No Picnic On Mount — Kenya- A Daring Escape- A Perilous Climb.pdf
Why? As he later wrote, "A man must pit his spirit against something bigger than barbed wire and guards." The mountain represented freedom. Climbing it was an act of rebellion against the war itself.
During WWII, Benuzzi was an Italian prisoner of war at Camp 354 in Nanyuki, Kenya, near Mount Kenya. Out of boredom and a desire to prove the human spirit, he and two fellow prisoners escaped—not to flee to safety—but to climb Mount Kenya (17,057 ft) with improvised gear (including a homemade ice axe from scrap metal and rope from torn sheets). After a harrowing climb, they returned to the camp and surrendered.
Avoid "free PDF" sites with pop-up ads. The book is popular enough that malware authors use it as bait. During WWII, Benuzzi was an Italian prisoner of
When the PDF version of the book describes their departure, it is with a mix of tension and black humor. They created a dummy for Benuzzi’s bed to fool the guards during roll calls. They walked out of the camp not as fugitives fleeing for their lives, but as mountaineers heading for the hills.
The British commander was so incredulous he assumed they had been on a spy mission. But Benuzzi presented his climbing log—a detailed, handwritten diary wrapped in waterproofed cloth. The guards found the wooden pitons, the homemade rope, and the empty sardine tin. Avoid "free PDF" sites with pop-up ads
If the escape was daring, the climb itself was perilous. This is where the "No Picnic" aspect of the title becomes painfully literal. Benuzzi and his companions were not equipped with modern Gore-Tex jackets or high-tech ropes. They were wearing homemade garments and carrying improvised gear. They faced the dual enemies of the Kenyan highlands: the extreme altitude and the bitter cold of the equatorial nights.
Most escape narratives from World War II—think The Great Escape or The Wooden Horse —focus on the singular goal of returning to friendly lines. Benuzzi’s narrative flips this trope on its head. When he approached his fellow prisoners, Enzo Barsotti and Giuàn Balletto, he proposed a plan of breathtaking ambition. They would not escape to vanish into the Kenyan bush, nor would they attempt to reach the coast. They would escape solely to climb Mount Kenya’s highest peak, Batian, and then—crucially—break back into the prison camp. For more details
They did not attempt Batian, the higher peak. They were out of food, and one man could no longer feel his feet.
On the night of January 24, 1943, they slipped through the wire. Their plan was not to reach Allied lines (they spoke no Swahili and had no maps) but to ascend the lost, technical —a route no one had ever climbed from that side.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi is a classic 1946 mountaineering memoir detailing the true story of three Italian prisoners of war who escaped a British camp in WWII to climb Mount Kenya. The prisoners successfully reached Point Lenana, scaling the mountain with improvised gear, before choosing to break back into camp to return to captivity. For more details, visit UKClimbing .
