Page 108 - They Also Served

they were sent, alongside other senior officers captured in the desert war, to Castle Vincigliata, near Florence, the Italian equivalent of Colditz.
The senior captives spent months digging a tunnel using cutlery and utensils stolen from the castle kitchen. Finally, in March 1943, Boyd, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, Major-General Adrian Carton de Wiart (who had lost an eye and an arm in the Great War), and brigadiers Combe, Hargest, and Miles escaped. The two generals, with a combined age of 118, succeeded in walking 150 miles towards Switzerland before they were recaptured. Combe was arrested for having false papers and, faced with a long prison sentence, was forced to admit he was a British officer; however, Hargest and Miles made it to neutral Switzerland. Boyd travelled on his own, hitching a lift on a freight train, but he was apprehended less than a mile from the border.
Eventually, the senior officers made their escape during the confusion after Italy’s capitulation a few months later, the majority of them returning to the UK to contribute to the Allied cause for the remainder of the war. Awarded another MiD for his escape attempt, Boyd was given command of 93 Group, the Bomber Command training organisation, on 27th February 1944. However, less than six months later, Air Marshal Owen Boyd CB OBE MC AFC died of a heart attack and is buried in Mill Hill Cemetery, London.
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