The Italian Chapel

by Philip Paris

  The men moved quietly around, laying down bags and belongings on the floor. Aldo claimed a bottom bunk near to the stove and Domenico took the one next to it. Dino and Carlo had taken beds near the stove on the other side of the hut. They were cousins but more like brothers and wherever you found one you found the other.

  Carlo set about getting the stove going, which he did quite quickly, but it didn’t make a lot of difference unless you were standing near. Before long, hooks and pegs were covered with an assortment of dripping clothes, while several pieces of long stout cord appeared from the bottom of rucksacks for makeshift washing lines.

  Domenico shivered as he removed his shirt. It was only as he was drying his hair with the towel that he spotted the British sergeant and private standing just inside the doorway, watching. They might have been there for several moments, but no one had actually noticed.

  ‘Alright! Listen up. My name’s Slater … Sergeant Slater to you. You’re going to get to know me well, and I’m going to get to know you. But I don’t want this thought to give you nightmares. Better men than you have had nightmares at the idea of being my friend.’

  The Italians were silent and sullen. Only a few had a sufficient grasp of English to understand the essence of what was being said, but all anyone wanted was to get into bed and try to get warm. Sergeant Slater resumed his speech.

  ‘Work hard, keep your noses clean and you’ll be alright.’

  He fell silent, staring as if trying to memorise their faces. The sergeant looked hard but Domenico reckoned he was probably the same with his own men and his comments were standard ‘sergeant speak’.

  ‘Why does he want us to keep our noses clean?’ whispered Aldo.

  ‘He means keep out of trouble,’ said Domenico, who had taken off his vest and was drying his chest and arms.

  ‘Don’t they speak English on this island?’

  Before Domenico could speak, if indeed he thought the comment worthy of a reply, Sergeant Slater started again.

  ‘Now, settle down and get some sleep. As you’ve all had a long day you can lie in tomorrow. Reveille won’t be until daylight.’

  This comment created a moan from those who had followed what was said.

  ‘Don’t worry. I believe it’s going to be a nice day, so you’ll want to make the most of it.’ He paused for a moment, but no one spoke. ‘Lights out in fifteen minutes.’

  Sergeant Slater left, followed closely by the private who slammed the door behind him. The door wasn’t locked. A few men quickly put back on their coats and boots and went out to find the latrines. Everyone else hurried to get ready for bed. Aldo had disappeared under the coarse blankets. Exactly fifteen minutes later, the hut was plunged into darkness.

  Exhaustion overwhelmed Domenico, but the sleep he craved didn’t welcome him. He lay there, hungry and cold, trying to block out the noise made by the rain on the corrugated iron roof above his head. It reminded him of machine gun fire. He thought about Maria; sweet, gentle Maria. He had not seen her since leaving home eighteen months earlier to work on the decoration of a church in Laste. While there he had been called up, put in an anti-tank regiment and sent to fight in Libya.

  Dino and Carlo had also been there, the three of them only fighting for six months before they were captured by the Australians. There had followed a confused round of different POW camps, during which it had been almost impossible to keep in touch with family back home; never staying in one place long enough for letters to catch up. Since leaving the camp in Egypt they had been travelling for months, and Domenico was weary to the bone, uneasy at what the future held in this strange and wild land.

  3

  Nothing had dried. The concrete floor was wet where clothes had dripped throughout the night and everything was still damp. Men were forced to climb back into shirts and trousers that sucked the heat from their bodies and made them shiver and swear.

  Daylight came much later in the morning than any of the men had imagined. No one had experienced an Orkney winter and many were baffled by it. Domenico and Aldo left the hut carrying their towels, soap and shaving gear and joined the stream of men making their way to the wash block. Men scrubbed at their bodies as if trying to wash away the memory of the previous day’s journey and, to an extent, they succeeded. But there was one thing they were more in need of than cleanliness and that was hot food.

  The mess hall was by far the biggest building and could feed all of the men in one sitting. It was half full when Domenico and Aldo entered. Murmured voices were accompanied by the sound of metal spoons on metal dishes. Joining their third queue of the morning, they entered immediately into conversation.

  Someone had heard that British guards had woken half the occupants of one hut whilst it was still dark, marched them to the huge kitchen ranges in the mess hall and told them to start preparing breakfast. Some of them had never even boiled an egg before and apparently the commotion in the wash block had been nothing compared to the mayhem in the kitchen. Aldo well believed the story as he reached the serving area and looked down suspiciously at a vat of a bubbling, watery, lumpy substance.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked of the Italian on the other side of the table.

  A guard standing nearby overheard the question.

  ‘You’ll not get a good nourishing meal like porridge in your country, laddie. You start eating that every day and it’ll make a man of you.’

  The Italian ladled porridge into Aldo’s dish. He moved along and was given two small slices of bread, a cube of butter and a spoonful of jam. The last thing he collected was a mug of hot but weak coffee. Aldo and Domenico found places at a table opposite Dino and Carlo, but the men barely spoke apart from the occasional mumbled curse aimed at the substance in their bowls.

  Domenico studied the faces of the men on the other side of the table, hoping it was not too obvious. Faces fascinated his artist’s soul. Dino and Carlo were both in their early thirties and each had two small sons back home near Bergamo in the north of Italy. In appearance they were very similar, their round, dark-skinned faces topped with a cropped hairstyle that Domenico thought made them look like Roman centurions, and yet their personalities were as different as possible. As well as an exceptional singer, Dino was gifted at sketching. He was always scrounging paper, constantly filling sheets with birds and animals, drawings for which he had a natural ability. Carlo, was as talented with mechanical, practical tasks as his cousin was with art.

  As he stood on the parade ground later that morning, Domenico thought that Sergeant Slater had been right. In its own way it was a beautiful day. The cloudless blue sky mocked the storm of the previous night and there was only a slight breeze. However, the men shivered as they stood in line. A British corporal walked up and down, counting. Aldo and Domenico were near the back, separated by a large Italian of about forty. When the corporal had walked past and was well out of hearing range he held out his hand to Aldo.

  ‘I’m Domenico Buttapasta.’

  ‘Aldo Tolino. Better known as Mr Fix-It. If you need something, you let me know; alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, equipment. Anything you want and all for a good price.’

  ‘That’s an impressive list,’ said Buttapasta, amused by the boast.

  ‘It’s all a matter of time,’ continued Aldo, unabashed. ‘I simply need to set up my channels of supply. Just give me time.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have plenty of that,’ replied the big man. He turned and held out his hand to Domenico.

  ‘Domenico Chiocchetti,’ said the artist, taking the strong hand in his. ‘I would normally say I’m pleased to meet you, but I don’t expect you’re any happier to be here than I am.’

  ‘There’ll come a time when we won’t be in such a strange place my friend then we’ll show the British what a proper Italian greeting is.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Domenico.

  ‘I think I understand what Aldo does, but what about you?’ asked Buttapasta.

  ‘I guess I paint.’

 
‘Paint? Walls or pictures?’

  ‘I studied the art of painting statues as a student and was working on the decoration of a church when I was called up. If I wasn’t painting, I sometimes tried my hand at sculpture.’

  ‘An artist. I like that.’

  ‘And you?’ said Domenico.

  ‘Oh, I’m a simple man. I just work with cement, that’s all.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of opportunity for that,’ said Aldo from the other side. ‘They say the British want us to hold back the sea … to create a huge dam and stop the tide. And they think they will win the war? They’re more insane than my uncle Fabio and he thought he was a buzzard …’

  ‘Buttapasta.’ Domenico was suddenly alight with interest. ‘Not the Buttapasta, the artist with cement and stone?’ Buttapasta shrugged. ‘Your work is famous throughout Italy. It would give me great pleasure to talk to you later.’

  ‘And I look forward to it,’ said Buttapasta graciously. ‘Although for now I think we are both about to do some listening.’

  He indicated with his head and they turned to face a British officer as he walked towards the front of the lines.

  ‘Attention!’

  The order came from Sergeant Major Fornasier, the most senior Italian in the camp. He was standing facing the men, a few yards from a wooden crate. The British officer stepped on to this and when he spoke, his voice was crisp, authoritative.

  ‘Stand at ease. My name is Major Yates and I am in command of Camp 60 on the island of Lamb Holm and also of Camp 34 on the island of Burray.’

  Whispered translations went up and down the lines.

  ‘The nearest land is mainland Orkney, which is also an island. You will know from your journey that we are a long way from Italy. You’re all here to do a job, to help build a unique set of barriers between mainland Orkney to the north and between the islands to the south of Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay. Four barriers in all. It will be a big job, but you won’t be alone. In addition to your fellow Italians in Camp 34 there is a large contingent of civilian workers and experts from the construction company Balfour Beatty, as well as admiralty engineers and local Orkney men. ‘I understand some of you may feel this is a bleak place, very different from your homeland, but the sooner you get working, the quicker this project will be completed. I know you will do your best. Your day-to-day orders will come from Sergeant Major Fornasier. He will liaise directly with Major Booth, the deputy camp commander, and myself. His staff will organise you into work groups with specific tasks. Before that, however, you will need to have your uniforms … updated.’

  Major Yates did not intend, it would seem, to elaborate on what this entailed.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant Major.’

  Sergeant Major Fornasier stood smartly to attention and barked out an order with a volume that would have made Sergeant Slater proud.

  The men on the parade ground snapped once more to attention.

  When Major Yates had walked away the men were dismissed and the noise on the parade ground switched instantly to excited babble. By mid-morning the washing lines that had festooned the inside of huts had been strung up outside. Camp 60 consisted of an assortment of Nissen huts contained within a high barbedwire fence. Apart from the mess hall and the accommodation huts there was a canteen, which contained a small shop, and an administration hut, where the British officers worked. The wash and latrine blocks were the only brick buildings. Just outside the camp, in its own enclosure, was the concrete discipline block. The camp had a feeling of emptiness and desolation.

  A large number of POWs stood silently along the west-facing fence, stunned at the sight before them. The number of destroyers, cruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts and other vessels were staggering to behold; an armada the like of which they had never seen before. Scapa Flow was unique for the opportunity it provided to sail west into the Atlantic or east into the North Sea.

  Domenico, Buttapasta and Aldo walked to the fence facing mainland Orkney. Aldo spoke in a voice almost hushed with bewilderment.

  ‘Where are all the trees?’

  ‘The wind is too strong and too constant across the islands to allow trees to take root,’ guessed Buttapasta.

  ‘And people live here?’ said Aldo with awe.

  When the 230 civilian construction workers had arrived in May 1940 on board the liner Almanzora to put in place the first stages of the barriers’ creation, Lamb Holm had consisted of nothing other than rock and soil. The first men rowed ashore in dinghies, with nothing more than crowbars and muscle power to build the small pier, which was needed before anything else could be landed.

  Every single item of equipment had to be transported from the Almanzora, including building materials, food, water, fuel, lighting and power generators, cranes, lorries, railway track, plus the steam and diesel trains to run on them. A great deal was lost overboard before it could be transferred safely from the liner to a barge, and then from the barge to the pier. One of the trains had even slid into the sea during the transfer and had to be recovered later. Most of the smaller items that had fallen overboard were simply washed away.

  But the Italians knew nothing of the enormous effort that had taken place before their arrival, nor of the toil and hardships men had endured just to get the materials onto Lamb Holm to build Camp 60 alone. Most knew nothing about Scapa Flow, more than 120 square miles of sea encased by Orkney islands, nor of the 833 men who had gone down with the battleship HMS Royal Oak.

  The British forces had tried to seal every sea entrance to Scapa Flow with a combination of sunken discarded ships, antisubmarine mines, nets and thick steel booms. But during a particularly high tide on the night of 13th October 1939, German U-boat U47 had slipped past the defences, only hundreds of yards from where Camp 60 now stood. In around fifteen minutes, the 29,000 ton Royal Oak sank where she was anchored, and the U-boat made its way silently out to sea, through Kirk Sound.

  Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow to be sealed completely, which meant the creation of huge barriers between the islands; Churchill’s Barriers, a phenomenal feat of engineering that would require vast amounts of money, time, materials, skills and men.

  4

  Later that morning, six long lines of chattering and shivering Italians stood before six British army privates. Each private sat at his own table, flanked by two armed guards. On the tables were large piles of circular red cloth, either twelve or five inches in diameter.

  ‘Your jacket,’ said the private, holding out his hand to Aldo, who was at the front of one line.

  ‘Why does he want my jacket?’ he asked. Domenico and Buttapasta looked back blankly, equally at a loss. ‘Why do you want my jacket?’ said Aldo in halting English.

  ‘Look, mate,’ the Cockney accent became even stronger, ‘just hand over your jacket and you can have it right back. You’ll hardly have time to feel the cold.’

  ‘Hand over your jacket Aldo, or they’ll simply take it from you by force,’ advised Buttapasta.

  Aldo muttered noisily in Italian, took off his coat, gave it to Domenico, and removed his jacket, which he reluctantly handed to the private.

  The soldier turned the garment over in his hands then, quite casually, produced a pair of scissors and began to cut a large hole in the back. Aldo cried out and took a step forward but Buttapasta laid a powerful hand on his shoulder as one of the guards levelled his rifle.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? Are you insane? He’s cutting up my jacket. Stop it! You’ve no right. No right!’

  This was shouted by Aldo in an agitated mixture of English and Italian, directed at both his friends and his enemies. The private, ignoring the expected outburst, carried on and expertly cut a circular hole then a smaller hole on the outside of one arm. Moments later he held out the jacket to Aldo, who grabbed it angrily and examined the garment as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had just witnessed. The soldier seemed amused, which infuriated Aldo eve
n more.

  ‘Now, so that you don’t get a nasty draught blowing through those holes in your jacket, His Majesty’s British Government has kindly provided these circles of cloth,’ said the private holding out a large piece of cloth and two smaller pieces. Aldo took them warily.

  ‘And His Majesty’s British Government has also kindly provided the needle and thread to sew them on with. You may keep the needle and thread for future repairs, such being the generosity of His Majesty’s British Government.’

  After a moment’s hesitation Aldo snatched the small bundle and was about to storm away when it dawned on him he had three circles but only two holes in his jacket. He turned back to face the soldier.

  ‘Why have you given me three pieces of cloth?’

  ‘Ah, that mate, is because now I want your trousers,’ said the private with a grin.

  An hour later Domenico and Aldo were sitting on their beds sewing. Domenico’s artistic eye and hand producing neat, even stitches. Aldo sat bare-legged opposite, rather clumsily sewing a target disc over the hole in his trousers, his face a mask of indignation. The other men were busy with the same occupation and there was a hushed concentration in the hut. Aldo could hardly contain his anger.

  ‘Why should we help the British shoot us if they want to? It must be against the Geneva Convention. It must be against some convention. Anyway, can’t they shoot straight?’

  ‘Aldo, we’re prisoners of war,’ said Domenico, trying to calm him down. ‘We have no choice in most things but to do what they tell us.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Aldo rather petulantly, ‘but I’d looked after my jacket.’

  Domenico grinned, although he tried to hide it from his young friend. At that moment the door opened and someone shouted into the hut.

  ‘Hey everyone, Sergeant Major Fornasier wants us on the parade ground in fifteen minutes to organise the work groups.’