the uncertainty surrounding the status of the 6th Brigade, was present on an inspection of the battle zone and he moved about, rifle in hand, encouraging his men, and directing them to fire their guns over open sights. Eventually, he was wounded and taken prisoner. This action was the most costly day of the war for the divisional artillery, with 275 casualties, including 96 prisoners of war, Miles among them. Prisoner of War Together with Brigadier James Hargest, the commander of the New Zealand 5th Infantry Brigade and captured around the same time, Miles arrived in the Italian prisoner-of-war camp Vincigliata PG 12 in 1942. The camp was a medieval castle near Florence, where he found himself amongst other captured high-ranking personnel such as Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame, General Sir Richard O'Connor and Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd. Miles settled into camp routine and became a gardener, and was actively involved in escape attempts. Together with Hargest, he escaped through a tunnel that he helped to build and made his way to Switzerland in April 1943. Neame received a coded letter announcing their success a fortnight later. Miles was one of only three men (Hargest was one of the others) known to British Military Intelligence to have escaped from an Italian prisoner-of-war camp and make their way to another country prior to the armistice with Italy. In Switzerland, Miles and Hargest split up and travelled independently. As Hargest wrote in his book Farewell Campo 12, "I was over in Lucerne when Miles rang up to say he was off, and to suggest I should follow him later". Having travelled as far as the Spanish frontier on 20 October 1943, exhausted and depressed, Miles shot himself. He was buried with military honours, and escorted to his final resting place in the Figueras Municipal Cemetery by members of the British Consulate and a party of Spanish officers. Shortly before his death, his appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire was confirmed. Miles was posthumously awarded a bar to his DSO for his efforts in escaping from Italy. The citation for the bar, published in the New Zealand Gazette on 21 September 1944, read: Legacy Miles was survived by his four daughters from his marriage to Aimée Zita Donnelly, whom he had married in Egypt in 1916, and his second wife, Rosalind Georgette Bisset-Smith, whom he had wed