It Happened in Tuscany

by Gail Mencini

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  In honor of...

  Maps

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preview of Sophie’s Simple Italian

  Arugula and Speck Salad

  Spaghetti Carbonara

  Amaretti Cookies

  It Happened in Tuscany

  a novel

  Gail Mencini

  Capriole Group

  It Happened in Tuscany

  by Gail Mencini

  Copyright © 2020 by Gail Mencini

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published in the United States by

  an imprint of Capriole Group, LLC, Centennial, CO 80161

  www.CaprioleGroup.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Names: Mencini, Gail, author.

  Title: It happened in Tuscany : a novel / Gail Mencini.

  Description: First edition. | Centennial, CO : Capriole Group, [2020]

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781938592157 (paperback) | ISBN 9781938592164 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945–Veterans–United States–Fiction. |

  Guerrillas–Italy–Fiction. | Women authors–Fiction. | Man-woman

  relationships–Italy–Tuscany–Fiction. | Family secrets–Fiction. |

  Tuscany (Italy)–Description and travel–Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.E4795 I8 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.E4795 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6–dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906602

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  Cover and Book design by Nick Zelinger, www.NZGraphics.com

  Author Photograph by Ashlee Bratton, www.Ashography.com

  Ebook conversion by Veronica Yager, www.YellowStudiosOnline.com

  It Happened in Tuscany is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, incidents, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Though based on the 10th Mountain Division ascent of Riva Ridge in World War II and the inclusion of certain real characters, this is a work of fiction and the author’s imagination. Where real-life places and historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those places and persons are fictional or are used fictitiously and are not intended to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  In honor of WWII military service members:

  the Army 10th Mountain Division,

  Papa, who served in the Army,

  and Gramps, who would want you to know

  that he was a Navy man.

  1

  Higher.

  U.S. Army searchlights, meant to distract the Germans, reflected off the clouds and bathed the ridgeline above with light. They created hazy moonbeams in the otherwise black sky.

  Would these lights—their only protection—keep the men who hugged the base of the mountain hidden? Or would the deadly guns on the ridge blast them once they began their climb?

  Higher.

  Army Specialist Will Mills, age seventeen, and his platoon brothers faced the most challenging route of the attack on Riva Ridge on this night, February 18, 1945.

  Lieutenant James Loose led Will’s platoon, which was part of A Company, 86th Regiment. The best mountaineers, they drew the assignment of the gutsy technical climb straight up Pizzo di Campiano on the eastern spur of Riva Ridge.

  Will respected Lieutenant Loose, but tonight, Loose turned Will into one of his father’s steers being herded up a chute, with a meatpacking plant its destiny.

  Climb to glory.

  The motto of the 10th Mountain Division.

  Will prayed that tonight he would climb to glory. He shuddered. Shuddered from the cold and the dread of what this night might hold.

  The Germans had been pushed back to northern Italy by Allied troops, but further progress stalled. Heavy casualties plagued the Allies in the fall and brutal winter of 1944. Mount Belvedere in Italy’s Apennine Mountains held the key to piercing the Germans’ fortified Gothic Line and breaking into the Po Valley.

  General Eisenhower had tagged the soldiers on skis “playboys.” The 10th Mountain troops welcomed this assignment, where they could use their rigorous training and prove his label false.

  General Hays tasked the men of the 10th with the responsibility of pushing back the Germans from Mount Belvedere.

  Will, and the other members of Loose’s platoon, needed to take Riva Ridge.

  2

  Will licked his lips and waited among the five columns of soldiers for their 19:30 go-ahead. He would climb midway in the platoon of men scrambling up Pizzo di Campiano, which suited him fine.

  Will had grown up skiing and climbing the Colorado Rockies. At a buck thirty dripping wet, he didn’t have much weight to carry up those mountain faces. Years of throwing hay bales, riding horses, and herding cattle on his parents’ ranch had sculpted his frame into one both lean and strong.

  Will had skied the backcountry of the Rockies and scampered up the peaks. The elite 10th Mountain Division accepted him thirteen months ago because of his mountaineering skills. The Army didn’t look twice when Will lied and added a year to his age to make himself eligible for enlistment.

  The 10th’s best weapon on this climb would be that the Germans considered a nighttime assault up Riva Ridge impossible. Every other attempt by the Allied troops had failed.

  A passel of Germans waited for them. The scouting patrols for Riva Ridge spotted eighteen German positions on the ridge, plus at least four observation posts. If the enemy caught wind of them and
started firing from their superior position, the U.S. boys wouldn’t survive.

  Will wished their mountain boots and cold-weather sleeping bags had arrived in Italy with them. It’d be an icy son-of-a-gun stretching out under a blanket on the snowy, wet ground.

  He hadn’t slept but a lick last night and expected slim shut-eye in the nights ahead.

  His arms trembled.

  Fear of the Germans’ guns caused Will’s shakes. His gun stood empty and useless.

  The brass had ordered all guns unloaded until they breached the ridgeline. They wanted no chance of anyone pulling the trigger early and spoiling the surprise.

  No one spoke. The companies waiting at the base had been ordered into silence.

  Ragged breaths of fear, including his own, created steamy puffs in the cold air.

  He stood in ankle-deep mud.

  He thought about what General Hays said two days ago to the men charged with taking Riva Ridge and Mount Belvedere:

  “Remember the mission. No matter what happens, keep fighting, and take more ground.

  Your buddy may fall, but don’t stop to help him.

  Keep fighting. Take more ground.

  Always keep fighting.”

  The mission was more important than the men.

  3

  Will lined up behind Tom Hermann.

  A strip of white adhesive tape stuck to the back of Tom’s helmet bore his name. They all labeled their helmets with tape, to help keep the man ahead in sight.

  Will looked at his wristwatch, a gift from his grandfather on the day he enlisted. Its luminous dial was hidden. The men taped over their watches, so the glow didn’t give away their position.

  Tom tapped Will’s helmet to alert him. Tom started his climb. From one man to the next, the “time to go” signal passed down the line.

  Will stumbled over the tangled brush, which laced the trail. The sound of broken branches to his rear meant the man behind him got snared up, too. Following their orders, they all maintained silence, fearful of jeopardizing their mission.

  Every shrub, every tree possibly hid a German, eager to cut down the enemy with his ready gun. Will hunched his shoulders and gritted his teeth, steeling himself for an oncoming bullet.

  The line passed a group of trees, a possible Nazi hiding spot.

  Will exhaled with three quick breaths.

  The hard, slow climb got steeper with each footfall. The men stopped for rest, five minutes at a time.

  Tom tapped Will’s helmet. Time to go.

  His muscles strained from hauling his gear and ammunition, but Will’s training prepared him for the slope and the weather.

  Hell, he survived the winter “D Series” outside Camp Hale, the damn-near cruel training in the frigid Colorado Rockies.

  And the altitude? No problem. The Rockies beat the Apennines by thousands of vertical feet.

  In spite of his training, Will’s hands quivered. In the D Series, no Germans hid with machine guns and grenades ready to rain down on them.

  The path got steeper, dusted with new snow, and icier as he climbed.

  They were supposed to reach the ridge after five or six hours of climbing.

  Will looked up, but only an eerie light danced in the distance, no ridgeline.

  Will came upon a stream frozen solid. The scouting team had placed a rope on the margins of the ice bulge to help with safe passage.

  Will followed Tom up the first rope. They skirted the frozen stream on one side and then the other, careful not to cross straight over the ice. Will thanked God and the advance crew for anchoring the life-saving rope to rock.

  The path’s slope eased for a short distance after the frozen stream. Will clambered over the boulders, not needing his technical climbing skills.

  He looked up, but the darkness kept secret whether snow or a trail lay ahead.

  Will told himself not to rush. The steepness of the slope lessened, but that didn’t make it less treacherous.

  The terrain changed again before Will could settle into a rhythm. The mountain alternated between technical climbing and scrambling over the rocks with his hands and feet.

  The breaks came more frequently as the climb took its toll. They climbed for ten minutes, rested for five, and then ascended again, eager for the next break.

  Will rationed his water. He took tiny sips to wet his parched mouth on only a fraction of the rest breaks.

  Fog, with its snaking tentacles, settled in. Will couldn’t spy Tom at all now.

  Will blinked his eyes. His ice-crusted lashes clumped together and made opening his eyes a downright chore.

  His arms burned as if seared by a mighty furnace.

  Will didn’t have a sense of time, but he guessed it was longer than the six hours estimated.

  Higher. Climb higher.

  Ten torturous minutes of climbing passed. He clung to his position and rested for five.

  Will forced his mind back to the climb. Though rest had eluded him last night, he wasn’t sleepy. His fear kept him awake.

  A noise ripped through the silent night. Above him, rocks tumbled down the mountain face. Stones peppered the slope, likely dislodged by a foot skidding on the scree.

  Will looked up into the fog, but only an eerie mask greeted him.

  The only thing he—and likely the Germans—heard was the crash of rocks racing down toward him.

  4

  Baseball-size rocks skittered on the slope three feet to Will’s right. His stomach tensed, but the stones bounced along on their quest for the base, leaving Will untouched.

  The explosion from a German “potato masher” grenade and its lingering reverberation cut through the night.

  Will’s hands tightened on his handholds. His arms shook.

  Small arms fire popped above him. Grenade explosions echoed overhead.

  Mixed with the sounds of the German attack, a burst of answering fire rang out, likely from Loose and Harry Reining, the two lead men. They must have slapped clips into their rifles after they came under attack.

  Their best weapon, the surprise of the assault, was gone.

  Silence.

  Had the Germans killed Loose and Reining?

  Were the enemy soldiers now waiting for the rest of the platoon to climb within firing range?

  Or had our boys taken out a German observation group, clearing the way to the ridge for the rest?

  A tap on his head. Time to climb again. Climb to the ridge and whatever it held.

  Will’s burning arms and legs inched him up the slope. The tape on Tom’s helmet bobbed in and out of Will’s sight.

  The silence, except for his own panting breaths, cloaked the dark, foggy night.

  A bazooka’s thunder broke the stillness.

  The volley from a Browning Automatic Rifle answered. One of the men ahead of Will carried a BAR. Will hoped its rounds had found a German.

  Silence.

  Had the lead men reached the summit?

  Silence.

  Will looked up into the fog. He couldn’t distinguish more than a clump of snow stuck to Tom Hermann’s boots.

  Higher.

  Climb higher.

  5

  Nine hours of climbing after Loose’s troops started up Pizzo di Campiano, Will reached the top of Riva Ridge.

  The first twelve men up the mountain got separated from the rest of the platoon and arrived hours earlier than Will. Near where Loose’s team breached the ridge, the men said they found two Germans sleeping in a pup tent, and they made sure the Nazis would never wake up.

  Loose called the platoon together. “I’ve got lousy news,” Loose said. “The enemy found and cut the communication wire between Cappel Buso and Pizzo di Campiano. Our own wire party climbed ahead of me and got lost. A Company is stranded. We can’t communicate with the other troops on the ridge or those at the base.”

  Loose ordered Will and most of the others into the German foxholes to guard their position. The lieutenant set off with a small patrol to scou
t the area.

  The morning sun lit the ridge. Will studied the clumps of scruffy bushes and rock formations dotting the land around him.

  His arms and legs ached from climbing the entire night. He looked down at his hands. His fingers were scraped and battered from digging into the mountain for handholds.

  Tom, next to Will in the foxhole, whispered a question. “You all right?”

  “Peachy,” Will said. “You?”

  “Same.”

  Explosions, one chasing the next, shocked Will. His head jerked toward the racket. Flames and rising balls of gray smoke told the story. Loose and his patrol had discovered a foxhole fortified with ammunition and mortars and set it ablaze.

  Another rumble of firepower sounded. Not far from Loose’s bonfire, puffy balls of smoke tarnished the alpine air.

  For a brief moment, the sound and sight of exploding ammo reminded Will of lying on his back in the grass on hot Fourth of July nights in Golden, watching the fireworks and fireflies. Frigid fingers crept up Will’s spine and chased away his memories. The Germans hiding in fortifications along the ridge set off the second detonations to pinpoint the Yanks’ location.

  The real fight for Pizzo di Campiano was on.

  Loose circled back to where Will crouched in his foxhole. The lieutenant wanted to expand the area cleared, and he sent more men out. He assigned Tom and Will an area to search for the enemy and remove hazards.

  The sun was warm on Will’s face, but chills crept over him. Now he would face the enemy.

  He studied the ridge. A bump rose over the ground in the distance.

  Tom took the lead. They moved from cover to cover in the direction of the mystery bulge. What would they find? A stand of bushes, a rock formation, or pup tents?

  They soon realized the lump was both God- and man-made. Scraggly crops of bushes provided cover for a pup tent tucked between them. Foxholes likely protected the camp.

  Tom pointed to the next clump of brush. Will nodded. It was within grenade range of the pup tent. The perfect spot for them to launch an attack against the Germans.

  Tom and Will ducked low and dashed toward the bushes. Tom kept the lead, with Will behind and slightly to his right.

  Tom stopped. Had he seen something?

  Will’s search partner leaned right as the whine of a sniper bullet cut the air.