As they had in England, they lived in a succession of rented rooms until she took a small flat on the Aventine Hill in 1959, next door to a German couple (formerly of the German Army Film Unit) who had hidden in Italy posing as Dutch refugees after the Nazi surrender; their two sons became Hugo’s playmates. In Italy she wasted not a single free day, taking her child by bus or third-class train all over central Italy to see the beautiful buildings and art and hear the operas, delighting in Italians’ friendship and reading deeply in Dante, Leopardi, Pirandello and the great literary geniuses of Italy who began to rival Goethe and Schiller for her affections.
Concerned for her child’s future in an impoverished country with few opportunities for foreigners, she returned to England in 1961 where she took two jobs teaching three languages. She settled near her mother, who was by then declining rapidly, in Suffolk. With the financial help of a former student of her father’s, she and her mother bought their present house in Woodbridge. Apart from three years lecturing in Oxford, she remained in Suffolk, teaching A-Level languages, tutoring at a Boys’ Borstal and giving her spare time to Save the Children Fund (for which she was later awarded an MBE) until her stroke in 2003. In September that year she had gone on one of her regular visits to see her lifelong friend Iselle Simmonot at Trouville, where she suffered first a heart attack and then a stroke. After some months in hospital in France and in St Thomas’ London she has lived first near her son’s family in Bermondsey and since then in the Royal Star and Garter, Richmond.
In 2009 a party was held for her ninetieth birthday in the Royal Star and Garter, music provided by a band of the Coldstream Guards. Aside from her sister’s children and her son’s family, present were friends – or the children and grandchildren of friends – from Ipswich, St Felix, Oxford, Cyprus and Woodbridge days.
The present book was found among many letters and papers from the war period, long forgotten during a busy subsequent life. Mary Hodge edited it down from an original manuscript of 150,000 words (now in the Imperial War Museum) and the author’s son proposed it for publication, with the essential help of the appeal chairman of the MSMT, Vanni Treves, appeal chairman of the Monte San Martino Trust. The Imperial War Museum’s head of publishing Elizabeth Bowers worked hard to arrange its publication and Jo de Vries of The History Press has brought it to fruition with enthusiasm and dispatch.
Plates
The author in 1945. (Author’s Collection)
The author (third from left) with colleagues at Latimer House Interrogation Centre. (Author’s Collection)
The parade ground: No. 7 ATS Training Centre, Guildford, 1942. (IWM Cat No: Art LD 1959)
British trucks entering the Piazza del Popolo, through the Arch of Titus Severus, in Rome, June 1944. (IWM Cat No: TR 1855)
British soldiers visit the Colosseum while on leave in Rome, June 1944. (IWM Cat No: TR 1960)
The author shopping in the market at Fiesole. (Author’s Collection, taken by Tiny Pook)
Invitation cards received by the author during her time in Italy. (Author’s Collection)
The author at Padua market, Easter leave 1946. (Author’s Collection)
The author in Naples. (Author’s Collection)
The first Allied convoy to arrive at Naples harbour. In the foreground some of the wrecked harbour installations are visible. In the background is Mount Vesuvius. (IWM Cat No: NA 7414)
An award ceremony of the Allied Screening Commission for Italian partisans. The Commanding Officer is between the flags. (Author’s Collection)
British aid to partisans in northern Italy, April–May 1945: on a field just outside Cuneo, Piedmont, near the French/Italian border, partisans wait for the containers carrying supplies to land. The French Alps are in the background. (IWM Cat No: NA 25393)
Demobilisation of the British Army in Italy, 1945: British servicemen catch trams outside Milan central railway station to travel to the Assembly Centre for Release Personnel at Eugenio barracks on the western outskirts of the city. (IWM Cat No: NA 26237)
A visit by the Allied Screening Commission to a mountain village. Note the Commanding Officer (saluting). Standing behind him are Major Gordon Lett and the author. (Author’s Collection)
The Commanding Officer of the Allied Screening Commission (right) in a mountain village. (Author’s Collection)
The author with her Commanding Officer, Venice, 1946. (Author’s Collection)
The author with Signora Boldrini. She and her husband, an architect, had risked their family to mastermind the escapes of British fugitives in Tuscany, 1947. (Author’s Collection)
Copyright
First published in 2013
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Lucy de Burgh, 2013
The right of Lucy de Burgh to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
978 0 7509 5306 1
Original typesetting by The History Press
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
My Italian Adventures Page 45