|
Hero
|
Sneaking Into Prison Camp
“The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.
I sat there with Sally.
We sat there, we two.
And I said, ‘How I wish
We had something to do!’
Too wet to go out
And too cold to play ball.
So we sat in the house.
We did nothing at all.”
- The Cat in the Hat, 1957, Random House
Felice Benuzzi is one very bored prisoner of war. Having served as a junior officer in the Italian Colonial Service under Mussolini, Benuzzi was stationed in Addis Ababa when the British barged into East Africa and took all the Italians prisoner. Now he’s sitting in a POW camp near the foot of Mount Kenya where he waits despairingly for the end of an eternal war. One tedious afternoon Benuzzi stares at the mountain that punctures the clouds of the horizon and mumbles, “In order to break the monotony, I need only to start taking risks again.”
Soon he is secretly sewing clothing, making tents, hoarding food and gathering scrap metal to hammer into homemade climbing gear. “I shall try to get out, climb Mount Kenya and return here.” Two of his friends decide to go with him.
Leaving a note telling their British captors “not to worry, we’ll be right back as soon as we climb the mountain,” the unlikely trio snuck out of prison camp with their bags full of makeshift gear to begin the most outrageous adventure of WWII. At first they were in danger from elephants, rhinos and leopards. Then they were in danger of starvation. Finally, they were in danger of the rocks and ice and blizzards of lethal Mount Kenya.
The three men ascended 16,300 feet to Mount Kenya's Point Lenana, hoisted a homemade flag, and then returned to the prison camp. Even though they had scaled a mountain that had previously repelled some of the world’s best-equipped and most expert climbers, the most difficult part of their journey was sneaking back into prison camp without getting themselves killed, or having to hurt someone else. But they did it.
Benuzzi and his pals didn’t climb the mountain simply “because it was there.” Their motivation in climbing majestic Mount Kenya was to laugh in the face of a barbaric world war.
What might our world be like today if we had more Felice Benuzzis?
~ Roy H. Williams
To view the archives click here.
|
|
|
Invisible Heroes is a collection of more than 100 biographical stories written by Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads. You can read a few of these stories in the archives of this web page, but most of them are inaccessible because they're soon to be published in a book.
We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams. And then they create us in their own image. Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They're the embodiment of all we're striving to be.
Do you want to be notified when Invisible Heroes is published? Give us your email address and we'll send you a note when the book is ready. (We solemnly swear not to let anyone else have your address. We detest spam as much as you do.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
