by John Smolens
The second half was excellent football, a pure defensive battle. And the crowd on both sides of the field was into it now—the Americans cheering for us, and the prisoners cheering for the COs. Once, when the ball rolled out of bounds on the west side, I went to the fence to retrieve it, and stood within five yards of Chiara. She was leaning against the car, her arms folded, as she had been throughout the match. Unlike the other Americans, she had remained quiet. As she stared back at me, the breeze tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. Then the Shepherd blew his whistle and I walked over to the sideline, raised the ball over my head with both hands, and threw it back into play.
Unlike American football, soccer has no visible clock. The referee keeps time on a watch. Players on the field only know approximately how much time remains. In the last couple of minutes, with the CO Bombers still ahead, 2-1, play turned furious. We knew time was running out, but we didn’t know exactly when that would happen, so our playmaking was desperate, intense, and quite brilliant. We managed two shots on the CO goalkeeper, which he deflected away with his long arms. Finally, there was a moment when Adino had the ball. He was about twenty yards from their goal and surrounded by opponents. But his legs performed magic and suddenly he broke away from them, sprinted toward the crease, and curled the ball into the far corner of the goal.
The match ended in a 2-2 tie, but my teammates piled on each other at midfield as though we had won a championship. The American spectators hurled more produce—very ripe tomatoes and a few large heads of cabbage—over the fence at the COs. Vogel gave the order and the German prisoners marched in formation back to the barracks. When I looked toward the yellow convertible, I saw it bouncing down the dirt road toward the prison gate. Chiara was sitting in back, in what Americans call the rumble seat, and I watched her ponytail snap behind her head until the car disappeared into the woods.
As we were walking off the field, Commander Dalrymple waved to me. He was standing next to a black sedan. I went over, and Father Ignacio, who sat behind the wheel of the car, greeted me in Italian. Usually, he came out on Sundays to say Mass for the Catholics in camp. “Tomorrow,” Father Ignacio said, “we are going to celebrate a special Mass of thanks for the life of the child you saved.” He was an old priest with kind eyes and a nose full of burst blood vessels. “The Imlachs and their neighbors would be honored if you would attend the service in Munising. One of my curates will come out to say Christmas Mass for the other prisoners.”
I looked at Commander Dalrymple, who said, “This is a rare request and you may attend, if you like, Captain Verdi. Merry Christmas.”
7.
Even though the match had ended in a tie, our squad celebrated the fact that we were still undefeated. We traded cigarettes and canteen coupons for a bottle of moonshine (made in the barracks that housed most of the Poles). Rudi Brandt wasn’t part of it. We hadn’t seen him since the end of the match, and we all agreed that on Vogel’s orders he had tried to throw the game. On an uncharacteristically democratic impulse, we voted him off the team. After that we drank and danced and sang in our barracks well past lights out, and it being Christmas Eve, the guards didn’t bother us.
The following morning I had a brutal hangover as Corporal Marks drove me into Munising. Adino and I had been able to put together the semblance of a dress uniform, though on me his jacket was too broad in the shoulders and too short in the sleeves. When I got out of the commander’s car, Marks said that someone from the village would return me to camp. I watched him drive off, and then climbed the steps and entered the church, which was packed with town folk. As I walked up the center aisle, everyone stood up. At first they were silent, but then someone began to clap, and in a few moments applause resounded through the church. I was offered a seat in the front pew with the Imlach family, who had been burned out of their house. For the most part, Mass was a blur. During the sermon, I was nodding off when Father Ignacio mentioned my name, startling me awake. He was recounting my act of heroism—a word he used several times—and explaining that such bravery knew no nationality, race, or creed.
After Mass there was a lunch in the parish hall. I endured bone-crushing handshakes from men, hugs from women wearing perfume so strong I thought I might faint. The Imlach family—George, his wife Dorothy, their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, and nieces—all crowded around me for more photographs for the newspaper. Finally, the hall began to clear, and eventually I was left seated with Father Ignacio, Mrs. Frangiapani, and Chiara, who had agreed to drive me back to the camp. My hangover was fading at last and everyone at the table spoke Italian. Chiara, seated directly across from me, wore a blue-and-yellow print dress, and her attitude toward me seemed more receptive, even though she hardly said a word.
When we arose from the table, I offered to get Mrs. Frangiapani’s and Father Ignacio’s coats and started for the cloakroom at the back of the hall. Chiara followed me, saying she would get her own. When we entered the cloakroom, she pushed me back against the coat rack, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. Empty wood hangers clacked about our heads, but her kiss became fiercely ardent—and then it was over. She released me, took her overcoat off a hanger, and fled the cloakroom.
On the way back to camp, Chiara drove, and I sat next to her while her mother occupied a corner of the back seat. “If they really want to show their appreciation,” Mrs. Frangiapani bellowed, “they’d let you go free.”
“Momma,” Chiara said. “They do not send war prisoners home for heroism.”
“Nonsense. All it would take is for Father Ignacio to write a letter to the Vatican, and then the pope would tell President Roosevelt to let him go home!”
Chiara laughed, and she almost drove off the winding dirt road, but I grabbed hold of the steering wheel with my left hand. “We are at war, Momma.” Chiara took my hand off the steering wheel and held it on the seat between us.
“With the Germans,” her mother insisted. “The Italians are another story.”
“But Mussolini has allied us with Hitler,” I said.
“Il Duce’s just confused,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “Men like him are always confused.”
Chiara’s fingers stroked the palm of my hand.
“The war will come to an end,” I said weakly. “Maybe in a year?”
“You can wait that long?” Chiara asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s getting more difficult in there every day.”
Then I felt Chiara’s hand leave mine, and I watched it reach across the seat, until it rested on my upper thigh. I feared that our silence would give us away, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “I’m not sure I would want to go home if the war ended.”
“What?” Mrs. Frangiapani shouted from the back seat.
I turned slightly, so that I could look back at the old woman, which only allowed Chiara to get a better hold on me. “Oh, I’d go back to visit, to see that my family was all right,” I said. “But I would stay in America if I could.”
“I’m not sorry we left Calabria,” her mother said wearily. “Except sometimes when it seems it will never stop snowing here.”
Chiara turned the car off the road and we passed through the camp gate, where the guards merely waved at us. When she stopped the car, she said, “It’s really bad in here, isn’t it?”
“You’ve just made it a lot worse. You both have given me a taste of freedom. Grazie.”
Mrs. Frangiapani looked like she was about to cry, but then she spoke harshly to her daughter. “Well, go on. Give it to him.”
Chiara opened her door, and as she swung her legs out from beneath the steering wheel I caught the briefest glimpse of the top of her stockings. I got out on the passenger side and went to the back of the car, where she lifted the trunk. “This ought to hold you and your friend Adino for a while. Buon Natale, Francesco.”
It was the first time she’d ever called me by my name. I picked up the paper bag in the trunk and glanced inside: farfalle.
&nb
sp; I went to the rear door and leaned down to the open window. “Molto grazie, Signora.”
“And there’s a jar of pesto at the bottom of the bag.” Mrs. Frangiapani was daubing her eyes with a handkerchief. “I will pray for you.”
That night the others at the football table watched in awe as Adino and I ate farfalle, which we explained meant butterflies in Italian. A few tasted it, but didn’t like it. They were put off by the green color of pesto.
It was a quiet evening, like all Sundays. There was a hollow feeling, and we seemed most aware of how far we were from home. In our barracks men played cards and chess, wrote letters, read, or just smoked and talked. The following morning we would be driven out into the woods to resume the tedious work cutting down trees. No one knew how long we would be kept in this limbo. As usual, I worked on the English lessons sent to me from Wayne University in Detroit.
A little after nine, men started to go out to the latrine before lockdown at ten. I was completing a vocabulary quiz when we heard the screams. We went outside and one of the prisoners waved us toward the back of the mess hall. It was quite dark behind the building, but I could see that it was Adino, writhing on the ground, making horrible grunts and groans.
Two of the guards arrived right after us and they trained their flashlights on Adino. There was blood in the dirt under his feet, and at first it was difficult to see what had happened. The Shepherd knelt down and held his light close, and said, “He’s been cut, back here—I forget what you call this.”
“Tendine” I could only think of the Italian word. Then I said, “Achilles.”
“Right,” the Shepherd said. “Both of them are cut.”
Though the other prisoners were soon told to return to the barracks, I was allowed to stay because the guards thought I might be needed as a translator. Adino was carried on a stretcher to the infirmary, and it was determined that he would have to be taken to the hospital in Marquette, an hour away. Adino was in agonizing pain, and the two medical officers—both Germans—gave him only an aspirin. When Commander Dalrymple finally arrived, I tried to convince him to let me go to the hospital with Adino, but I was sent back to my barracks.
I lay in my bunk for hours, unable to sleep. I hadn’t felt such terror since Africa. In Camp Au Train you thought you were removed from the war. As dull and tedious as life in those north woods was, it seemed safe. You came to believe that you could survive it. The enemy here wasn’t out to kill you; in fact, they housed you and fed you better than your own army had done before you were captured. But now it was clear that the enemy wasn’t the Americans.
We had heard about these things happening in other camps. There were Gestapo and SS; there were midnight tribunals. Men who were easily labeled as traitors to the Führer were killed or, often, given the option to commit suicide. The Americans wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything about it. Ironically, they had posted a bulletin in each barracks urging any prisoner to report incidents that made him feel he was unsafe. The Nazis would immediately deem such an act as collaborating with the enemy. We’d heard about one prisoner in Arizona who had been tried and found guilty of conspiracy against the Third Reich because he liked jazz. His ears were cut off. Now many of the men in Au Train, particularly the Germans, were changing their behavior. They were even wary of talking with those of us who were not German.
I knew Vogel’s men would come for me soon. When I was in southern Italy and Africa, the dead and wounded were everywhere. My hope was that when I died it would be sudden and immediate. A bullet in the brain. A direct bomb hit. A mortar shell. I feared the slow death: the shrapnel in the intestines. The faces of those men carried their agony into death. And perhaps most, I feared being maimed: life without a leg, an arm, a penis.
It was clear that Vogel believed in forms of punishment that he deemed suited to the crime.
In the morning I was put to work with two new men, the Russian Dimitri Sabaneyev, and a German named Otto Werner. We hardly spoke. A few times Sabaneyev caught my eye, and I realized that he too had suffered a long, sleepless night. Werner had complete disdain for the notion that he was expected to work with either of us. When we asked him to help, he ignored us, believing that he was doing his job, slowing down our efforts to help the enemy.
Before dinner that evening, I went to speak to the commander. Corporal Marks stepped into Dalrymple’s office, and after a moment I was admitted—a bad sign because previously the commander always came out of his office to speak to me. Marks closed the door behind me, and Dalrymple gestured toward the chair in front of his desk. I remained standing. “I would like to know how Corporal Agostino is doing, sir.”
The commander nodded but avoided looking me in the eye. He wasn’t going to give it to me straight.
“You have heard from the doctors, Commander?”
“It’s not good, Captain Verdi. His Achilles tendons were completely severed. The doctors suggest that he be moved to a hospital in Detroit, where they’re better able to deal with such situations.” The commander stared at me for the first time. “They aren’t sure if your countryman will walk again.”
I sat down in the chair.
The commander opened a lower drawer and placed two glasses and a bottle of liquor on the desk. He poured two shots and put one on the outer edge of the desk. “I suppose you’d prefer a little wine, Captain, but this is all I’ve got.”
I picked up the glass and held it up to my nose.
“It’s Kentucky bourbon.”
I didn’t like the smell, but it seemed less vile than what the Poles made from potatoes. The commander drank down his bourbon and placed his glass on the desk. “Captain,” he said, and I could tell by the resolve in his voice that he was now determined to be straight with me. “Something is going on in this camp.”
“Yes.”
“There’s a loss of discipline,” he said. “Fights, escape attempts, suicides—and this terrible thing that has happened to Agostino.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve had a talk with Kommandant Vogel about it.”
I drank my bourbon, which burned my throat and sinuses. “You have?” I wheezed.
“Indeed, he shares our concern. We agree that there’s a lack of discipline, that certain elements in the camp are bent on creating pure chaos.”
I put the empty glass back on the desk and said, “Elements?”
“As much as I detest the Third Reich and many of the things Hitler stands for, as a military man I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t acknowledge that there is much to be admired in the way his army conducts itself. Particularly the Afrika Korps. They are first-rate. But here we simply don’t have enough of them to keep the other troops in order. Vogel, oh, he’s trying, but what can one officer do? This thing they are up against is evil; it’s as bad as anything the Führer can do, maybe even worse.”
“What thing, sir?”
“Communism.”
I wanted to stand up, but my legs wouldn’t move.
Dalrymple leaned on his desk and said, “Captain, I mean no disrespect. You are clearly a man of honor and dignity. You speak several languages and have been of great assistance to this camp as a translator. I understand that you’re furthering your education through a correspondence course. Your act of heroism in that burning house speaks for itself.” He sat back in his chair, exhausted. “But Agostino is different. He has little education and he comes from the peasant class, is that not true?”
“His father is a butcher, Commander. My family owns a shop where cheese and meat are sold, and we have an olive grove.”
“Yes, you are landowners.”
“What are you saying, Commander?”
“Captain Verdi, you know very well that when the war is ended we will face a potentially greater danger. And you know that countries like Italy are full of people who are waiting for fascism to fail.”
“You think Adino is a communist?”
“Captain, it is a terrible thing that happened to him, but you must s
ee that this is all part of a pattern. I can’t say with absolute certainty anything about him—perhaps he has resisted the influences of communism and was punished because of it. Kommandant Vogel has suggested this as a possibility. It’s the way the Commies are, of course; they cut you at the first sign of resistance, and—”
I stood up then, the legs of the chair scraping loudly on the wood floor. “Sir, Adino Agostino is not a communist. He was not cut by any communists. There is no communist organization here.”
Dalrymple looked disappointed, but with patience he said, “You see, Captain, that’s exactly why they’re so . . . insidious—do you know that word?” I merely stared at him. “They’re all around you, like snakes in the grass, and you don’t even see them. Even here, in the United States of America.”
I went to the door, but when I had my hand on the knob, the commander said, “I’m afraid, Captain Verdi, that I must take steps before this gets out of control.” I looked back at him as he splashed more Kentucky bourbon in his glass. “I’m sorry, but one of the first things I must do is put an end to this soccer team.”
“For the winter, yes, but certainly in the spring we will schedule matches with—”
“Captain,” he said without looking up at me, “there is no more soccer team.”
8.
December 29, word went around the camp that Glenn Miller was missing. He’d been in England for much of the past year, giving concerts for the military. News reports were vague: he’d told his wife, who was in the States, that he was about to travel to France, and then there was no word of his whereabouts. I’d never seen the guards and American staff so distraught. It was as though they’d lost a member of their family.
That morning as Otto Werner, the young German who had replaced Adino in our work detail, wandered off to defecate behind some bushes, Dimitri Sabaneyev took something from his pocket and held it out to me in his massive, calloused hand.