THE GREAT TRAIN RAID

This mission was so secret that few published records exist. Now, best-selling author Damien Lewis has unearthed the full incredible story from long-hidden files, family archives and untold personal accounts

- WORDS DAMIEN LEWIS

In autumn 1943 the SAS was charged to form the tip of the spear as the Allies assembled the greatest war armada for the thrust to liberate a continent that had fallen into darkness.

As part of the invasion fleet landed at Taranto, on the 'heel' of Italy, the SAS punched through positions held by German paratroopers, wrestling a toehold onto Europe's steel shores.

Even as they battled their way inland, a Yugoslav prisoner, Zeljko 'Zelcko' Ljubo, broke out of a place of horror and suffering. He was one of thousands incarcerated in Pisticci, known as 'the First Italian Concentration Camp.' Constructed in 1939, complete with rows of huts, watchtowers, gun emplacements and barbed wire, hundreds of Italy's so-called Untermenschen - subhumans - were corralled there. Jews plus Yugoslav, Polish and French freedom fighters, and Italian artists, writers and priests - anyone with the temerity to resist Benito Mussolini's fascist rule were held there.

Having seized a police car in a daring escape, Zelcko made his way to the Allied bridgehead. There, he revealed a tale that appeared utterly fantastic. It was one of hundreds of prisoners being delivered by cattle car, after weeks in inhuman conditions. It was of locals - women, children and the elderly - pelting them with rocks and rotten fruit, while screaming: "Robbers! Rebels! Murderers! Criminals!" The prisoners were emaciated and dishevelled. When some tried to retort that they were freedom fighters their words had little effect. The locals had been brainwashed by Mussolini's virulent fascist propaganda.

In Yugoslavia, Italian troops had burned villages and rounded up 'Slavs' for deportation to the camps. Captured French and Greek Resistance fighters were likewise held at Pisticci. Food was so scarce that camp inmates were forced to hunt stray dogs to eat and to rifle through garbage heaps.