around the countryside in those parts. His plan was that as myself
and Stephen Radcliffe were both sappers … he would take us onto his staff
… and employ us as reasonably fit young men … to charge round the hills –
it was quite mountainous around there – find where these people were and
collect them together at appropriate times and feed them into the machine
which was transferring them to Switzerland. There was no other plan, they
were going to Switzerland, there was no plan to move anybody to the south
or to join the partisans or anything of that sort. And it was run on the Italian side … by a man whose name I never discovered, he was always known
to us the Gangster. He lived in Piacenza, he ran a big garage with a fleet of
hire cars, and he was collecting lira from the Germans by hiring these cars
out and then handing over the lira to the escape organisation run by Boddington to pay fares and buy clothes and things to enable the British to move
themselves to Switzerland … I believe that this chap was eventually picked
up by the Germans, not I think … for helping the British prisoners escape, or
indeed helping the partigiani or anybody else, but for some purely technical
fault with the cars he was hiring. And of course the whole story came out.
Rumour has it he was then duly shot.
“I don’t know how many guides there were… [their] business was to collect small groups of British [soldiers] and … take them in the train to the
Italian-Swiss frontier and pass them over. These men were what the Ital-
23
ians called contrabbandieri, or smugglers. The trade was tobacco against
saccharine. What the trade was in peace time I don’t know. I can’t remember now whether it was the Swiss who got the tobacco and the Italians the
saccharine or the other way round! Francesco [Cordani] was our particular
chap, a distinctly charming young man, who had done a lot of these trips.
In due course it was arranged that I and one or two others would go. In the
meantime I lived with an extraordinary family way up in the Appenines. I
have never seen such enormous people! Great big father, two enormous sons,
two daughters with fists like hams. And a sizeable mother as well. They were
living in a farmhouse in tolerable comfort – they had plenty to eat in the
sense of pasta, but the only meat that I can recollect that we had in the whole
time I was there was a squirrel, and that divided between the family of five
and me meant that it didn’t go very far! She made her own pasta and it was
great fun watching her doing it, it was very high quality stuff too. I went
out from there in every direction, tramping over the hillside finding these
people wherever they were and telling them to stay put until I came back
and told them what day they could be moved to Switzerland. I did this for
about three weeks. And then it seemed to me that it was my turn… I returned
to the Ansielmi family because they were nearer to the station at … Ponte
delOllio, on the railway which ran to Piacenza. They said that I couldn’t go
to Switzerland dressed like that, I must be properly dressed, so how would I
like to be dressed? I replied that I had better look a middle grade executive or
businessman of some sort. So they went off and the very next day they came
back with a suit – it must have cost them thousands of coupons on the black
market or something – a hat and tie, a handkerchief. And a pencil. I asked,
what was the pencil for? They said that all Italian businessmen have a pencil
sticking out of their pocket. I accepted this as good advice. And then we had
a colossal party, they killed another goose, it was really a terrific farewell …
The next day we went down to the station where we were to meet Francesco
and three other [British] officers… We went from Piacenza to Milan, then we
had to take a tram to the station for Como. That was a little alarming, we
were right in the middle of Milan, where it was business very much as usual,
with German troops in every direction. However nothing happened and we
got to the station and got some more tickets there. The Italians love this sort
of thing; we went down to the gentlemen’s lavatory, a chap came in front of
us and went ‘psst’ and shoved the tickets into our hands. I don’t think that
that was really necessary, but still that’s what happened. And then we sat in
the train for a very long time before it started … It was a bit trying, a little
boy came and did tricks in the train and then asked us for money, and we
hadn’t got any. It’s very difficult to say ‘go away’: even though we did speak a
certain amount of Italian it certainly wasn’t the Italian they spoke in Milan!
But it all passed off all right.
“Eventually we arrived in Como … We walked across the local square
there, which was right in the middle of the German Headquarters, again
nothing happened, and we took a boat … a pleasure steamer. I think this was
really the most trying and interesting part of the whole journey because the
boat was running a girls’ school outing, girls of about 18 I suppose. Well, we
hadn’t seen many girls for about two years; there we were, cooped up in this
boat with all these very pretty girls, I very nearly chucked my hand in and
said I’m not going to Switzerland, I’m staying here, but in the end they persuaded us to be brave, and they launched us onto terra firma at a little place
called Moltrasio … We had by then picked up two Italians – I don’t know who
they were but they were nice chaps, middle aged gentlemen, and they said
that they were with the partisan organisation. They had a radio, I think in
Milan, which was in communication with the British Embassy in Bern …
24
but they had either mislaid or changed the ciphers and they couldn’t any
longer decipher what was coming through, and they wanted to come to Switzerland with us, partly because this was the way to get there without having
to go through the customs and immigration at the frontier, and partly because they hoped that we would be able to vouch for them. We said, that’s all
very well but we don’t know who you are, but we don’t mind you coming with
us. One was a chap called Marco something or other, he’d been an agent for
one of the big companies in England and in Milan, and on the whole on the
course of our journey with him we came to the conclusion that he was quite
genuine. Anyway he came with us all the way. In Moltrasio we went to a
house quite near the disembarkation point. Moltrasio is a little village quite
like Clovelly,1 it has no street, you climb up steps up the hillside … We
waited there with the wife of the chap who was supposed to be the chief contrabbandiere who was going to actually take us over the frontier, the man
who knew the way, but he wasn’t there. She was quite happy to see us. We
were wondering what was happening, this was daytime, quite early in the
morning, absolutely nothing happened until about 5 o’clock in the evening,
and then the smuggler suddenly appeared. It couldn’t have been more typical, one moment he wasn’t there and the next moment he was! A little man
about 4 foot 6 wearing gym shoes, and he said, we must go to my uncle’s
house, we can’t stay here. Well, in time we moved to the uncle’s house, who
lived up at the top of the village, quite a walk up the village street which was
very steep, and the first thing we saw at the uncle’s house was rifle with a
bayonet on it, and hanging on the bayonet one of those slouch hats with a
feather in it, which the Italian mountain troops, the bersaglieri, wear. We
really thought this was the end, all that they’ve done is to hand us over to the
local military. However this was far from the truth, because we were hastily
assured that the bersagliere soldier was a key man in the whole proceedings,
because his duty was to stand as sentry on the frontier and see that nobody
crossed it, or alternatively to receive 50 lira from everyone who did, and he
was one of the ones who did just that. And so we started off that very evening, from the village on the shores of Lake Como, straight up into the mountains up a very steep cobbled road, allegedly built by Napoleon and no doubt
it was, about I suppose one or two thousand feet vertically up, it was getting
dark. We came to a mountain hut or farm where they said, here we spend the
night. We were then seven people, plus the bersagliere soldier, plus the guide
Francesco plus the contrabbandiero … one enormous bed, and a barn full of
newly mown grass – not hay but grass, and therefore very wet. I said, very
selfishly, I’m sorry I’ve got flu, I feel absolutely awful, I’m not going to sleep
on wet grass. So I was allowed to sleep in the bed, with three other people,
and everybody else piled into the hay. The next morning we got up at dawn;
it was now late October and it had been snowing in the Appenines where we
had been, but it was lovely in Como, except for the morning fog, and as the
sun came through it was absolutely beautiful; the lake gradually appeared
through the fog. But it was obviously no time to stay in people’s barns or
haystacks. Even the one I’d been in recently which was over the cows and
therefore reasonably centrally heated: cows give off a lot of heat! We felt no
compunction about moving ourselves to the rather more civilised atmosphere
of Switzerland … We set off with the bersagliere leading the team with my
hat sitting on the end of his bayonet instead of his own which he was wearing and the guide. The nearer we got to the frontier the more … ‘cloak and
dagger’ the whole thing became with a lot of ‘psst’ and hiding behind trees,
and eventually we arrived at an enormous chain link fence. It was really a
rather surprising thing to find up there. They said we stop here, and we said
how are we going to cross this? It was about 10 feet high I suppose, with
25
three strands of barbed wire at the top and three strands at the bottom. A
pretty formidable obstacle to get over, and in the middle of a wood although
there was an old cobbled road up to it. And a sentry box into which the bersagliere soldier took up position … we said, what do we do now? And they
said, we’ll pass you though the fence, but first let us give you some advice.
You see up there? And we looked up the mountain, about a thousand feet up
there was a big building, and they said, that’s the carabiniere barracks, you
don’t want to get near there! And we said that we wouldn’t go near there if
we could help it. They said, otherwise you just go … The next thing that happened was they lifted up the fence, they said, here’s the place to go through,
and there was a perfectly good gap through this thing, somebody had made
a gap through the barbed wire at the bottom. The chief guide went to bottom
of the chain link fence, lifted it up and we all passed underneath, and our
modest goods consisting of a razor and a couple of handkerchiefs wrapped in
a cloth were thrown over the top, and there we were in Switzerland. The
sentry presented arms, everybody said arrivederci, the two Italians went
back the way they came and we and the other two Italians who were with us
who knew no more about it than we did were left standing one yard inside
Switzerland wondering what to do next. And so we said that the obvious
thing is not to go up that way, we must go down, the other way. And so we set
off down the mountain, it seemed the sensible thing to do, through the woods,
[it was] very easy to lose your bearings. We kept on coming back to the frontier fence which was rather stupid! Eventually we found a road and we said
that if it goes down it must go to Switzerland, if it goes up it goes back to Italy. We set off down this road, and eventually we met some Swiss soldiers,
two I think 2… The Swiss were very cunning of course, and manned their
frontier with Italy with German-speaking soldiers, and the frontier with
France with Italian-speaking soldiers, and the frontier with Germany with
French-speaking ones. Which was obviously a very sensible thing to do, they
couldn’t communicate with the other side. But it made it difficult for us: I
don’t think anyone in our party spoke much German, and in any case they
spoke Schweizerdeutsch. However they were very welcoming, and they said
they wondered where we were, [as if] they knew we were coming, I don’t know
how. We were led off to Chiasso – quite a long walk, and we had already
walked up the mountain so we were quite tired by then. In Chiasso we were
looked after, by the Swiss Red Cross I suppose. They provided odd items like
a handkerchief and a piece of soap, that kind of thing. We spent that night
there in a school … and then we went to Bellinzona. In Bellinzona they had
a bigger set-up just outside the town … which must have been a factory or a
warehouse … in which they were doing exactly the same as the Italians: it
was a quarantine camp. We stayed there a few days. We refused to have our
hair cut as the Swiss wanted us to do; we said no, British officers don’t have
their hair shaved. And we won that one actually! The Swiss were very charming as usual, they were also I suppose conscious of the fact that one day the
war would be over and there might be some potential tourists among the
prisoners of war! And we were classified as an odd thing called evadés de
guerre, which is not at all the same thing as a person who is interned, because there are rules about internment. One of them is of course that you
can’t be repatriated until the war is over, because an interned person is somebody who has entered the foreign state, the neutral state, armed. This is what
happened to the Polish Division. They, with great pride, marched across
France before Dunkirk, arrived at the Swiss frontier, and demanded to be
allowed to enter. The Swiss said, well, put your guns down and come in. And
they said no, we won’t do that. And so they were allowed in with their arms
and promptly had to be disarmed and were interned. Whereas if they’d said
26
they were non-combatants escaping from the Germans, they would have
been sent straight home as soon as there was a means of doing so. There were
a few British there in the same position. But we, as escaped prisoners, were
‘non-combatants’, and the only mention as such in the Geneva Convention is
that they may be assigned a ‘place of residence’. And the place of residence
assigned to us was a place called Wil in east Switzerland in the canton of St
Gallen. Not altogether suitable, very near the German frontier, very strongly
Roman Catholic. But on the other hand we couldn’t have been treated more
kindly”.
Tony Dobson remained in Switzerland until the allies established a frontier crossing near Geneva in early 1944. During this period he was able to
indulge in his favourite sport of skiing, and it was during a period of this
activity in the resort of Arosa that he met his future wife Mlle Nellie Homberger. They were married in St Helens, UK in 1946.
The story continues...
Once the allied forces had reached the Swiss border near Geneva in
early 1944 the ‘escaped prisoners’ were able to cross the frontier into
liberated France and then back to their respective homelands. Major
Dobson was amongst the last to take advantage of this opportunity
because he was asked to remain in Switzerland to tie up any loose ends
with the accommodation providers, especially with regard to payments
to hotels and the like. However, owing to the method used to transfer
the large number of the evadés de guerre back home, which involved
their being driven to Lyon, then flown to Marseille and on to Naples,
and finally shipped back home, he was actually one of the first to arrive
back in England as he was flown there directly from Lyon.
After a period of de-briefing at Prince’s Risborough he was given six
weeks leave and then sent to Ripon in Yorkshire for training, and was
subsequently posted as a brigade-major in a unit similar to the one
that he had been working with in Libya prior to his capture. This brigade, formerly consisting of gunners, was being re-trained as an infantry
brigade to join the 2nd Army which was then advancing into northwest Europe. In March 1945 Dobson was himself released to join the
2nd Army and found himself back in action. But this return to the war
was short-lived: within weeks of his arrival at the front he fell ill and
was hospitalised. To quote from a letter he sent to his mother on 22nd
April 1945: ‘Mr dearest mum, I am sorry you have not had a letter for so
long, but I have been ridiculously unfit. It all started about ten days ago
with shivering and temperature popping up and down which I surmised
[was] a mild attack of ‘flu. However eventually I succumbed to taking
the medico’s advice and he said he thought it must be malaria. So I
was packed off to a forward hospital, where I spent a couple of rather
miserable days among the wounded, decided I felt better and returned to
Army HQ. the trouble is a soon as one gets into the medicos’ hands one
gets swept back to Brussels or Ghent or somewhere and it takes a year
to get back again. However I didn’t feel much better after my return and
by Saturday it was pretty obvious what was wrong with me – jaundice
– and so here I am back in another hospital – within (so far) a day’s journey of HQ. Actually the worst is over – temperature and so forth gone
– but I can’t raise any sort of appetite and the sight of food is positively
repellent. Meanwhile I grow daily more like a Chinese mandarin! Provided I don’t get moved from here (and in this I have the support of the
senior doctor at Army HQ who came over this a.m.) I ought to get back to
HQ in a week or ten days, but it is perfectly infuriating, as things are of
1 Clovelly: a
fishing village on
the north coast of
Devon, England,
it is a major
tourist attraction
notable for its
extremely steep
pedestrianized
cobbled main
street, donkeys
and views over the
Bristol Channel.
(Wikipedia)
2 In his subsequent report to
the War Office in
London, made in
July 1944, Dobson
stated that the
party entered
Switzerland near
Cabbio, Tessin,
where they were
taken over by the
Swiss Military.
27
course at an “interesting stage”. Moreover Myddy [Dobson’s immediate
boss at HQ] has a good deal too much to do and I don’t know how long
he can carry on without getting someone else in – so you will appreciate
I am anxious to get back . . . As hospitals go it might be worse – I have
plenty to read and the beds are normal. Quite a decent building, Boche
school or nunnery or something and I expect the food is all right, though
the mere idea of food revolts me! Meanwhile I am missing all the fun. I
did manage to get a look at a trainload of V2’s we overran recently, but
the big ghoulish thrill of Belsen Concentration Camp I missed. The head
doctor said it was the most awful thing he had seen in his life. I can only
suppose it is fear that these things and worse are coming to light that
keeps them on the job at all – God knows what he thinks he’s gaining
… Don’t worry about me. Both my own and the doctors’ view is that I
am firmly on the mend though with this yellow thing it is a regrettably
slow business …’. Dobson remained in hospital through VE day on 8th
May 1945, being finally declared fit to rejoin his unit on 12th May. So
ultimately he took very little part in the last stages of the second world
war in Europe.
The border between Switzerland and France was opened in October
1944 following the allied landings in the south of France in 1944, and
the evadés de guerre were able to return home. They were taken to
Lyon and flown to Naples, which may seem a perverse route back to
the United Kingdom but in fact made sense as many of the man were
from other countries in the British Commonwealth and Naples was a
sensible staging post for their dispersal. Major Dobson and a couple of
other British officers remained in Switzerland for a few weeks to tidy
matters up with the Swiss authorities before leaving Switzerland. They
spent a last night in the Cornavin Hotel in Geneva; whilst he was there
Tony proposed to Nellie Homberger; he gave her an engagement ring
and promised to bring her back to England for their wedding once the
war was over.
The Swiss would not allow the Americans to drive a truck into Switzerland so the next day he and his colleagues boarded a privately-hired
tram (complete with ‘Privé – Reservé’ on the head-board) which took
them to the frontier accompanied by a Swiss army officer and another
soldier. At the border they were handed over to an American GI, the
sole occupant and driver of an enormous lorry who took them on a ‘terrifying journey’ to Lyon Bron airport. From there they were flown into
a fog-bound England, landing at Rothwell in Northamptonshire rather
than their intended destination of Heston aerodrome. (Rothwell, otherwise Harrington airfield, was a base for clandestine operations into
Europe during the war and it is my guess that they flew there on the
return sector of such a mission, the pilot having decided that he might
as well fly back to his base having been denied a landing at Heston due
to the weather. This would also explain the presence of some other
passengers on the flight who were complete strangers to Tony.) Since
all the other former Swiss internees were still on their way home from
Naples by ship, Tony and his small party were in fact the earliest arrivals from Switzerland. Or maybe not: there was a story that on an earlier
flight out of Lyon the pilot asked his passengers where they wanted
to go to. Somewhat bemused they said ‘Naples’. To which he replied,
‘Yeah, but where do you really want to go?’ And when they all said to ‘to
England’, that is where he took them.
Tony was taken to a country house in Princes Risborough, a few miles
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outside London for de-briefing. He found it difficult to convince them
that he really was an ex-POW: they were apparently expecting some
starving, emaciated specimen of humanity, not a man who had spent
the best part of a year skiing, climbing and being fed a lot better than
his countrymen at home. He then spent six weeks waiting to be recalled
for action, but very little happened, apart from being told that as he
had completed his time as a temporary major (a rank that he kept the
whole time that he was interned, both in Italy and in Switzerland) he
would revert to captain. This naturally infuriated him: he even suggested that he would return to being a prisoner of war as he would be
far better off financially! They relented on this and eventually sent him
to Ripon in Yorkshire to sharpen up those military skills he had forgotten during his period of incarceration. After this he joined an active
unit as a brigade major once more, a similar position to that which he
had before his capture in Libya, but this time with gunners who had
been engaged in anti-aircraft activities in London and who were being
retrained as infantry soldiers ready for the big push into northern Europe. In March 1945 he was posted to join the 2nd Army and was finally
back in action. Working in Field Marshall Montgomery’s staff, he was,
as he put it, ‘in a highly important department which really runs the
war, or thinks it does’. They were living and working in caravans or
trailers which stayed behind the front line as it advanced eastwards
across Germany. Censorship of course prevented him from saying very
much in his letters home about his work and location, although in April
1945 he did mention that he was near the German town of Osnabrück.
But later that month he became ill. Initially he thought that he had
flu; then a doctor diagnosed malaria. But what he had in fact contracted was jaundice, and was therefore unfit for further duty. For him, ‘the
war was over’ – for the second time. Although he did make a full and
relatively swift recovery, he was still convalescing in hospital on VE
Day (May 8th 1945). He was upset that he was not with Montgomery
when the German Generals surrendered to him: he wrote to his mother
that he was in a ‘Prison Camp for the Italian bust, Hospital for the Germans; where shall I be for the Japanese? Lunatic Asylum or the Grave?’
With the war in Europe over Dobson remained in Germany, being
based variously in Ham-burg, Bremen, Hannover and Bad Oyenhausen amongst other places. He was also engaged in arranging his marriage to Nellie Homberger; this took place on November 10th 1945 at
St Helens in Lancashire, after many difficulties with the authorities in
respect of visas, travel arrangements and other obstacles. Once married, he promptly returned to Germany, leaving his new wife to live in
London on her own, awaiting the opportunity to join him once suitable
accommodation could be arranged for service wives to be with their
husbands. There were vague promises from the government that this
might be possible later in the year, but otherwise the only chance that
such couples had to see each other was on the occasional home leave, or
perhaps a business meeting called in London, or, in Tony and Nellie’s
case, a military skiing competition in Chamonix, France, not far from
the French-Swiss border. It was touch-and-go whether the French visa
for Nellie would be ready in time (she had to get a British passport in
her own name as the spouse of a British national first), followed by the
travel arrangements by train across France in late winter, but this was
all completed successfully and they had a joyous reunion, back in the
Alps where they had first met. Later that year, in August, they spent
another holiday together in Switzerland. The tale of Tony’s journey
29
from Brussels to Basel is interesting. Of the journey itself little needs to
be said – a slow train making frequent long stops which took 17 hours
to complete, but his description of how he reduced the fare he paid demonstrates much enterprise. In his words: ‘I buy a ticket as far as the
Luxembourg frontier with Belgian francs – half fare for the military.
In Luxembourg for some reason I have never been asked for a ticket so
I don’t bother to buy one. In France I get a ticket to Basel with French
francs, quarter fare for the military – so that the whole journey cost
me under 30/- first class! I recommend anybody travelling in France or
Belgium to invest in a second hand battledress!! ’ (30/-, £1.50p, about
£90 in today’s money).
Nellie finally joined Tony in December 1946 and they were both able
to live together under the same roof. They remained in Germany until
1950 in a variety of houses and had three children in fairly short order.
Back in England they bought a house in Guildford, Surrey, and Tony
worked at the War Office in the Manpower Directorate, then coping
with the manpower bill for the Korean War. In 1953 he was promoted to
Colonel and the family was posted to Hong Kong for three years, where
he was the Commanding Officer of a Field Engineer regiment. Their
fourth and last child was born there.
Returning to the UK in 1956 he joined the staff of the Engineer-in
Chief at the War Office. In 1959 he was promoted to Brigadier and took
the position of Chief Engineer at HQ Eastern Command based in Hounslow. In 1962 he was about to be posted to a similar job in Gibraltar
when a vacancy arose in the British Army of the Rhine headquarters
in Mönchen-Gladbach, as Deputy Quartermaster General, engaged in
the complete revision of administrative plans for war as a consequence
of NATO’s decision to adopt a forward strategy, together with an immense works programme required to house the all-regular (and much
married) Army in Germany. In 1964 he was promoted Major-General
in the dual role of Chief Engineer of the NATO Northern Army Group
and of BAOR, still based in Mönchen-Gladbach. In November 1967 he
retired from active service but remained on the Army list as Colonel
Commandant of the Royal Engineering Corps , a position he held until 1973. On returning to England after his retirement he purchased a
house in Farnham, Surrey, where he passed away on March 12th 1987,
sadly missed by his family and colleagues the world over. Tony Dobson
was born 15.12.1911 .
Among his awards and medals these should be mentioned;
Commander of the Bath (CB). Awarded 1968.
Order of the British Empire (OBE). Awarded 1953.
Military Cross (MC). Awarded 1944.
1939-45 Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces who saw active
service between 1939 and 1945.
Africa Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces who served in
north Africa between 1941 and 1944.
France and Germany Star. Awarded to members of the armed forces
for service in northwest Europe between June 1944 and September 1945.
1939-45 War Medal. Awarded to full-time personnel of the British
armed forces who served a minimum of 28 days between September 1939
and September 1945.
He was also twice mentioned in despatches: July 1941 and June 1942.
30