W/O. Antonio Marco Publo (Anthony/Tony) Camenzuli was the rear gunner of Halifax HX291. In the night of 21/22 April 1944 this bomber took off from Skipton-on-Swale on a bombing raid to Düsseldorf. On the return flight the Halifax, already cripple after having sustained some flak damage, was attacked and shot down by a German nightfighter. The bomber crashed at Meeuwen in Belgium. Three members of the crew were killed. Of the four survivors, the pilot and the navigator were soon captured by Germans. Only Camenzuli and the wireless operator, F/O. P.A. Schnobb (E1034), managed to evade capture. Camenzuli made a hard landing somewhere near Weert, twisting his right ankle. As he was injured, he hid in a ditch for a while. A 'man on a bicycle' gave him cigarettes, meat sandwiches, beer, sweets, and matches. He then contacted members of the Dutch resistance group ‘de Vrijbuiters’, based in Maarheze. This group operated on both sides of the Dutch-Belgian border and was, led by Harrie Semler and his wife Catharina (Trien) Semler-Hendriks from their caravan in Maarheeze. The couple and their co workers helped at least twenty aircrew over the border from Budel to Hamont and handed them over to the Belgian resistance (Secret Army/White Brigade). Camenzuli was one of them. Probably Lautent Heukeshoven (Gatelscheweg 2 at Budel) was involved in the transport across the border. On Belgian soil he came in the hands of Marcel Royers and his wife at Neerpelt, who passed him over to - eventually - Frans Bas ('Franz'), a local carpenter at Kreyel, a hamlet near the village of Bocholt in Belgium. Bas hid Camenzuli in a small room that he had constructed above his workshop until the American was recovered enough to move on.
In a letter he wrote after the war, Camenzuli mentions meeting an American pilot called ‘Douglas’ in Bocholt. Douglas had been hiding out in a brewery and had been shot down in his Flying Fortress during a daylight raid over Germany. Camenzuli was eventually captured in Antwerp on 3 August 1944. In his post war account he wrote: 'The five men involved in our arrest were Dutch and Belgian traitors, paid by the Gestapo.' He possibly was one of the more than hundred airmen betrayed in Antwerp by the collaborator Rene van Muylem (known as ‘Alphonse'), who was executed for treason after the war. After his arrest Camenzuli was transferred to Stalag Luft VII near Bankau where he arrived on 22 August 1944. He was eventually liberated in Stalag IIIA near Luckenwalde on 22 April 1945.
After the war Camenzuli went on to live in England until his death in 2013.
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