Former Saltaire milkman Joe Clow, who died a year ago, left a riddle.

It's a book he was given while working on an Italian farm as a prisoner of war in 1942-43.

The book was given to his brother, retired Baildon businessman Geoffrey Holmes, a few months before Joe died while living in Heaton.

The book is a handsome memento of an ugly time.

Joe came about it like this:

He was called up in 1940, while working on a farm and delivering milk in Saltaire, in the days when it came in churns and was ladled into householders' jugs - and delivered twice a day (a boon in warm weather in the days when fridges were a rarity).

Joe went into the Fourth Battalion, the East Yorkshires and, in 1941, found himself in North Africa, facing a German commander called Erwin Rommel, who was making a push towards the Libyan port of Tobruk.

One of the obstacles was the 150th Brigade, which Rommel managed to overrun. Among those captured was Joe Clow, and he became a prisoner of the Italians, Germany's increasingly reluctant allies. In due course he ended up in a PoW camp somewhere in the Po valley in northern Italy.

In 1943 Italy had had enough of the war and capitulated. The camp guards, letting discretion be the better part of valour, legged it, leaving Joe and his fellow prisoners to fend for themselves. He, and three of his mates, decided to take to the hills. Italy had packed up, but Germany was still at war and now running occupied Italy.

Joe settled down on a farm, just the job for a man with his experience, and also ended up giving weapons instruction to local resistance fighters who had the guns but not the know-how. He also accompanied his new friends on their sorties against the Germans.

While he was away on one of these expeditions, two other British soldiers, also escapees, took refuge at the farm before heading on towards Switzerland (there were a number of ways out of Italy - north would take you to neutral Switzerland, south would take you towards the invading Allied forces).

When the soldiers left one of them - known only as Gunner A Pearson, Royal Artillery - left behind a notebook filled with water-colour and pencil sketches of prison camp life, fantasies of freedom, and pictures from a journey through an Italy which, though war-torn, retained much of its mediaeval beauty.

There was also a plaintive poem about the lot of the prisoner. Here's a bit of it:

Three days of hell oe'r desert land

Plodding onwards oe'r scorching sand.

Bitter the nights, burning the day,

Men without shade under the scorching ray.

Many of thirst by the wayside fell,

Others were killed by bullet or shell.

Onwards plods this forlorn host,

Men who fought a battle and lost...

Woe betide us, the bread is small;

But remember those who get none at all.

At last we arrive in Camp 53:

This is our PoW home to be.

It's not Kipling, but it still tells its story 55 years down the line.

The chances of reuniting the book with either A Pearson or any of his relatives seems vanishingly small. But if it does ring a small bell, drop us a line.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.