Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Daniel Gordon.

And today I'm taking you back to World War II,

to June 1943, the day the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa

fell to the Allies.

The story of how it was captured is a strange one.

Lampedusa was defended by thousands of Italian troops,

but they surrendered without a fight to a Jewish tailor from the east end of London called Sydney Cohen who'd been conscripted into the RAF.

In 1943, Flight Sergeant Sidney Cohen was stationed on the Mediterranean island of Malta,

when he accidentally became one of the first Allied servicemen to capture Italian territory. They landed on an island which they realize could not be Malta.

Not long afterwards to their astonishment, but a medled Italian came up and asked them if they'd be kind enough to accept

the surrender of himself, his island, and all under his command. They accepted. The Italian

was the military commander of the island, and the island was Lampedusa.

One day he was out on an airsea rescue mission and a small plane.

His compass packed in, his wireless packed in, and he was running on a fuel.

Arnold Schwarzman is a documentary maker who put together a film about Sydney Cohen's story.

Suddenly he spotted land and he asked his navigator, where are we? And he looked at his charts and he said,

...