War in My Town

by E. Graziani

  Mamma wept. “They were all crying and moaning, men and women alike, powerless.”

  Cesar looked at Mamma and then at us. “They were preparing to shoot us,” he continued, “but Father wouldn’t move. He talked quietly to the commander. All the while, the soldiers were waiting for the commander’s order to shoot. Father swore to the commander that his people would have done no such thing, that we had cooperated with the soldiers all these long months. The cord might have accidentally been chewed by an animal or cut unknowingly by a spade or shovel. He said, ‘I will vouch for my people. They did not do this.’

  “The commander threatened him, saying that he would be shot too, but Father still didn’t move. He fell to his knees in front of the commander and continued to plead for our lives. He said to shoot him instead, to make him the example and let his people go.

  “It took a while, but the Nazi commander finally let us go. He told Father that if it happened again the entire village would be executed. Then he told all of us to get out of his sight before he changed his mind.”

  I just sat stone still throughout the story, feeling grateful to our priest for offering to sacrifice himself for his people, my brother included. “And then what?” I whispered.

  “Father thanked him,” added Pina. She wiped at her eyes. “Everyone scurried away after that.”

  “What about Father?” I asked.

  “I think he may have gone back to the rectory to lie down,” said Pina. “When it was over, I saw that his hands were shaking.”

  Part Six

  Nazi Defeat and Liberation

  1945

  In December 1944, the Allies took control of the city of Ravenna, northeast of Tuscany. In retaliation, the Axis planned a ground offensive in which they tried to recapture some of the land lost to the Allied forces in Tuscany. This resulted in renewed aggression in the valley and mountain areas around Eglio. Safely hidden in bunkers and in the villagers’ homes, the Nazi soldiers stubbornly held their ground.

  In other parts of Europe, the Russian army was advancing deeper into formerly Nazi-occupied territory. On January 27, 1945, the concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by Russian troops revealing to the world the horrible crimes against the Jewish people. On January 31, the Russian army crossed the Oder River into Germany, less than 50 miles (80 km) from Berlin. Soon the Allies bombed Germany on a massive scale.

  Isolated from the rest of the world, the citizens of Eglio knew nothing of what was occurring around them. What they experienced were the bombings and gunfire by Allied strafing aircraft flying low. The villagers continued to be the moving targets of the automatic weapons mounted on the underside of these planes.

  In the spring of 1945, an important breakthrough occurred on the Gothic Line. Beginning with the Po Valley Campaign in northern Italy, Allied forces captured Lombardy, a region in north-central Italy bordering Switzerland, and swept downward toward the mountains of the Garfagnana region. One by one, pockets of Nazi-occupied territory in Italy were overtaken. On April 24, 1945, the Allies surrounded the last of the Nazi armies, taking the German front near Bologna. The war in Italy had finally come to an end. The agonizing months of captivity and forced labor under the Nazis were soon to cease for the people of Eglio, in a way that they never dared to hope for.

  Chapter 27

  Not long after Christmas Day, 1944, there was a particularly horrific exchange of fire. My family and I huddled in the back room of Vincenzo’s house while Allied planes launched mortar rounds. Nazi soldiers returned fire at the Allies and, again, we villagers were caught in the crossfire. The drone of airplane engines overhead warned us moments in advance of their approach. Our only defense was to run and hide as far from the outside world as we could get — anywhere but out in the open.

  “Hurry! Get in! There’s more gunfire coming!” Vincenzo’s voice was sharp. It had to be, to be heard over the sounds of war outside his front door. Earthshaking crashes were all around us as mortar shell after mortar shell whistled its familiar arrival above us and found its target, bursting into the buildings and any reinforcements that were left. The Nazi gunners discharged steady rounds of thudding artillery fire.

  We ran for our shelter in Vincenzo’s house, the women farthest in at the safest point, the men in closer proximity to the front of the room. We huddled close to one another, against the dirt walls. Vincenzo lit a lantern and, to our surprise, we saw that in our midst was one of the German soldiers, the short potato soldier with the steely blue-gray eyes. But his eyes were not so steely now. Instead he had the look of a frightened child. He must have followed us into the shelter when he heard the shots, terrified like the rest of us. He shook in the corner like a scared rabbit, alone, powerless, and afraid. I should have felt vindicated that he felt a small portion of what I felt every day, but instead I felt pity. I wondered, could there be a human being beneath all that cruelty, afraid to die like the rest of us?

  The candle’s flame quivered wildly with each pounding contact from the shelling. We all worried that this night might be our last. I was sure that our luck had run its course. I wept.

  My sister Pina was hunched beside me. She was crying, too. My brilliant sister, whom I always relied on for strength, was crying like a baby. Mery was on the other side of Mamma, and then there was Nonna. They held onto each other, with their faces buried in their arms. Cesar was with the men on the opposite side of the room, and his sweetheart, Ersilia, sat devotedly beside him.

  The drone of plane engines and gunfire seemed unrelenting. Then, smash! There was an enormous thud. The sturdy house shook to its foundations. The door to the shelter blew open, and displaced air spewed hot embers from the point of contact. Before we could even react to the sound, the bomb had hit Vincenzo’s house.

  With instinct that I can only attribute to great courage and love, Pina threw herself on top of me, shielding me from the flying rubble that swept like a wave across the stone floor. It took a moment for us to realize that we were not dead. We looked up in a daze at the destruction, coughing and sputtering as the dust entered our lungs.

  There in front of us was a bomb — intact and imbedded under the front entrance. Burrowed into the ground, unexploded, the metal shell had left a cavernous hole in its wake. Through the thick cloud of dust, we could make out fallen eves and debris covering the living room and kitchen. We all sat rooted to the spot, stunned, our mouths gaping at the instrument of death right in front of us.

  Everyone I loved was in the shelter that day — my family and as many of our neighbors as could fit. And then there was the potato soldier. If the bomb had exploded, we all would have perished. What happened that day to save our skins, I will never know. Perhaps whoever had assembled it was having a bad day and hadn’t put everything together correctly. Or maybe it had not hit at the correct angle. Maybe it was just a dud.

  “All right everyone, just stay calm,” Cesar breathed hard. He closed his eyes and his head hung back for a moment. “Don’t make any sudden moves.” His voice was a husky whisper. His remark was a bit laughable since there was shooting and shelling all around us. Our own sudden movement would not have made much difference to the bomb.

  But there we sat, staring at it, as if even blinking the wrong way would set it off. We flinched at every round, at every mortar shell, at each gunner thump for the next hour or so, not daring to even speak. Our whimpering had stopped and raw fear took over. We felt that our survival depended on our intense focus on the bomb. Nothing else mattered. Keep still and quiet.

  When the shelling and gunfire finally subsided, Vincenzo made the first move. He got up cautiously, nodding toward Cesar and the other men. It was time to leave the shelter. The men held out their hands, the soldier included, helping the women up with unparalleled calm. One by one, we trod at a snail’s pace, our backs against the walls using measured steps around the rubble and debris. With painstaking care, we all managed to step around
the bomb giving it a wide berth. I lost track of where the potato soldier went. Instead I watched the faint pink sun sinking slowly into the western horizon.

  We scrambled to the back trails around the village, and then ran to the closest safe house, paying no heed to the dangers surrounding us.

  Elsewhere in the village that day, there was severe damage to many other homes, including my grandparents’ house. A bomb penetrated the roof and traveled through the upstairs and the living room, ultimately coming to rest in the crawlspace in the basement. It too, remained there, unexploded, until it was extracted after the end of the war.

  Chapter 28

  I have heard it said that those of us who lived and survived World War II were ordinary people living in extraordinary times. Of this I’m certain. I do believe that, despite all that we suffered, we were among the fortunate people. I can’t begin to understand what others in concentration camps suffered, those who were starved, tortured, and mercilessly gassed and murdered. The only thing I can speak to is what I and my family suffered to survive.

  The Allies (mainly U.S. and Indian forces), lost much of Northern Tuscany that December, but not for long. By January 1945, Allied forces had regained control and then everything seemed to grind to a halt for us. The remaining winter months brought relative quiet to our village, save for the usual oppressive shadow of the Nazis. There was a stalemate in the valley, with neither side able to advance successfully. But elsewhere in the world there was a definite turn in the tide. The Nazis’ days were numbered. We didn’t know it at the time, but soon they would be gone.

  By April 1945, we were all listless and tired from the years of war. Our captors were distracted, anxious, almost preoccupied. Most of our houses had been destroyed. The majority of the dwellings that faced the Garfagnana valley had gaping holes from the constant barrage of mortar shells. The insides of the houses were exposed, the contents spilling out like the guts of a wounded animal. In the interior of the town, many homes suffered the same fate, either destroyed by Allied aircraft bombings or mortar attacks. Their inhabitants crowded together and stayed with other families that still had intact homes. We stayed with any family that welcomed us, sometimes sheltered in the chestnut dryers and barns in the fields behind Eglio, depending on where we found ourselves during an attack.

  When the Nazi front fell in Bologna, I believe that the German soldiers in our village had been given instructions to defend their post, to stay in Eglio until their dying breath. But this is not what happened.

  Instead, one morning we awoke to an unusual quiet — peaceful, hushed tranquility. Gone was the shouting, the clicking of boots on the stones, the harsh commands. We poked our heads out of our makeshift shelters, like gophers waking from a long sleep to see what had happened on the outside. All was abandoned and silent. No one was skulking around with a gun, ready to shoot if we ventured out of line. We left our houses, shelters, and barns in search of our oppressors.

  Our people stepped gingerly out into the village, slowly, warily. There was equipment here and there, where it had been left the night before. The men went to look in the windows of the houses typically used by the officers. No one there. We searched the bunker and the officers’ eating areas. No Nazi soldiers. The men searched the houses still standing and found only leftover equipment. No arms. Was this all a trick? Were they testing us? Or had they just disappeared into the woods in the night like common thieves?

  “The Palazzo,” said Oreste, his eyes wide with hope. Would the wireless radio still be there? A contingent of men scurried to the big building and cautiously entered. There it was on the table in the kitchen. They turned it on, but only static could be heard.

  The news came to us in piecemeal fashion. The Nazi forces had been pushed out of Garfagnana, but small battles were still being fought. The Allied forces and the Italian partisans scoured the mountains, looking for remaining Nazi soldiers and fascist sympathizers, and searching for any hidden arms.

  A few days later, a disguised Benito Mussolini was captured in northern Italy trying to escape. He was shot and hanged in Milan by the partigiani the next day. He and his mistress were hung upside down in a public place for all to see, confirmation to the Italian population and to the world of his execution. Other members of his puppet government were also put to death by the Italian partisans, and their bodies put on display.

  Within days, the American Allies approached Eglio to liberate us and secure their position. They carefully made their way from Castelnuovo on the other side of Sassi, where it was safe. I remember being frightened at seeing soldiers again, although these soldiers looked very different from the Nazis. They carried rifles, but the Americans appeared more relaxed and friendly. Were these the same men who had pummeled us with mortar shells all these months? I was afraid of them at first because of this, but my brother explained to me that they were simply trying to destroy the Nazi oppressors. As they walked into our village, our liberators talked with the villagers through an interpreter. To our surprise, there were even a few who spoke a bit of Italian, their families having immigrated from Italy to America.

  The Americani and our men discussed what had occurred in Eglio for so many months, what the Nazis had done in our village, and where their arms might be. Cesar, Vincenzo, Oreste, and other villagers answered their questions honestly and freely, giving them any information that might be of strategic significance. The Americans listened attentively and seemed sympathetic to the dangers we had been through. They understood that we had been used as human shields by the Nazis.

  The men of Eglio invited the liberators into Ferrari’s bar and poured them drinks from wine that had been hidden all these months. They drank a cin cin toast to the disappearance of our captors and to the liberation of Italy. Whatever food the women could find was brought and shared with the victors. The men clapped their newly found American soldier friends on the back. They ate and drank with them for a while and even sang songs. There was joy once more in Eglio. Laughter could be heard in the street and celebration was in the air.

  The Americans continued through Eglio, up into other villages higher in the mountains. Later they cleared the landmines and allowed our men to dismantle the barbed wire fences as they went. Eventually, we heard radio broadcasts of Nazi Germany’s surrender and of Hitler’s cowardly suicide. It was May 1945, and at last, the war was over!

  Chapter 29

  Celebrations, though long awaited, were bittersweet for most of us. There were many in our village who had lost loved ones in the terrible years of Italy’s war. Just about every family in Eglio had lost a son or daughter, husband, mother, or father.

  Some of our men who had served in the military, began trickling into town shortly after the peace declaration to the great delight of their families. But others were never heard from again, their bodies buried in some obscure battlefield in Eastern Europe or in a mass grave in a prisoner of war camp. Edo’s brother, Mario Guazzelli, for example, never returned from the Russian front. There was also the tragedy of the villagers who had lost their lives in Eglio, such as Alfezio, Eva, Enrico, and my nonno. They were no longer here to celebrate the end of the war.

  But life resumed for those of us who were left alive. The roads were cleared of landmines with great efficiency and people started to venture out again. Aurelia and Dante came back to Eglio with a beautiful baby boy. Cesar and Ersilia were married. Armida, Beppina, and I renewed our friendship after months of virtual imprisonment within our own community. And Edo did manage to become the man of the family for his mother and three siblings with some initial assistance from our kind and brave priest Don Turriani.

  Our family was one of the more fortunate ones. We were able to move back home to Poggetti. Though there was damage to the upper level of the house from the shelling, it was repairable.

  We were grateful to have Cesar with us. But the war was over and we had not heard from Alcide for years. There was no word of h
is whereabouts and we had to assume that he had been killed or captured by the Nazis. Our dear Alcide, tall and imposing, fearful but brave, another casualty of war. Mamma tried to accept that her son was gone. I, on the other hand, still believed in miracles. And miracles often come when one least expects them.

  It was October 1945, and slowly life was becoming normal again. Death had come to claim our nonna who had just passed away and we were still mourning her. Remarkably, she had made it through the war unscathed. But a few months later, she had surrendered to her many frailties, dementia being only one of them. Earlier that same day, Mamma, Mery, and Eleonora, who had come back to Eglio for the funeral, and I had gone to Nonno’s big house to clear out her belongings. It was not a difficult task as many of her things were still buried in the barn, still too dangerous to approach because of the landmines that might be buried there.

  The morning after Nonna’s funeral, I poked my head out of the window at Poggetti and breathed in the clean, crisp morning air. The fog was over Barga down in the valley, covering it like a tufted cotton blanket. But we mountain folk already knew that this was going to be a beautiful day.

  I strode downstairs and washed, combed, and braided my hair, securing the strands at the bottom with a ribbon. Mery, Nora, Cesar, and Mamma were already at breakfast when I joined them. Mamma had fixed porridge, thick and sweet with honey and milk. The coffee was steaming hot and smelled heavenly. Just as we were done and starting to clear the table, we suddenly heard a commotion echoing off the hills opposite the valley. Children were shouting, not frightened shouts, but excited, happy cries.