The Monte San Martino Trust was founded in 1989 by J.Keith Killby. As a former Second World War prisoner in Italy, he formed the charity in order to reward, in a small way, the descendants of those Italians who gave courageous and generous assistance to the thousands of Allied servicemen on the run from PoW camps following the Armistice in September 1943.

Keith Killby was captured near Tobruk in 1942 but was returned to Allied Lines after his ambulance unit had cared for wounded German soldiers. After the advance from El Alamein, he volunteered to be a parachutist and joined the SAS near the Suez Canal. Sent to Sardinia by submarine, he was captured and taken to the mainland. After the Armistice, he escaped together with 2,000 other prisoners from a camp at Servigliano, near Monte San Martino in the Marche. Captured on two further occasions near the front line, he was eventually taken to a camp in Germany.  An honorary citizen of Monte San Martino, he has been made a Cavaliere Ufficiale of the Italian Republic and awarded an OBE.

Since its foundation, the charity has received strong backing from many former PoWs and their families who support the Trust in its determination to put its student bursaries for young Italians on a permanent footing.

Below: Keith Killby, the Trust's founder, indicates the breach in the wall at Servigliano camp through which many of its prisoners escaped on the night of 14 Septmber 1943