The details of the brutal killing of a young Bermudian prisoner of war near the end of the Second World War have been compiled by an Italian scholar, with help from the dead soldier’s relatives in Bermuda.

James Outerbridge was just 20 when a guard killed him, even though he had surrendered, after being caught attempting to escape from a prisoner of war train in Italy.

Royal Air Force documents titled “Italian War Crimes”, cited in the latest study of the events that day, describe how Mr Outerbridge jumped off the prison train as it idled at a little railway station at the city of Rimini.

“He was then fired at by a sentry or guard on the train when some forty yards away,” the document reads.

“He fell to the ground and put up his arms, but was shot at four or five times more by an Italian guard.”

The guard was variously identified as Guiseppe Papantonio and Pietro Guiseppe.

The account from a British officer who successfully escaped back to the UK has the guard wounding the young Bermudian prisoner and then using his rifle to bash in Mr Outerbridge’s head.

The compiled story was shared with The Royal Gazette, with messages of thanks, by its author, Daniele Cielli.

Mr Cielli, a historian in the city of Rimini, had contacted this newspaper earlier in 2014, seeking help with his project.

After learning of Mr Outerbridge’s grave in a nearby military cemetery at Ravenna, Mr Cielli set out to learn more.

The Bermudian pilot was on board a train carrying Allied prisoners from the camp PG21 in Chieti to another camp, PG49 in Parma, when it stopped at Rimini on May 1, 1943,

Mr Cielli speculated that Mr Outerbridge might have been trying to reach the neutral enclave of San Marino when the guard shot him.

A darker account of what befell the young Rhodes Scholar, who had been joined the Royal Air Force and been assigned to the 458 RAAF squadron, emerges in the collection of accounts. Witness accounts vary in exactly what befell James Outerbridge, but one thing seemed certain.

“James, then, had surrendered and was killed anyway,” Mr Cielli wrote. “I asked myself, why would the policeman shoot an unarmed prisoner, plus one who had surrendered? What could have led him to behave in such a manner?”

He hypothesised that the policeman might have lost his family in one of the many bombing raids carried out on Rimini by the Allies. The city had been devastated by unrelenting bombardments.

“I tried to imagine what might have been the reason for his behaviour — not to justify it, but to try to understand the context in which occurred the reprehensible fact,” Mr Cielli wrote.

He suspected the motive for the killing was more likely “pure sadism”.

Mr Cielli was amazed to learn in November that a book had been published by British author and historian Brian Lett, entitled An Extraordinary Italian Imprisonment — the brutal truth of Campo 21, 1942-1943.

It happened that the author’s father, Major Gordon Lett DSO, had been imprisoned with Mr Outerbridge, which Mr Cielli found an “incredible” coincidence.

Mr Lett’s book described a transfer of 34 prisoners. Several toyed with thoughts of escape, but “James was the most restless among them”.

In the account that emerges, an agitated and emotional Mr Outerbridge sought “nothing more than escape”.

Although the other soldiers kept watch of him, at Rimini the young man impulsively seized the opportunity.

He was shot from the train by a guard, and fell to the ground. According to witness Claude Weaver, the guard Guiseppe Papantonio shot the injured man, who had raised his arms in surrender.

The young man was hit “four or five times”, after which the guard used his rifle to shatter his skull.

It was a brutal end for James Outerbridge, whose portrait remains in Bermuda. Mr Cielli’s collection of writings is thus far untranslated, but has nonetheless been gratefully received by relatives of the long-dead airman.

“He was my father’s first cousin — once we started looking into his life, he seemed amazingly accomplished at the age of 18,” distant relative Bill Outerbridge told The Royal Gazette.

“Until we found his grave in Italy a couple of years ago, the only thing we had here was a painting of him and a ghost story — and my aunt, Barbara Saber, who lives in Florida, grew up with Jimmy at Flatts Hill.”

His wife, Carol, said the family knew of Mr Outerbridge’s story from a plaque commemorating him in St Mark’s Church in Smith’s.

Family legend had her father-in-law playing the piano in the family home shortly after the young Outerbridge had been killed, and a ghost form of the dead man emerging from the portrait of him.

Like Mr Cielli, whose writing is as much about tracking down details as it is about Mr Outerbridge’s untimely death, the Outerbridges were able to put the internet to great use in tracking down details.

Frequent visitors to the nearby Italian city of Bologna, the Outerbridges hired a car to visit the decades-old grave of a Bermudian soldier who fell far from home.

“Walking around the cemetery and seeing how many of these young men made such a sacrifice, you think of how brave they were,” Mrs Outerbridge recalled.

“You’re in awe of what these people went through, committed themselves to and then gave their lives.”