“When they got back to Castelvetrano, I was there waiting for them near the hangars with the mechanics and all the others, Faggioni appeared at the top of the steps pale and tense, he went over to Buscaglia who was checking the damage to his own plane and screamed at him that it was utter madness to attack a well guarded stronghold like that in daylight, you were just sending men out to die, he said, and to die for nothing. It was surprising to hear that from a man like Faggioni, an extraordinary and highly disciplined pilot, shrewd and responsible enough to know that you don’t raise matters like that in front of other officers, NCOs or airmen; but Buscaglia was just as disciplined and exceptional, and for that reason he moved off without saying a word. Graziani took Faggioni to one side to let him vent his rage on him, and anyway these three were the oldest officers, the most responsible in command and, as you can imagine, it’s part of the business of command to know what makes men tick and to pay heed to their feelings. Buscaglia summoned Graziani into his office – ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘I think Faggioni is partly right,’ said the other, ‘it’s crazy to attempt to slip past a whole escort of warships to get at the cargo ships, three out of the four crews got out of Bougie by sheer good luck, purely because the Americans are still feeling their way and shoot at individual targets instead of throwing up a barrage as the British do.’ Look,” said the elderly gentleman, returning to indirect speech to convey what he could not have heard personally, “Graziani was trying to mediate, there were murmurings in the ranks, the rumour was that Buscaglia was taking too many risks in his pursuit of honours, that he couldn’t care less about the men’s losses or sacrifices, but this was nonsense and Graziani made light of it: ‘You don’t need me to tell you,’ he said, ‘that when we were being pursued by the Spitfires we got away only because all three of us have put in hours of flying in tight formation, wing to wing, but the other officers think that it would be better to drop the torpedoes in the semi-darkness of dusk when they can’t be seen by the enemy fighters, and I’m basically in agreement with them.’ ‘I’m not,’ said Buscaglia, ‘with the rear gunners, if we’re flying in tight formation, like today, you can defend yourself more easily from warplanes in daylight, and anyway it’s easier to ditch the plane in the sea during the day if you’re hit.’” The elderly man came back to the present with the remark, “I wouldn’t like you to think that this dispute of daylight versus darkness was a theoretical or academic problem, there was nothing academic about it, any more than there was any theory which was not converted into an immediate, positive, concrete question of life or death. Anyway, Graziani came out of Buscaglia’s office without any definite conclusion having been reached over the question of the light.
“That evening we ate in icy silence, in part because of the day’s tension and the comments that had been passed, in part because of the death of Angelucci and his crew. Angelucci had a lovely voice, he sang beautifully, it was left to me to gather together his guitar, his new, blue Schöller uniform with which he had probably hoped to make a big impression, his silver cigarette case and a little bundle of letters and pack them all up for his family. We all went to bed early in a big room in the Palazzo Pignatelli in Castelvetrano, Buscaglia had got a hold of a car battery and lamp. When he noticed that I couldn’t get to sleep, he asked if I was afraid, and I said I was. ‘So am I,’ he replied; ‘switch on the light and pass me the map.’ He traced out the route with his finger, ‘We’ll make our way across Tunisia and Algeria, what do you think?’ ‘Good idea,’ I replied. During the night he called to me a few times to check the route again, after all, I was his aide-de-camp. The following morning we were on the airfield at dawn, ready to go, waiting for word from Supreme Command. Buscaglia arrived in his car on the apron, he made Graziani get in and they drove down to the foot of the runway where we saw them get out and walk along a country road that circled the airfield. There they picked up the argument about mid-day light versus nightfall from where they had left off the previous evening, Buscaglia with new arguments in favour of daylight. ‘The level of training of some of the officers,’ he said, ‘does not provide sufficient guarantee of their ability to return under cover of darkness, especially with poor weather or damaged aircraft, so it’s better to launch the torpedo attack in early afternoon.’ Graziani turned the argument around to his own advantage, ‘if the training level of some of them is so modest, how would they ever be able to fly in close formation, wing to wing, and defend themselves from the Spitfires, so your main argument in favour of daytime rather than evening flying doesn’t stand up.” The elderly gentleman interrupted his narrative, “Of course I know this might seem to you nothing other than an academic dialogue on light and darkness held one morning in the year nineteen hundred and forty-two in a military airfield in the province of Trapani, possibly under the influence of the ancient philosophical traditions of the locality, but I would rather invite you to think of them as two young men obliged to debate technical and tactical questions while enclosed inside a shell of their deepest emotions and convictions. Their discussion, far from being purely academic, quickly shifted to embrace the whole progress of the war. Graziani fell silent as he became aware of the other’s need to find an outlet for the tension which had overwhelmed him, and the other released it in a monologue. The war was moving towards its inevitable conclusion, the enemy forces were much superior, we are being driven back onto home territory, he said: ‘Our group will be asked to perform heroics, many of us will be killed, the more fortunate will end up as prisoners of war, the few survivors or escapees will be handed the task of reconstituting the squadron.’ Graziani, fond though he was of Buscaglia, was as sharp as a needle and tried to propose an alternative, at least a short-term alternative, to this catastrophic vision. He began by setting out, in general terms, the case for inflicting the most serious damage possible on the enemy while keeping our casualties to the minimum; he continued with the observation that crews of our sort were suffering a process of attrition and that new ones could not be trained in a short time span and so, Carlo Emanuele, he concluded, why do we not attack at dusk when the odds are stacked more in our favour? Buscaglia, taken aback by this sudden, renewed assault, abandoned the agonised tone and was reverting to the argumentative style when he was interrupted by the arrival of a motorcyclist from the far side of the airfield with the news that he was wanted on the telephone; shortly afterwards in his office he received an order by telephone directly from the Head of Supreme Command, and the order was simplicity itself – back to Bougie, same procedure as yesterday.
“We took off at eleven o’clock in the morning, six warplanes with their respective crews, Buscaglia at the head; as he opened up the throttle, he waved to Graziani who, together with Faggioni, had been grounded since they had both taken part in the previous day’s operation. We headed for the open sea, and once we sighted La Galite, came down to sea level and made for Africa; we flew over Tunisia, continued towards Algeria, keeping to the far side of the mountain range which stands guard over the coast, until we were able to bank to the north and enter a valley in the spine of the Atlas Tellien. I have already described that route to you, but it was new to me; we followed the ascent of the valley, the mountainous flanks closing in until they reached a ceiling of cloud; as we climbed, we felt the cliffs pressing in on us, like reservoir walls on river water, and we were squeezed between the ceiling of cloud and the floor of the valley until we soared over the top and went plummeting like a waterfall down from the sky onto the sea and onto Bougie. Obviously, the British were desperately trying to figure out how we’d got there and why no one had picked us up earlier. Buscaglia gave the order over the headphones to get into assault formation, we drew up behind him, my Seventy-nine reached speeds it had never previously approached, everything – controls and bodywork – was shaking, a mad nose-dive in a hellish din of metal and wire, not just the whiplash of the cloth on our panels, above us the twenty-millimetre guns of the Spitfires crackled and beneath us the barrels of the nava
l batteries were spewing out one almighty, violent grand barrage, they had mastered it in a single day. The fighter planes made a bee-line for Buscaglia, singling out the big prize and ignoring us small-fry, his plane burst into flame at the first bursts of gunfire, he went on fearlessly, I can still see in my mind’s eye that plane deviating neither to right nor left, dragging a widening trail of smoke in its wake. I was right behind him, I tried to catch up and shelter him, I tried to get in close and fly wing to wing with him but I couldn’t reach him, I was already on full throttle, I dropped the nose and that way gained a few feet, but at the cost of losing height; I was out of line and directly underneath him, my machine-gunner was firing non-stop but the Spitfires were buzzing frantically on the other side, they got in between us and positioned themselves in the shadow of Buscaglia’s plane. They let up only when we came within range of the naval batteries, I was hoping against hope that Buscaglia’s crew would manage to control the flames on board, but as we passed over a destroyer the plane received several more strikes and the trail of smoke suddenly expanded. Buscaglia got clear of the ring of escort ships, his plane was blazing furiously but he took aim at a massive liner at anchor and fired off his torpedo. The plane was already low over the sea, it came gliding down and crashed in the bay; when it made contact with the water, it exploded and the burning petrol spread out over the sea.”
The elderly gentleman gave an unexpected sigh which hung in the heavy silence, throwing a furtive glance around him as he did so: “We returned to Castelvetrano in the early afternoon,” he said, “arriving one by one. Graziani, who was standing waiting with the mechanics, counted five planes and knew immediately whose was the missing sixth. As we were coming in, Faggioni’s plane was returning from Catania and he waited his turn to land. On the ground, passing by our bullet-riddled planes, his photographer and machine-gunner made signs to enquire of the mechanics whether anyone was missing, and they indicated with raised forefinger, joined thumb and ring finger the rank of squadron-leader. The photographer went along to the cockpit to tell Faggioni, who slammed on the brakes, put his head on the control column and burst into tears.
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