The Vintage Book of War Stories

by Sebastian Faulks

  It was always raining and cold, and there was no order but for the great maps of art that showed judgement, piety and sacrifice. The Eighth Army came upon river after river of destroyed bridges, and their sapper units clambered down banks on ladders of rope within enemy gunfire and swam or waded across. Food and tents were washed away. Men who were tied to equipment disappeared. Once across the river they tried to ascend out of the water. They sank their hands and wrists into the mud wall of the cliff face and hung there. They wanted the mud to harden and hold them.

  The young Sikh sapper put his cheek against the mud and thought of the Queen of Sheba’s face, the texture of her skin. There was no comfort in this river except his desire for her, which somehow kept him warm. He would pull the veil off her hair. He would put his right hand between her neck and olive blouse. He too was tired and sad, as the wise king and guilty queen he had seen in Arezzo two weeks earlier.

  He hung over the water, his hands locked into the mud-bank. Character, that subtle art, disappeared among them during those days and nights, existed only in a book or on a painted wall. Who was sadder in that dome’s mural? He leaned forward to rest on the skin of her frail neck. He fell in love with her downcast eye. This woman who would someday know the sacredness of bridges.

  At night in the camp bed, his arms stretched out into distance like two armies. There was no promise of solution or victory except for the temporary pact between him and that painted fresco’s royalty who would forget him, never acknowledge his existence or be aware of him, a Sikh, halfway up a sapper’s ladder in the rain, erecting a Bailey bridge for the army behind him. But he remembered the painting of their story. And when a month later the battalions reached the sea, after they had survived everything and entered the coastal town of Cattolica and the engineers had cleared the beach of mines in a twenty-yard stretch so the men could go down naked into the sea, he approached one of the medievalists who had befriended him – who had once simply talked with him and shared some Spam – and promised to show him something in return for his kindness.

  The sapper signed out a Triumph motorbike, strapped a crimson emergency light on to his arm, and they rode back the way they had come – back into and through the now innocent towns like Urbino and Anghiari, along the winding crest of the mountain ridge that was a spine down Italy, the old man bundled up behind him hugging him, and down the western slope towards Arezzo. The piazza at night was empty of troops, and the sapper parked in front of the church. He helped the medievalist off, collected his equipment and walked into the church. A colder darkness. A greater emptiness, the sound of his boots filling the area. Once more he smelled the old stone and wood. He lit three flares. He slung block and tackle across the columns above the nave, then fired a rivet already threaded with rope into a high wooden beam. The professor was watching him bemused, now and then peering up into the high darkness. The young sapper circled him and knotted a sling across his waist and shoulders, taped a small lit flare to the old man’s chest.

  He left him there by the communion rail and noisily climbed the stairs to the upper level, where the other end of the rope was. Holding on to it, he stepped off the balcony into the darkness, and the old man was simultaneously swung up, hoisted up fast until, when the sapper touched ground, he swung idly in midair within three feet of the frescoed walls, the flare brightening a halo around him. Still holding the rope the sapper walked forward until the man swung to the right to hover in front of The Flight of Emperor Maxentius.

  Five minutes later he let the man down. He lit a flare for himself and hoisted his body up into the dome within the deep blue of the artificial sky. He remembered its gold stars from the time he had gazed on it with binoculars. Looking down he saw the medievalist sitting on a bench, exhausted. He was now aware of the depth of this church, not its height. The liquid sense of it. The hollowness and darkness of a well. The flare sprayed out of his hand like a wand. He pulleyed himself across to her face, his Queen of Sadness, and his brown hand reached out small against the giant neck.

  John Horne Burns

  MY HEART FINALLY BROKE IN NAPLES

  Set in Naples towards the end of the Second World War, John Horne Burns’s novel The Gallery (1948) portrays life in the city after its liberation by the US Army. The following extract describes the disillusionment of an American soldier whose ideals have been destroyed by the behaviour of the liberators towards the Italian people.

  I REMEMBER THAT my heart finally broke in Naples. Not over a girl or a thing, but over an idea. When I was little, they’d told me I should be proud to be an American. And I suppose I was, though I saw no reason I should applaud every time I saw the flag in a newsreel. But I did believe that the American way of life was an idea holy in itself, an idea of freedom bestowed by intelligent citizens on one another. Yet after a little while in Naples I found out that America was a country just like any other, except that she had more material wealth and more advanced plumbing. And I found that outside of the propaganda writers (who were making a handsome living from the deal) Americans were very poor spiritually. Their ideals were something to make dollars on. They had bankrupt souls. Perhaps this is true of most of the people of the twentieth century. Therefore my heart broke.

  I remember that this conceit came home to me in crudest black and white. In Naples of 1944 we Americans had everything. The Italians, having lost their war, had nothing. And what was this war really about? I decided that it was because most of the people of the world didn’t have the cigarettes, the gasoline, and the food that we Americans had.

  I remember my mother’s teaching me out of her wisdom that the possession of Things implies a responsibility for Their use, that They shouldn’t be wasted, that Having Things should never dominate my living. When this happens, Things become more important than People. Comfort then becomes the be-and-end-all of human life. And when other people threaten your material comfort, you have no recourse but to fight them. It makes no difference who attacks whom first. The result is the same, a killing and a chaos that the world of 1944 wasn’t big enough to stand.

  Our propaganda did everything but tell us Americans the truth: that we had most of the riches of the modern world, but very little of its soul. We were nice enough guys in our own country, most of us; but when we got overseas, we couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a dollar or two at the expense of people who were already down. I can speak only of Italy, for I didn’t see France or Germany. But with our Hollywood ethics and our radio network reasoning we didn’t take the trouble to think out the fact that the war was supposed to be against fascism – not against every man, woman, and child in Italy . . . But then a modern war is total. Armies on the battlefield are simply a remnant from the old kind of war. In the 1944 war everyone’s hand ended by being against everyone else’s. Civilization was already dead, but nobody bothered to admit this to himself.

  I remember the crimes we committed against the Italians, as I watched them in Naples. In the broadest sense we promised the Italians security and democracy if they came over to our side. All we actually did was to knock the hell out of their system and give them nothing to put in its place. And one of the most tragic spectacles in all history was the Italians’ faith in us – for a little while, until we disabused them of it. It seemed to me like the swindle of all humanity, and I wondered if perhaps we weren’t all lost together. Collective and social decency didn’t exist in Naples in August, 1944. And I used to laugh at our attempts at relief and control there, for we undid with one hand what we did with the other. What we should have done was to set up a strict and square rationing for all goods that came into Italy. We should have given the Neapolitans co-operative stores.

  I remember watching the American acquisitive sense in action. We didn’t realize, or we didn’t want to realize, that we were in a poor country, now reduced to minus zero by war. Nearly every GI and officer went out and bought everything he could lay hands on, no matter how worthless it was; and he didn’t care how much he paid for i
t. They’d buy all the bamboo canes in a little Neapolitan shop, junk jewellery, worthless art – all for the joy of spending. Everywhere we Americans went, the prices of everything sky-rocketed until the lira was valueless. And the Italians couldn’t afford to pay these prices, especially for things they needed just to live on. For all the food we sent into Italy for relief, we should have set up some honest American control by honourable and incorruptible Americans. Instead we entrusted it to Italians who, nine times out of ten, were grafters of the regime we claimed to be destroying.

  I remember too that an honest American in August, 1944, was almost as hard to find as a Neapolitan who owned up to having been a Fascist. I don’t know why, but most Americans had a blanket hatred of all Italians. They figured it this way: these Ginsoes have made war on us; so it doesn’t matter what we do to them, boost their prices, shatter their economy, and shack up with their women. I imagine there’s some fallacy in my reasoning here. I guess I was asking for the impossible. This was war, and I wanted it to be conducted with honour. I suppose that’s as phony reasoning as talking about an honest murder or a respectable rape.

  I remember that the commonest, and the pettiest, crime we did against the Neapolitans was selling them our PX rations. We paid five lire a package for cigarettes, which was a privilege extended to us by the people of the United States. To a Neapolitan we could sell each package for three hundred lire. Really big business. A profit of 6,000 per cent. Of course the Neapolitans were mad to pay this price for them, but I don’t see that it made our selling any the righter. I don’t believe that these cigarettes were legally ours – ours, that is, to sell at a profit. They were only ours if we wanted to smoke them. If we didn’t smoke, we had no right to buy them. Though there was no harm in giving these cigarettes away.

  I remember that we went the next step in vulturism and sold our GI clothes to the Neapolitans. Then we could sign a statement of charges and get new ones, having made meanwhile a small fortune out of the deal. This was inexcusable on any grounds whatever. There are loopholes in my cigarette syllogism, but none that I see on the clothes question.

  Then I remember that there were not a few really big criminals who stole stuff off the ships unloading in Naples harbour, stuff that didn’t belong to them by any stretch of the imagination. For all this that I saw I could only attribute a deficient moral and humane sense to Americans as a nation and as a people. I saw that we could mouth democratic catchwords and yet give the Neapolitans a huge black market. I saw that we could prate of the evils of fascism, yet be just as ruthless as Fascists with people who’d already been pushed into the ground. That was why my heart broke in Naples in August, 1944. The arguments that we advanced to cover our delinquencies were as childishly ingenious as American advertising.

  – If a signorina comes to the door of my mess hall, the mess sergeant said, making a salad, an she says she’s hungry, why, I give her a meal . . . But first I make it clear to her Eyetie mind that I’m interested in somethin she’s got . . . If she says ixnay I tell her to get the hell out.

  – Of course the only reason I sell my cigarettes, the corporal said, is because we’re gettin creamed on the rate of exchange for the lira . . . What can I buy in Naples on the seventy bucks a month I’m pullin down?

  – You’ve got enough to eat and a place to sleep, said the Pfc with the glasses. That’s better than most of the world is doing in 1944.

  – I didn’t ask for this war, the sergeant major said. I didn’t ask to be sent overseas. Guess I’ve got a right to turn a buck when I see the chance, ain’t I?

  – You must make the distinction, said the Pfc, between so-called honest business tactics and making money out of human misery.

  But he was only a Jewish Communist; so no one paid any attention to him.

  Yes, I remember that being at war with the Italians was taken as a licence for Americans to defecate all over them. Even though most of us in the base section at Naples had never closed with an Italian in combat. Our argument was that we should treat the Neapolitans as the Neapolitans would have treated our cities presumably if they’d won the war. I watched old ladies of Naples pushed off the sidewalks by drunken GIs and officers. Every Italian girl was fair prey to propositions we wouldn’t have made to a streetwalker back home. Those who spoke Italian used the tu on everyone they met. And I remember seeing American MPs beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on Via Roma. I don’t think the Germans could have done any better in their concentration camps. I thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever.

  – These Eyeties, the mess sergeant said, ain’t human beins. They’re just Gooks, that’s all.

  – All I know, the corporal said doggedly and worriedly, is that they ain’t Americans . . . They don’t see things the way we do.

  – They’d steal anything, the mess sergeant said, stuffing a turkey, his mouth crammed with giblet leavings.

  I remember that other arguments against the Neapolitans, besides the cardinal one, that they’d declared war on us, were that they stole and were filthy-dirty. I only know that no Neapolitan ever stole anything from me, for I took pains to see that no temptation was put in their way. Though once my wallet was lifted in a New York subway. And for those Neapolitans to whom I sometimes gave an extra bar of soap, I noticed that they used this soap joyfully on themselves, their children, their clothes. I’ve buried my face in the hair of Neapolitan girls. It was just as sweet as an American girl’s if the Napoletana had the wherewithal to wash it.

  I remember that in Naples after my heart broke I decided that a strictly American point of view in itself offered no peace or solution for the world. So I began to make friends with the Neapolitans. And it didn’t surprise me to find that, like everyone else in the world, they had their good and their bad and their admixtures of both. To know them, I’d been working on my Italian. That lovely supple language was kind to my tongue. The Neapolitans were gracious in helping me with it.

  I met agile dapper thieves who’d steal the apple out of my eye if they could sell it on the black market. But this tribute I must pay even to the crooks: when I answered them in Italian, they’d laugh and shake my hand and say they were going to try someone else who didn’t know their language quite so well.

  I met studenti and young soldiers just fled from the army, baffled and bitter, with nothing but a black bottomless pit of despair for their future. Perhaps I’d have been like them if I’d been on the losing side?

  I met Neapolitan whores who charged a rate a countess couldn’t have earned from her favours in the old days.

  And I met ragazze and mamme so warm and laughing that in Neapolitan dining rooms I thought I was back in my own house, hearing the talk of my mother with my sisters.

  This forced me to the not original conclusion that the Neapolitans were like everybody else in the world, and in an infinite variety. Because I was an americano the Neapolitans treated me with a strange pudding of respect, dismay, and bewilderment. A few loathed me. But from most Italians I got a decency and a kindness that they’d have showered on any other American in Naples who’d made up his mind to treat them like human beings. I’m not bragging. I’m not unique. I’m not Christlike. Many other Americans in Naples made friends they’ll never forget. Thus I remember that in Naples, though my heart had broken from one idea, it mended again when I saw how good most human beings are if they have enough to eat and are free from imminent annihilation.

  I remember that I came to love the courtesy and the laughter and the simplicity of Italian life. The compliment I pay to most Italians who haven’t too much of this world’s goods is that they love life and love. I don’t know what else there is, after all. Even in their frankness the Italians were so seldom offensive. An Italian mother told a friend of mine that he could never marry her daughter because he had the face of a whoremaster. And we all laughed. No one was hurt.

  I remember the passion and the und
erstanding of Italian love. There’s no barrier between the lovers. Everything is oxidized at the moment, without rancour or reservation.

  – Fammi male, amore mio . . . Fammi godere da morire . . . .

  And I remember the storms and quarrels of Italian love, mostly rhetorical. The going to bed is all the sweeter for the reconciliation.

  For I thought that to this people, broken and saddened and dismayed, there yet remained much of that something which had made Italy flower – though not as a nation of warriors. To this day I’m convinced of Italy’s greatness in the world of the spirit. In war she’s a tragic farce. In love and sunlight and music and humanity she has something that humanity sorely needs. It’s still there. Something of this distillation of noble and gentle grandeur seeps down through most of Italy’s population, from contessa to contadina. I don’t think I’m romanticizing or kidding myself. In the middle of the war, in August, 1944, with my heart broken for an ideal, I touched the beach of heaven in Naples. At moments.

  I remember how the children of Naples pointed my dim conception of American waste. They’d stand about our mess hall quiet or noisy, watching the glutted riches from our mess kits being dumped into the garbage cans. I remember the surprise and terror in their faces. We were forbidden to feed them, though I heard that combat soldiers, gentler and more determined than we, took the law into their hands and were much kinder to Italian children than we were allowed to be. When I watched the bitten steaks, the nibbled lettuce, the half-eaten bread go sliding into the swill cans in a spectrum of waste and bad planning, I realized at last the problem of the modern world, simple yet huge. I saw then what was behind the war. I’ll never forget those Neapolitan children whom we were forbidden to feed. After a while many of us couldn’t stand it any longer. We’d brush past the guard with our mess kit full of supper and share it with Adalgisa and Sergio and Pasqualino. They were only the scugnizz’ of Napoli, but they had mouths and stomachs just like us. I remember the wild hungry faces of those kids diving into cold Spam. But our orders were that since America was in no position to feed all the Italians, we were not to feed any. Just dump your waste in the GI cans, men.