sentences:  After the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces in 1943, the author left the prisoner-of-war camp in which he had been held for a year, PG 49 at Fontanellato, and evaded the Germans by going to ground high in the mountains and forests south of the Po River.In enforced isolation, he was sheltered and protected by an informal and highly courageous network of Italian peasants.Newby writes a powerful account of these idiosyncratic and selfless people and also of their bleak and very basic lifestyle.