At the outbreak of WW2, Felice Benuzzi, an Italian consul serving in Ethiopia, was captured by the British and sent to a prison camp in Kenya. The camp was within sight of the 17,057 foot Mount Kenya (second highest point in Africa) and since escaping the continent would prove almost impossible, Benuzzi decided to do something different to pass the time.
As an avid mountain climber, Benuzzi wanted to escape the camp in order to climb at the top of the mountain for simple fun.
He managed to find two accomplices and over six months, they slowly collected coldweather gear, food, and fashioned ice axes and crampons from camp scrap.
On Jan. 24, 1942, they escaped the camp and left a polite letter for the camp commander which read: “We are leaving the camp and reckon to be back within 14 days.”
Reaching the mountain meant evading all the Kenyans who’d have happily turned them in for a 10-shilling reward, then making it through a forest filled with big game that presented a very real risk to three unarmed men.
The hike up the mountain took the three into bitter temperatures, and the summit attempt was a risk all of it's own, using a questionable belaying rope made from prison bedframe springing.
Beaten back by a sudden blizzard, the trio failed to make it up the highest of the three peaks atop Mt. Kenya, but two of them managed to summit the third-highest and there, erected an Italian flag.
Then Benuzzi and his climbing cohorts did indeed return to the prison camp, where they were sentenced to 28 days of solitary confinement—a sentence commuted to seven days by the British camp commandant, who admired their “sporting effort.”
Benuzzi’s memoir about the experience, No Picnic on Mount Kenya (1953), remains in print and is considered required reading for any serious climber.
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