by Philip Paris
‘You’d better hurry Aldo or you’ll be on the parade ground with no trousers,’ said Domenico.
‘Very funny,’ muttered Aldo, swearing loudly as he stabbed his finger.
It was lunchtime before the men were ready to leave the camp, having been fitted out with a variety of heavy overalls, oilskins, Wellington boots and gloves.
In order that every accommodation hut contained an Italian corporal or sergeant there was some movement of men. Domenico’s hut already had Sergeant Primavera. However, the result was far from perfect and it was impossible to completely separate men from the north and south who, on the whole, did not want to share huts, owing partly, though not entirely, to practical reasons. Two men in hut number three, from Calabria, had ended up surrounded by men from north of Venice and had already complained they could not understand a single word being spoken.
Those who claimed to have cooking experience were given jobs in the kitchen, but it was discovered over the next few days that a few POWs had exaggerated their kitchen experience so they could get what seemed easier, and certainly warmer, work.
Around thirty men were selected for other tasks and not to work on the barriers. These included the cooks, who were considered to have full-time jobs, and men whose skills ranged from shoe-making and barbering to the camp doctor, Gerbino Rocco. In addition to supplying these services to the other POWs, this latter group was made responsible for maintenance and cleaning of the camp. This included the task of travelling, under escort, once a week to the army supply depot near St Mary’s on the south coast of mainland Orkney to pick up food, supplies, cleaning materials and cigarettes.
The men from Domenico’s hut, along with about 160 others, were destined for the quarry. No one knew what to expect. When the POWs finally walked through the gates they were accompanied by armed guards. The British soldiers kept their distance in every respect and in their defiance the Italians ignored them.
Having holes cut in their uniforms then being given the undignified task of sewing on target discs – so the guards could shoot them more easily if they tried to escape – had hurt the men to the core. They had fought for their country and been captured. There was no dishonour in that. Their resentment was like a physical presence, which enveloped the group and followed it along the road … waiting for the chance to reveal itself.
It only took one person to be the catalyst, and when someone shouted out ‘Viva il Duce!’ the cry was taken up immediately like an infectious chant. Nearly 100 men had joined in when it was shouted for the fourth time. Many held out their arms aggressively in a classic Mussolini salute.
Halfway down the column, the Lee Enfield in the hands of eighteen-year-old Private Kemp shook visibly. He had never fired the rifle other than on the practice range. He looked frantically up and down the line, trying to see an officer. Instead, he caught the eye of the next private further along the column, but the fear on his face brought Kemp one step nearer to panic. ‘Viva il Duce.’ He brought the rifle down from across his chest. ‘Viva il Duce.’ The Lee Enfield swung around slowly.
Several of the POWs who hadn’t joined in the chanting watched with growing horror at the events unfolding around them. They didn’t know how far the guards could be pushed but they understood how dangerous frightened men with rifles could be.
It was a sign of the power of Dino’s voice that when he started singing he could be heard by all those around him. It seemed like a beacon of sanity and an increasing number of Italians started to sing with him. For a while the singing and chanting competed while the life of the original trouble-maker hung in the balance. Unknown to him, Private Kemp had levelled the rifle at his head.
More men joined in the song until the chanting eventually died away. The tension dispersed with it, and by the time they reached the quarry the group were walking along in silence and Private Kemp was once more carrying the rifle across his chest.
‘Heaven help us,’ said Buttapasta to Domenico beside him, ‘it looks like something from Dante’s Inferno.’ The quarry was a combination of noise, dust, cold and confused activity. Mechanical diggers and excavators appeared locked in a dual of strength with the rock face, while around them trucks full of stones crawled away in low gear, whining with the effort, as empty lorries almost raced into position to be filled.
In the centre of it all was a steam train to pull loaded wagons from the quarry to the barriers. A feeling of foreboding descended upon the Italians. Sergeant Slater appeared before the group, accompanied by six civilian workers in hats and overalls. He used his parade ground voice to be heard above the noise behind him.
‘Someone from Balfour Beatty is about to speak to you. He knows what he is doing so listen carefully to what he has to say. Then make sure you jump to it.’
Sergeant Slater stood back a few paces to let one of the civilians move forward, although the man seemed rather reluctant to do so. Before him stood 200 Italians. He was nervous.
‘You are at the Lamb Holm quarry,’ he shouted as best he could. ‘What we are doing here is supplying stones to be crushed to make concrete blocks, and stones to fill bolsters … large steel nets … which are being dropped into the sea between the islands. Eventually, when we’ve sunk enough bolsters, the islands will be linked by solid barriers. It’s mainly manual work here and you’ll operate in parties of forty with your own NCO, along with a Balfour Beatty engineer and a guard. I believe you’ve already been allocated into your working groups according to your hut numbers, so could huts one and two please make their way forward.’
The Balfour Beatty man stood back a little, not quite sure if anyone was actually going to do what he said. But then about eighty men started moving away from the main body.
‘There Aldo,’ said Buttapasta, ‘it’s not all bad. We’ll get lots of fresh air after being cooped up travelling for so long.’
‘Fresh air! I’ve never known such cold. I think you and Domenico are sadists, not artists,’ replied Aldo.
Buttapasta laughed and slapped him on the back. Despite his protestations, Aldo stuck close to the older men and they ended up in a gang, dropping stones from a high ledge into the back of a lorry. The men were covered in dirt and dust. Domenico and Buttapasta struggled with a boulder between them. Domenico was considerably shorter than the big man, but years of skiing and rock climbing had made him extremely fit and he kept up the pace easily.
‘Not the usual sort of stone you’re used to, Domenico,’ said Buttapasta. The two men hated idleness. The quarry might be strenuous, but it was better than the claustrophobia of a ship and preferable to the inside of a hut while the weather stayed dry.
‘I wonder how many months we’ll be doing this.’
‘I think we might be looking at years.’
Aldo joined them, just as Domenico uttered this comment, and threw a rather small stone into the vehicle below.
‘Did you say years?’ asked Aldo aghast. ‘I can’t do this. It’s slave labour.’ He looked down at his hands as if he could actually see that they were cut and bleeding under the heavy ma terial of the gloves. ‘This is not what I was built for. It’s a crime against nature.’
The two older men exchanged a glance and Buttapasta put an arm around Aldo’s shoulders, steering him gently back to the rock face.
‘Come, Aldo. Just consider how good the exercise is for you.’
Aldo stopped dead, his dusty face a mask of misery.
‘I thought you were my friend.’ Buttapasta and Domenico burst out laughing.
By mid-afternoon, daylight was failing. There were no defiant shouts or singing on the return journey, just a line of silent, dirty, weary Italians. The wind picked up, drops of rain began to fall and by the time they reached the camp the washing that had been left out on the lines that morning was soaked.
The cold hit the Italians hard. The Orkney winter weather was something alien and the following few weeks were a nightmare of cold, rain, mud and gruelling work.
By mid-February, the mo
od in the camp had changed from being resentful to rebellious. The Italians’ only escape came in writing to loved ones back home. Dino lay on his bed one evening, writing to his wife of the events of the last few days.
… I think the guards are basically decent but there is a great deal of misunderstanding on both sides, because none of them speak Italian and those of us who speak some English are often completely confused by their accents.
Domenico lay resting on his bed, trying to ignore the complaints from Aldo a few feet away.
‘Everything in my body hurts. I have hurts where I don’t have body. If I was religious I would believe I was being punished for past sins.’
Domenico sat up on his bed.
‘You are religious Aldo. You just fight against it.’
‘Religious! Not me. No offence Domenico. Every man to himself and all that. But I’ve seen too much, perhaps too much of the wrong thing, and you can’t forget what you know.’
‘Every man has the capacity to see the right things and follow the right path. You just have to be able to open your eyes to it,’ said Domenico. This conversation had been coming for a while. Domenico was frustrated by Aldo’s cold materialistic streak. Aldo was already establishing himself as the camp’s wheeler-dealer and the only time he wasn’t moaning about the conditions was when he was involved in some deal.
‘My eyes have seen enough,’ said Aldo.
‘My young friend, I think you look, but do not really see.’
Aldo was about to reply but at that point the door was suddenly flung open and an Italian stepped inside.
‘Quiet everyone. Quiet! We’re not working here anymore. Everyone is on strike, so stay in your hut when the British come around in the morning.’
The men were stunned.
‘Is everyone going on strike?’ asked Sergeant Primavera.
‘They’d better, Sergeant,’ replied the man at the door. ‘If we all stick together the British can’t make us do anything.’
No one else spoke and it wasn’t until the man had left that the men in the hut broke into excited murmurs.
‘Ha, there is a God,’ said Aldo, his complaints suddenly forgotten. ‘We don’t have to get up early. No work. No more stones. I feel better already. It’s a miracle.’
‘It won’t end at this,’ said Domenico, who was concerned at this development.
‘They can’t force us to work. What can they do? Sack us? Refuse to pay us? Send us to a prison camp?’ Aldo was becoming more elated with each point he made.
‘Well, we’ll see what the morning brings,’ said Domenico. ‘But I have a bad feeling about this.’
5
The rain fell lightly against the window in Major Yates’s office. He sat at his desk, a mug of tea in his hand, ploughing through a list of figures that compared the actual usage of consumables such as food, fuel, water and medical supplies with what had been estimated. The amount of coffee drunk during the period was staggering.
‘Enter,’ he bellowed in response to a knock at the door.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but the prisoners have gone on strike,’ said Sergeant Slater, as if he was simply making a comment on the menu for dinner. The effect was dramatic.
‘On strike! What the devil do you mean they’ve gone on strike?’ Major Yates slammed down his mug, spilling tea over his papers.
‘There’s a small delegation of them, sir. They say the camp is too near the Scapa Flow base, which means they are in danger should there be an air raid, and the barriers they are being asked to construct are works of a war-like nature,’ said Sergeant Slater, the latter point being quoted from a letter he produced while speaking and which he now kept in his hand. ‘Both of which contravene the Geneva Convention.’
‘The Geneva Convention!’
‘Sorry, sir. That’s what they say. They’ve written it down.’ He laid the letter on the desk and took a step back to let Major Yates read, which he did with a growing rage.
‘They want to be transferred to another camp. Do they think they’re in bloody Butlins and can be moved if they don’t like the entertainment? Tell my orderly to get me someone from the War Office on the phone.’
The following week, Domenico and Aldo were sitting side by side outside their hut. The weather, something the Italians had given up trying to predict, was currently clear and bright and whilst Domenico sat quietly with his eyes closed, Aldo was complaining. It seemed to be a regular scenario.
‘Three days on bread and water. How can we survive, Domenico? I’m so hungry.’
‘Normal food tomorrow, Aldo.’
‘Yes, but then it’s back to bread and water for the next three days. How long can this go on?’
‘I told you the British wouldn’t let us get away with this,’ said Domenico, looking at his friend.
The call by Major Yates on the first day of the strike had resulted in the Inspector of POW camps making the long journey from London to Orkney. It had taken nearly two days. Negotiations had then begun and the men told they were subject to the same regulations and laws as the armed forces of the detaining country. However, their complaint had been passed to the relevant Swiss delegation, the ‘Protecting Power’ in London, for further investigation. In the meantime, they were all to go back to work.
The Italians had refused and the British had imposed punishment rations – three days of bread and water with standard rations every fourth day.
A couple of Italians retaliated by leaving all the taps running in the wash block. The sudden increase in water usage was quickly noted and spring-loaded taps were then fitted to every sink. The Italians tied these down with whatever came to hand and so the guards had to go around the wash block several times a day and free the taps, making relations between the two sides even worse.
There wasn’t sufficient coal to keep the stoves burning all day so men pooled their fuel and occupants from several huts crowded into one building. The air became so thick with cigarette smoke that when the door was opened it looked as though the hut was on fire. The gates were firmly locked. If the weather was fine men walked around the inside of the perimeter fence for exercise or stood about in small groups. They were subdued. No one seemed to have any purpose.
‘Anyway,’ Domenico continued, ‘I thought by now you’d have secured some extra supplies.’
‘Domenico, even a genius of my abilities can’t achieve miracles when feeling so weak with hunger. It affects the efficiency of the mind.’
‘Nonsense! It should sharpen up your efforts, not muddle them. Do you think anything great in the world was ever created by a fat man sitting around eating?’
The two men sat in silence. Aldo didn’t understand Domenico’s ability to ignore his surroundings by taking his mind to a place where he could explore, plan and calculate what could be made with the materials to hand. It was one of the reasons Domenico stayed, in his own quiet way, stubbornly cheerful.
After a while, Buttapasta and two other men appeared from behind a hut. Buttapasta was taking large strides, as if measuring distance, while the other men took notes on scrap paper.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Aldo. ‘Has he gone mad already?’
‘Several of the men want to build concrete paths between the huts and they’ve asked Buttapasta for help. You’ve got to admit it would be nice not to slide around in the mud.’
It was one morning in March, when the head count had been completed and the Italians were waiting to be addressed or dismissed, that rumours of a change in the camp spread throughout the parade ground.
‘Hey,’ said Aldo, ‘I hear there’s a new camp commander.’
‘What’s happened to the other one?’ asked Micheloni, who was in Domenico’s hut and had become friendly with the artist.
‘Now only running Camp 34.’
‘So who have we got?’ said Buttapasta.
‘No one knows but they say the men who started the strike idea were moved off the island first thing this morning.’
�
�I think we’re just about to find out,’ said Micheloni.
A new British officer walked on to the parade ground.
‘Attention!’ shouted Sergeant Major Fornasier.
The men snapped to attention and were immediately silent. When the camp commander started to speak there was a moment of whispered surprise. He spoke Italian.
‘Stand at ease. My name is Major Buckland and I am the new commander at Camp 60. I’m sorry things have got off to a bad start. None of us want to be here. We all have loved ones, wives and families back home who we would rather be with. Unfortunately, for now, we are all here. Fate has decided we should end up together on this little Orkney island. You might have noticed it rains a bit more than in Italy. I’m told that it does stop and, after all, it is March. But just as I can’t make you any promises about the weather, I can’t make you any promises about how long we will be on the island. We are all married together.’
This latter comment caused some amusement. Major Buckland’s Italian was far from perfect and he knew he hadn’t said what he meant to. However, he smiled at his mistake and the men found themselves liking this rather fatherly figure, addressing them in their mother tongue.
‘I know some of you have concerns about the position of the camp to Scapa Flow and about the work you have been asked to do. We seem to have reached a stalemate in recent weeks. In order to resolve the matter I have asked Sergeant Major Fornasier to meet with me this afternoon, along with the Swiss delegation that provides guidance on the living and working conditions of prisoners of war. They should arrive here from London later this morning. In addition, I have invited the Provost of Kirkwall, the main town on Orkney, to join us, because he can give a local and civilian view of the work being carried out. I hope this meeting will clear up any misunderstandings that may have arisen.’ Major Buckland turned to Sergeant Major Fornasier, who was standing nearby. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Major Fornasier.’
The Italians stood smartly to attention. Major Buckland and Sergeant Major Fornasier exchanged salutes and the British officer walked off the parade ground.
