War in Val d'Orcia

by Iris Origo

  At Montepulciano this morning the disarming of the ‘Ravenna’ Division by the Germans took place: the men’s guns and tunics were removed, and those who wished to were allowed to take their mules away with them. At S. Quirico the garrison appears to have made an attempt at resistance, and we hear sporadic firing all through the morning. The whole thing is a grim comment on the illusions of those members of the Opposition who proclaimed (and sincerely believed) that ‘against the Germans the Army will fight again, as it fought upon the Piave’. But how can one expect an army to fight, when its leaders have fled? The King and Badoglio are safe in Sicily: and to Italians of a different stamp, nothing is left but bitter humiliation and shame. [17]

  Bewildered and confused, we sit listening to the radio—from which at one o’clock Radio Roma, for the first time, gives the news in German, and an hour later the BBC relays the bells of St. Paul’s ringing out in honour of the ‘victory’ over Italy.

  Meanwhile we have our local problems to solve, that of the British prisoners. With the arrival of German troops in Montepulciano their danger has become considerable. The lieutenant and the soldiers of the guard are already in plain clothes, preparing to go home, and the prisoners themselves are scattered in various farm houses. But there can be no question of concealing them for long. Too many people know of their presence here, including the shopkeepers of Montepulciano, where we drew their rations. While we are discussing what to do, one of our men comes running up the road with a false alarm: the Germans are already on the place! They’ve got as far as one of our farms, Pian Porcino: there’s been some shooting! (All this turns out later to have been purely imaginary.) Antonio hurries down to the farms where the Englishmen are living, and offers them a choice: those who wish to take their chance of getting away must leave at once; the others he will try to keep on as farm labourers, pointing out to the Germans that we are short-handed. And if the Germans threaten to take them off to Germany, we will try to warn them in time. The sergeant says that he will tell the men, and those who wish to go will be gone tomorrow. I spend the morning in the front garden with the children, expecting to see the Germans arrive at any moment, and thinking of ingenious ways of detaining them—but no one comes, and directly after lunch Antonio goes down the valley again, to take the men some maps, a compass and some money. Two of them, he finds, have already started: six more have decided to start at dusk. We have told them plainly that their chances of getting through are poor—but, says the sergeant, there is no holding them.

  Before going to bed, a final piece of news brings a climax to the day: German paratroops have succeeded in freeing Mussolini.

  SEPTEMBER 13TH

  More fugitive soldiers pass by, all through the day, and many of the men from our own farms have now come home. One who has returned from the South of France (acquiring an Army mule on his way) tells us of some severe local fighting there; another, from Genoa, says that a portion of the garrison in the harbour attempted to resist and two hundred men were killed, but that the barracks were promptly surrounded by the Germans, and the men there disarmed, marched to the station, and sent home. In the course of the morning, we hear a few gunshots across the valley, but never discover their origin. Antonio goes down to see off the prisoners, and discovers that thirty-two of them have now set off, so that only eighteen are left—the least adventurous, but possibly the wisest. In the evening the captain of the Carabinieri calls Antonio up to inquire about the prisoners, and Antonio explains the situation, pointing out that he needs their labour. ‘Go on feeding them, and keep quiet about it,’ is the captain’s advice.

  The German radio (which now alone gives the Italian news) does a good deal of crowing over Mussolini’s release, but gives no details. It also describes large crowds gathering in Piazza Venezia and calling for the Duce—a statement which it is difficult to believe. The BBC tells us of severe fighting, without much progress, on the Salerno beaches; the Eighth Army has occupied Cotrone—a long way away.

  So now, once again, we are under German rule; once again we must begin to wait. Looking back on the last few days, I realise that we have all been stunned by the suddenness and swiftness of the news, and also stimulated by the numerous small local jobs to be attended to. It is only now that the full grimness of Italy’s situation is sinking in.

  SEPTEMBER 14TH

  The German-controlled Radio Roma gives an account of the diplomatic conversations which took place immediately before the armistice. According to this account, Guariglia, Badoglio and the King himself (on September 1st, 4th, and 8th respectively) gave clear and personal assurances to the German envoys that Italy’s new Government would not break faith with her ally but would go on fighting.

  Drive with Antonio, Schwester and the baby to Montepulciano—with the grey mare, since we are warned that the Germans are still requisitioning all cars. The only German, however, whom we encounter is a lorry-driver fast asleep in the shade under his car. The roads are empty and the aspect of the countryside unbelievably peaceful. The B.s—although, as Liberals, they have desired the armistice—join with us in deploring the methods by which it has been accomplished, and especially the King’s and Badoglio’s flight.

  SEPTEMBER 15TH

  Antonio goes down to Chianciano for news (we are still without letters, papers or telephone) and finds four German hospitals in the Chianciano hotels. The wounded are beginning to arrive. At the post-office we receive a bunch of delayed letters, a week old, but are told that none will now be accepted or delivered.

  Meanwhile, although we are cut off from all our friends, life at La Foce is not lacking in variety. In the course of the afternoon, Antonio was first called upon for help by a German lorry-driver, who had got stuck at the bottom of our hill. (Once a Communist, he told us, he changed his views at Stalingrad.) Next we walked down the hill to give the day’s news to the British prisoners—many of whom, according to the sergeant, are now very jumpy and undecided. Half an hour later we were talking to another Allied POW—a French-Canadian who, with a friend, had found shelter this morning in one of our farms. He had escaped, with two hundred others, from a train in Florence that was taking prisoners up to Germany. He told us, too, that the Allied POWs at Laterina have broken down the barbed wire round the camp and escaped—three of them being shot in the process: so some of them, no doubt, will soon turn up here too. Finally, walking home, we stopped at a farm where a soldier had just returned from Jugoslavia. At the Jugoslav stations, he told us, German troops were waiting with machine-guns, but the engine-drivers slowed down the trains before each town, thus enabling the Italian soldiers to jump out, make a wide circuit round the towns on foot, and then jump again on to the next train that passed. At the next farm, one son had just returned from France; another from Russia.

  Germany, England, Canada, Jugoslavia, France, Russia—the farms of the Val d’Orcia are now linked with them all. Perhaps it is a forecast of the future.

  SEPTEMBER 16TH

  We wake to bad news. The tightening-up process has begun. This morning Radio Roma announces the names of the new ‘technicians’ appointed by the Germans as commissari, in place of the Badoglio Cabinet. All Italian officers and soldiers are to report at once to the nearest German Command—and corps of volunteers, organised by the Germans, are to continue the war against the Allies. The rest, we presume, will be sent to Russia or to labour camps. There will be many tears all over the country at this order, shed by all those whose sons and husbands have only just got home. Finally, all freed British prisoners of war are ordered to give themselves up immediately to the nearest German Command, where they will be treated according to the Convention of Geneva. Anyone sheltering them or feeding them is required to notify the nearest German Command of their whereabouts within twenty-four hours. Those failing to obey these instructions, or continuing to give shelter or food to POWs after that date, will be dealt with by German martial law.

  Our thoughts go at once, not only to the Englishmen on this estate, but to all th
e other POWs who are roaming about the countryside. Antonio goes off to Montepulciano to speak to the captain of the Carabinieri and returns with the news that the British prisoners’ presence at La Foce has already been notified by him to the German O.C. of Chiusi, who merely replied: ‘All right; I’ll see to it.’ This leaves us much where we were before. We discuss what advice to give to the men and come to the conclusion that their chances of being left in peace by the Germans are now exceedingly slight: those who wish to, had better make a bolt for it, while they still can. On the other hand, their chances of getting through to Naples are presumably even more slender than before. Antonio is about to hurry down to them, when the butler, Angelo, puts his moonstruck face in at the door saying: ‘Please, sir, the Germans have come!’ But it is a false alarm: they have merely come to requisition our motor-bicycle, and after an hour they leave, taking it with them.

  An absurd incident brings a comic relief to their visit. While Antonio is firmly declaring, ‘No, we have no spare tyres—all of them have been requisitioned—no, no tyres whatever are concealed upon the place’, Angelo, with a beaming smile, inexplicably appears in the fattoria yard, wearing a tyre upon each shoulder. Antonio, dreading serious trouble and a search of the whole farm, turns his back on him—but still Angelo stands in the yard, wearing his tyres like a garland. Finally the German can stand it no longer. ‘For God’s sake tell that silly ass to go away!’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen anything, but tell him to go away.’

  As soon as the Germans have left, Antonio hurries down to warn the prisoners—but scarcely has he gone than there is a knock at the door. ‘The Germans are back again.’ I go downstairs, thinking: ‘Now we’re in for it,’ and the officers’ first words, ‘About those prisoners’, are hardly reassuring. But in a moment I realise that they are not talking about our men, but about two others—‘Americans’, they say, in plain clothes, whom they believe to be in the district. No, I say, we have not seen them, and my husband is out—and the Germans go away again.

  Late in the afternoon I go into the wood behind the house, wondering whether the two American prisoners are in hiding there. And indeed, before I have gone two hundred yards, I meet one of them: a queer, unprepossessing little man in ragged clothes, certainly not an American, and who can speak no European language but a few words of French, in which he goes on repeating, ‘Tunis, Tunis’. There is something distinctly fishy about him—and though I point out the road to Monte Cetona, offer him some food (which he refuses) and say, ‘Germans are after you: get out as quick as you can’, Antonio meets him an hour or so later in the opposite direction. An odd detail is that he and his companion have a piece of paper on which is scrawled, ‘Ask for La Foce’.

  SEPTEMBER 17TH

  Today the news from Salerno is better. Purché facciano presto! [18] says everyone, especially those whose sons and husbands have just come home. Very few, if any, of these Italian soldiers will obey the order to report to the Germans. They propose instead to hide in the woods and (since the actual numbers of the Germans here are very small, and the Carabinieri will certainly not be over-zealous in carrying out their orders) I think they will probably get away with it. Of our British prisoners, several who had left have now come back, having discovered the ubiquitousness of the Germans and the scarcity of water. It is now settled that they are to stay on for the present, as if belonging to a regular working-camp. But when they are at work in the fields, they will always have their kit with them and keep one man on the look-out, so as to be able to bolt in time if the Germans approach. There is a cave at the top of the hill where they can camp out, and we will meet them at the edge of the woods, after dark, with food.

  While Antonio is arranging this with the prisoners, the same Germans as yesterday came back again, this time to fetch a battery and an air-filter. They behave like old acquaintances. ‘Very jumpy your household seem to be, when they see us!’ says the sergeant who pretended not to observe our tyres yesterday, a stout butcher from Berlin—and before they leave they produce photographs and anecdotes of their children. Both refuse to talk war or politics: ‘No, we’re not political blokes,’ they say—and they leave with a promise to bring us a sack of boots (stolen from the Italian military stores in Siena) for our workmen. It is all very odd—and very unlike any preconceived notions of war.

  SEPTEMBER 18TH

  Antonio is sent for by the German lieutenant who has been left in command at Chiusi. When Antonio mentions his address, ‘Ah, you’re the man who has got the British prisoners!’ says the lieutenant. ‘I can’t spare any men now to take charge of them, but I could perhaps send up a Carabiniere.’—‘Sorry, I can’t spare any men either,’ says the captain of the Carabinieri. ‘Well, then’—says the German to Antonio—‘I’ll give you a couple of rifles, and you can see to the guard.’ Antonio begins to laugh. ‘No, I really can’t do that.’—‘Well, then—you really think these men won’t make any trouble now?’—‘Certainly not.’—‘You’d better be responsible for them. And we’ll leave it at that.’ Surely a very odd conversation.

  In the afternoon we walk down to the prisoners’ farm and tell them of this arrangement, but warn them to continue to keep a sharp look-out, in case the situation should suddenly change. We also tell them the war news, which today is better, advance parties of the Eighth Army having joined up with the Fifth near Eboli.

  In the evening we turn on the radio and suddenly hear Mussolini’s voice—‘once,’ as he remarks, ‘well known to you.’ After relating the dramatic circumstances of his capture and of his release he proceeds to a violent attack upon the King—and ends with an appeal to Italians to unite once again under his leadership to form the new Republican Fascist Party. But nothing will come of all this. Too profound a disillusion, too violent a revulsion, is associated for all Italians with Mussolini’s name—and now no emotion is left but a weary passivity. That spring is broken.

  SEPTEMBER 19TH

  Talk to one of our contadini, Fosco Nisi, who has been a prisoner in Russia. He has a remarkable story to tell. Left behind (in February of this year) by the Italian troops in retreat, he and one companion—both with frostbitten feet—slowly made their way across the snowbound Ukrainian plain. Every night they slept in a Russian peasant-house and everywhere were fed, lodged and treated with the utmost kindness. The houses, he said, were poor, but clean and well kept: ‘They are as civilised as we are!’ At last their feet got so bad that they could drag themselves no farther, and the peasants took them to a small civilian hospital in a village about a hundred and twenty-five miles from Kiev, where they developed typhus and were cared for by the local doctor with the utmost kindness, and with exactly the same food and treatment as he gave to his own patients. Soon after their arrival, Russian troops occupied the village, but, on discovering the two Italianski, merely ordered that they should continue to remain in the hospital, under the doctor’s care. Later on, when they were convalescent, the Russians retreated, and the village fell into German hands, but they treated the two Italians less well than the Russians had done, and left them behind in the hospital.

  Finally the two men set off on foot to cover the hundred and twenty-five miles to Kiev, were transferred from there to a German military hospital at Warsaw, and only after many months and much red tape, at last rejoined their regiment at Naples—two days before the armistice! Then came the night of the last great air-raid on Naples (worse, he says, than anything he met with in Russia) and finally the last and most bitter of his experiences. On the day after the armistice, the barracks were surrounded by German troops and tanks. The colonel—a professional soldier—reviewed his men on the barrack square. They stood—anxious, bewildered, waiting for orders—and he bade them look at the German tanks around them. ‘On my own personal responsibility,’ he said, ‘and to avoid useless bloodshed, I order you to lay down your arms.’ As Fosco told me this, tears of humiliation sprang to his eyes. ‘Three years a soldier,’ he said, with a helpless gesture, ‘and then that.’ Now, lik
e the rest of the men who have come home, he will spend his days hiding in the woods, rather than obey the German command to join the colours again.

  Indeed, our woods seem likely to be thickly populated this autumn, sheltering not only Italian soldiers, but an ever-increasing number of Allied escaped prisoners (there were fifteen thousand in the camp of Laterina alone) who are waiting for an Allied landing in Tuscany. [19] Every day now some of them appear at the fattoria or at the various farms, travelling mostly in small parties of two or three—to ask their way south, get some food and then go on. Most of the farmers, though aware of the risk to themselves, are eager to shelter and help them. They are a very mixed lot: not only British, Americans, Canadians, and South Africans, but also Tunisians with more than a touch of Arab, who can only speak few words of French, South Americans who can only speak Spanish, and Boers who can speak no European language at all. Many of them have succeeded in getting hold of civilian clothes, although we have warned them that this renders them liable to be shot as spies. This evening, as we were walking down a lane, we suddenly met one of them—a tall, fair young man, who looked at us with some anxiety, clearly wondering whether he had better turn tail and bolt. ‘Good evening,’ we said—and he almost fell over with surprise. He was a South African who had escaped on the day of the armistice from Laterina, and had been wandering about ever since. It’s very lonely,’ he said naively, ‘with no one to speak to.’ This is his second escape, since he had already tried to get away from a camp near Foggia and had been recaptured—and he was very nervous, obviously wondering, as we walked along, how far he could trust us. Then, as we reached one of the farms where our POWs are living, and Sergeant Knight came running downstairs to thank us for the tomatoes and the Illustrated London News, the South African’s face cleared and, coming upstairs, he found a room full of Englishmen, a map, news, and some food. Never have I seen a man more astonished and more relieved. He told the other men later that I am the first Englishwoman he has ever spoken to—and he did not expect to find her in the Val d’Orcia.