The romance on a beautiful Greek island that inspired the story of Captain Corelli's Mandolin was in real life never consummated.

The love story, as told by Louis de Bernières in his best-selling novel - to be released as a film starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz next month - flowered in passion before the couple were torn apart. Last week the man on whom it was loosely modelled spoke about it for the first time, telling The Observer a very different story.

Amos Pampaloni is 90 now, living with his wife Marisa in Florence. De Bernières has always insisted his hero was a composite figure. His mandolin was an invention arising from his own mastery of the instrument. But, like the hero of the book, Pampaloni was a captain in the 33rd artillery regiment of the Acqui division, sent by Mussolini to occupy Cephalonia.

Like Antonio Corelli, Pampaloni fell in love with a Cephalonian girl, participated in the first military action against the Germans after the Italian armistice, and miraculously survived an attempted execution.

The book describes a love affair that gradually blossoms in an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility between a Cephalonian girl and the unwelcome Italian officer who is billeted in her home, forcing her to give up her bed.

Pampaloni said last week: 'My true love story was very simple. It was a platonic relationship with a young girl aged 18, while I was then 33.'

He recalled: 'She was the daughter of a Greek gentleman I knew, who used to invite me to lunch. I was tall and blond, with blue eyes, so different from the rest of her friends, and she was very smitten with me.'

The relationship never went beyond kissing and cuddling, partly because of the age difference between the two and partly because of a sense of responsibility Pampaloni felt towards her father. 'She was the daughter of someone who invited me into his home. I could have made love to her but I didn't. I never took advantage of this girl,' he said. Fiction departed from reality in another sense, he added. There were no tensions to be overcome between the foreign occupier and the patriotic Greek girl.

'We fraternised with the Greeks. The Italian soldier doesn't know how to play the conqueror, as the English did. He would share his bread with the local children.'

Pampoloni's path towards artistic immortality began in the early 1960s, when he published a brief memoir of his experiences in Cephalonia in the magazine Il Ponte.

The article aroused the interest of the historian and novelist Marcello Venturi, who interviewed the former captain and travelled to Cephalonia to research the tragedy of Italy's 11,500-strong occupation force, all but exterminated by the Germans in September 1943.

Venturi's novel, White Flag at Cephalonia, was translated into English in 1966 and is acknowledged as a source by de Bernières. The real Pelagia was a schoolteacher, who later married a doctor and moved to Athens. 'The romantic story was all on her side,' said Venturi. who would not offer clues as to her real identity. Interest in this period of history was heightened last month by the publication of two German soldiers' diaries recounting the atrocities, which has caused intense soul-searching among their countrymen. Pampaloni said last week: 'Some veterans are pressing for an apology from the German government, but that's ridiculous. We must concentrate on a united Europe and a culture of peace.'