One Man's War

THE NATIVES ARE FRIENDLY (222 pp.)--John R. Leeming--Dutton ($3).

The conscience of humanity has been shaken by those who went through the hell of the totalitarian concentration camps and lived to tell about it, in volume after volume of bleak horror. It is doubtful, however, that the world has yet heard anything to compare with the recital of Flight Lieut. John F. Leeming, R.A.F., who spent World War II as an Italian prisoner.

He managed to enjoy a good deal of it.

Flight Lieut. Leeming stresses the lighter side of his experiences in The Natives Are Friendly, a book which can probably claim the distinction of being the most peaceable war memoir of recent years.

Banquet the British. Leeming's first--and last--action as a belligerent in World War II was to throw -L-250,000 (then about $1,000,000) into the Mediterranean Sea one day in 1940. A few moments later, the R.A.F. payroll plane in which he was a passenger crashed in Sicily, and Leeming was made prisoner along with the late Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd.

No doubt Leeming had it better because he kept company with air marshals, but he gives the main credit for his gracious treatment to the superb natural manners of the Italian people, who, says Leeming, liked the British almost as much as they disliked the Germans. The first action of the Italians was to give a small banquet in honor of their prisoners. Boyd and Leeming were then installed in a large mansion in Catania. Distressed by their bad luck in being captured, the commanding general took them for an occasional cheering spin through the vicinity in his car. At their next place of detention, a villa near Sulmona, they were allowed to stroll at pleasure through the countryside, guards at a polite distance. During these walks the local peasants would invite them in for a glass of wine.

Guard the Clothes. Boyd and Leeming were soon joined by several tons of British brass (including Lieut. General Philip Neame and Major General Adrian Carton de Wiart). As the war went on, discipline was formalized--by Italian standards. For example, since none of the Italian garrison knew how to assemble a new machine gun, the British prisoners were asked to assist; the British obliged, thoughtfully omitting to install several vital parts. When the captives were taken on a picnic, the Italian officers and guards joined them for a swim, leaving a British general on shore to guard the clothes and the small arms.

Attempts to escape were punished with the utmost severity conceivable to the commandant: they were denounced as "discourteous." And a British general caught hanging over the wall on a rope was reprimanded by the guard who spotted him: "No, no, my General! Please, no!"

Leeming himself was repatriated when he faked insanity with the help of the friendly Italian medical supervisor. Unthinkingly, he committed the "unforgivable crime" of speaking without an introduction to a fellow passenger on the train to London. "Really. Really. Quite," the man sputtered. There was "a look of absolute horror ... on his face," and he hid behind his newspaper. Flight Lieut. Leeming was back home, among the everyday severities of English freedom.

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