Prisoner Of War Camps: Cold Logic

Axis Forces Dept: One destination was Sri Lanka – which, in 1943, was still Ceylon, a British colony. I unexpectedly learned of this in trying to resolve an old woman’s fantastic remembrance with the cold logic of military history. While in Sri Lanka doing research for my new novel, I was told the story of a great aunt who had watched thin and despondent Italians and Africans marching off a warship into the steam and chaos of Colombo harbour, in the early 1940s, according to Globe And Mail. As I explored Ceylon’s Second World War-era history, I soon realized that this tiny Third World island mattered both in terms of larger strategic concerns for both the European and Southeast Asian theatres, and in terms of its natives’ and their descendants’ visceral connection to a major world event and on this date, German and Italian forces surrendered to the Allies in Tunisia, effectively ending the war in North Africa and making possible the Allies’ eventual campaign in Italy itself. Beyond this strategic accomplishment, the Allies’ conclusive victory in North Africa also created a dramatic new responsibility: about 250,000 prisoners of war. Where would they go? I was compelled by the storytelling possibilities of that image but skeptical of its plausibility: How could Italians and Africans reach Ceylon in the middle of the war? Eventually, I uncovered a historically sound account of the island’s involvements in the war, which included its surviving a 1942 Japanese air attack that was repelled thanks in part to the heroics of RCAF pilot Lionel Birchall, a native of St. Catharines, Ont.; Lord Louis Mountbatten’s moving to Ceylon in 1944 to lead the Allied Command Centre for all of Southeast Asia; local men enlisting for both the defence of the island and for overseas fighting; and, indeed, the creation of prisoner-of-war camps for Italians and Africans who were part of the defeated Axis forces in North Africa. As reported in the news.
@t lord louis mountbatten, globe and mail