War in Val d'Orcia

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War in Val d'Orcia Page 11

by Iris Origo


  A band of partisans

  Five minutes later the German sergeant came up to the farm and telephoned to the O.C. at the Chianciano hospital. He was a red-haired, simple young man, much shaken, with the loquacity that sometimes follows a narrow escape. ‘Whew!’ he said—sinking into a chair and mopping his face, ‘that was a narrow shave! I’ve been through France and Russia, but this—whew!’ An hour or so later three German officers came up from Chianciano, asked some questions, and looked at the scene, where there was nothing to be seen but some broken glass. One of them, however, did not seem entirely satisfied. ‘Somebody must have lent a hand,’ muttered one of the soldiers to another, and the officer pointedly asked Antonio about our prisoners, and whether they really had left: ganz bestimmt? But in the end they went away again. [25]

  In the evening we heard that all four Americans had been seen at the top of the property, heading south.

  OCTOBER 19TH

  We hear from the Carabinieri at Pienza that the Americans of Sunday’s incident are not escaped prisoners, but parachutists. This morning a German plane flew low over the district, on the look-out—but nothing more has occurred. We also learn that on Saturday night the Americans slept in one of our farms—and offered to arm the farmer with a tommy-gun if he would join them.

  Yesterday evening a strange young man, driving a buggy, drove up to our door. He introduced himself as an officer of Genova Cavalleria, who had driven himself successfully through the German lines, all the way from Piemonte to Tuscany. When his regiment was disbanded on September 12th, near the French frontier, he decided to try at least to save some of his horses and set off with five men and seven horses, travelling across country and hiding whenever they met the Germans. But as they got towards Piacenza the Germans became too numerous and he reluctantly sold all the horses except his own, which he harnessed to a small buggy—and so, dressed as a fattore, drove quietly across Italy. Two days more and he will be at his home, Spoleto.

  He told us that, of the four thousand officers in Rome who, according to the Fascist radio, had ‘spontaneously adhered to the cause of the Axis’, and who had started off in German trains for the north, only eight hundred got as far as Florence: all the others had succeeded in escaping on the way!

  OCTOBER 20TH

  The battle of Volturno is over, but the Allies’ progress is still very slow; and as the Germans slowly retreat, they have ample leisure to leave utter destruction behind them. If the ‘liberation’ of Italy goes on at this rate, there will be little enough left to free: district by district, the Germans are leaving a waste land. Gone are our hopes of a decisive action before Christmas! A grim, long winter lies before us, at the end of which none of us can tell whether our homes will still be standing, or our children safe; and we must meet it with what we can muster of patience, courage and hope.

  OCTOBER 21ST

  Yesterday Arezzo was bombed, today Orvieto. We heard the noise of Arezzo’s bombing as we stood watching the sowing and the oxen slowly plodding across the fields. And this morning, as we were playing in the garden with the children, thirty shining Liberators, on their way to Orvieto, passed overhead—the first that I have actually seen.

  Hear of the arrest in Florence of M. C. C. and her family—for having sheltered a British prisoner for several days in her house in town (she had been unwise enough to speak of it freely, saying how nice he was). There is now a regular chain of people in Florence who give help to Allied prisoners, many of whom are hidden in the woods and the surrounding hills. Courageous friends walk up into the hills and meet them, provide them with money, clothes and blankets, and guide those who need it towards the south—while the farmers provide them with food and shelter.

  News of Bruno has arrived on a Red Cross postcard from Udine—where nurses meet the trains taking prisoners up to Germany and write down the addresses of as many as possible, so as to be able to send back news to their families. At some stations, where the nurses have received permission to take baskets of grapes to the prisoners, they have concealed small saws in the bottoms of the baskets—thus enabling the men to saw through the bars of the train’s windows, and escape.

  OCTOBER 28TH

  A boy of fifteen from the Montepulciano G.I.L.E. (a school for Italian children evacuated in 1940 by the Fascists from Tunis, Cairo, Malta, etc.) turns up. He says that he has run away from his school for fear of being taken by the Germans for Arbeitsdienst, and states that a lorry has already arrived at their school to fetch some of the boys. ‘Those who have relatives in Italy to plead for them,’ he says, ‘may be let off—but I’ve got no one. My father and mother are in Alexandria.’ He has been walking about for six days, and now asks whether we will take him in at one of our farms. I telephone to the Mayor of Montepulciano, and find out that no boys have been taken away from the school, only some young men of military age who previously belonged there and had recently returned, after running away from their regiments. We persuade the boy to go back, and Antonio gives him a letter for the head of the school, asking for him not to be punished—but two hours later he is found in another of our farms, in precisely the opposite direction. Germans or no Germans, he is not going back to school! So we settle him at one of our farms.

  Occasional POWs pass through, asking the way south. All know the name of this place, and we get the impression that someone farther north is passing them on to us. Not far from here, in the wild wooded country beyond Castiglioncello, there is said to be a large band of POWs, as well as Italian soldiers and officers, who are in hiding there. God knows how they will get through the long, cold winter!

  OCTOBER 31ST

  Grosseto and Genoa bombed yesterday, and Genoa and Perugia today. From here we see the lights in the sky and hear the bombs from Grosseto and Perugia.

  The new Fascist Republican Government has announced the formation of ‘special tribunals’ for the trial of ex-Fascists who have ‘betrayed their faith’ and for other Italians who ‘in speech or action have attacked the Fascist regime’—an indictment sufficiently wide to embrace all those against whom any Fascist may have a personal grievance. For those who were once members of the Fascist Party, the only penalty is death; for the others, from five to thirty years of imprisonment.

  NOVEMBER 3RD

  To Montepulciano for the day. Hear from a friend of B.’s who has just arrived from Rome (on a German lorry—there is now no other way) that whole Jewish families have been deported from Rome by the Germans. The old Ghetto was surrounded by troops, and men, women and children driven out of the houses, packed into closed lorries and driven off—no one knows where. At Arezzo this week, when the young recruits of the 1925 class failed to report, the police arrested instead their wives or mothers, who were kept at the police-station until the men turned up.

  B. also tells of terrible poverty among the numerous refugees from Grosseto and Livorno in Montepulciano. Their subsidy is eight lire a day for an adult and three for a child: a starvation allowance. And even this has now been taken away from all the men of the 1920–25 classes, so as to force them, by starvation, to rejoin the Army. B. is attempting to organise a communal kitchen, so that they may have at least one nourishing daily meal, but the supplies from Siena are delayed.

  Our nurse, visiting a patient at a farm, finds a Carabiniere in hiding. According to his account about a thousand men are now concealed in the Spineta woods—Italian officers, Allied prisoners of war, parachutists and Italian soldiers—and are being fed and supplied with ammunition (difficult as this is to believe) by Allied planes. [26] This man returns to his farm occasionally at night and goes back the following night, taking such provisions with him as his family can supply. I arrange that if, later on, medicines, blankets or other comforts should be needed for any of his companions, he will come by night to our clinic and collect what is required.

  NOVEMBER 4TH

  Spent the day in the beech wood, picnicking with the children. As we are lunching on the fringe of the woods a shining white pla
ne appears from the clouds and dips very suddenly, just above our heads, then circles over the Spineta district. Is it, we wonder, one of the planes bringing supplies to the hidden ‘bands’. At the Pietraporciana farm, according to the farmer, small parties of prisoners are constantly turning up, and are fed and lodged at the farm for the night—then sent on south. I cannot, however, be certain whether or no my informant knows about the Spineta band—part of which is said to be hiding here in the woods above Castiglioncello—and naturally refrain from pressing the point. He shows me a note left behind three days ago by a British major, addressed to ‘the O.C. Allied Army of Occupation, Sarteano District’ (a foreshadowing of the future which gives me quite a turn) acknowledging the kindness and hospitality received at the farm and asking that compensation should be given to its inhabitants. For several hours I walk in the wood hoping to find some trace of the Spineta band, but in vain.

  A letter from friends in Florence tells of an ‘epidemic’ of arrests, and advises me to go on nursing my baby, as a form of self-protection from being arrested! Another friend, living near Grottaferrata, fifteen miles from Rome, writes of ‘this nerve-racking waiting, waiting … Every day I do some planting and sowing (from force of habit) while asking myself “What for? Perhaps you will not see any of it, and you and your plants will be destroyed!”’ Her daughter, whose husband is in the Foreign Office, is in daily fear of her husband’s arrest; her four sons, of military age, are all in hiding in various parts of the country. ‘In Rome,’ she writes, ‘one can’t find any workmen, as none of them will go out for fear of the man-hunts. Even here the peasants won’t go outside their own gates.’

  NOVEMBER 5TH

  A friend returning from Florence brings accounts of fresh arrests in the provinces of Florence and Pisa; mostly innocuous old Senators, whose only crime is that they are known to be loyal Monarchists. It is said that the cause of the arrests is the severe treatment of Fascist officials by the Allies in southern Italy—these Monarchists being taken as hostages to protect the arrested Fascists. But if so, it is difficult to understand why most of the people arrested have been let out, after only a week or ten days in prison. In Rome there have been similar arrests among Ciano’s entourage. In Florence the Prefect is a fanatic, and has issued most inconvenient orders. One of the most unpopular is that ordering all employers to give a gift of a thousand lire to each of their employees, to celebrate the 28 ottobre! This at a moment when all work is at a standstill, and when it is impossible to get hold of any ready money. The banks only allow their clients to draw five per cent a month of their deposit and will cash no cheques.

  NOVEMBER 7TH

  An unidentified plane has dropped some bombs on the Vatican, injuring several buildings, though fortunately not St. Peter’s. The German radio, of course, claims that it is an Allied plane; the BBC denies it.

  NOVEMBER 8TH

  The first snowfall. Bitter cold. How will the prisoners and other fugitives in the woods survive the long winter? The boy from the G.I.L.E., who is now settled at one of our farms, comes up to ask for clothes—having nothing on but a linen jacket and a thin vest. There is also a constant stream of fugitive soldiers and evacuated women and children, all begging for clothes. We are giving what we can of our own, and are making jerseys and baby jackets with every scrap of wool, using the fringes off old counterpanes; slippers with old strips of carpets and curtains; and babies’ nappies with old sheets—but soon it will all be exhausted.

  NOVEMBER 10TH

  Bombing of Turin and Genoa has begun again—as well as of the railway farther south. Daily the BBC tells of ‘four miles’ progress; two miles’ progress’—it seems infinitesimal. The BBC reports, too, with satisfaction, the results of the Moscow Conference; but here it seems very remote indeed. As the circle in which our life moves grows smaller and smaller, and the immediate menace more threatening, our mental horizon shrinks to that of the peasants; and with this narrowness creeps in something of their scepticism towards all vague schemes for the future, all remote Utopias. We speculate, instead, at most, on the news from the surrounding provinces—for each province, now, has (in practice, if not in theory) its own laws, depending on the temper and attitude of the local Fascist Prefect, or of the German O.C. And soon even this local news will not reach us, for everywhere the screw is being tightened.

  NOVEMBER 11TH

  By order of the Fascist Government, all men who were still in the Army on September 8th (and who are now in hiding throughout the country) are to report before November 25th, to receive temporary leave. This means, presumably, that the authorities have at last realised that there is no possibility of getting these men to fight again, and that the whole work of the country is being held up while they are still in hiding. But many will be very wary of reporting themselves—fearing a trap. And the order does not, of course, apply to the younger classes (1923, ’24 and ’25) which are about to be called up—to form, we are told, the nucleus of the new Republican Army—and whose members are at least as reluctant to join the colours as their elders.

  NOVEMBER 12TH

  Antonio returns from two days in Rome, having gone there by car with the Mayor of Chianciano and a German permit. The only disadvantage of this form of travel is that, since the only cars on the road are presumably German, they are occasionally machine-gunned by Allied planes, but the journey passed without any incident. As they got nearer to Rome (supposedly an ‘open’ city) the numbers of Germans increased, and when they reached the town, they found it full of troops, with German sentries even at the doors of the Excelsior. Two floors of the hotel are taken by the Germans, the rest are empty, since the advent of Germans in a house in Rome today has the same effect as that of a negro family in a New York apartment house: the other tenants move out. Moreover many families, who have reasons for wanting to keep out of the limelight, have moved away from their own houses to those of friends, so that completely empty houses are to be found beside others absurdly overcrowded. The whole process, indeed, of covering one’s tracks has now been brought to a fine art, and many people are now still living, although hidden, in the heart of Rome, while special offices furnish them with false identity cards and ration cards. Some of those who have most cause for fear—Jews, officers, or members of the recent Government—are known as the sepolti vivi (buried alive—from the name of the perpetually cloistered nuns) and live in walled-in rooms, their food being handed down to them by their families through a trapdoor in the roof. Others are hidden in convents, in the catacombs, in attics, even in the domes of churches; they meet, in secret, in churches, cellars and caves and there mature the plans of the ever-increasing ‘Resistance’ movement. Other members of the same movement—many of them women—circulate freely in the city, changing their sleeping place as often as possible. It is they who carry messages from one group of the movement to another—who find hiding-places for Allied POWs—who furnish arms to the patriots and information to the Allies. Some day the full story of their adventures will be told. [27]

  Recent arrests have been directed not so much against anti-Fascists as against members of the Ciano group and Monarchists. They include, beside numerous ex-Fascists, ladies of the Court, and smart women of Ciano’s set. Of the seven thousand Jews of the city, about one thousand have been taken off by the Germans—all the rest are in hiding. A friend in the Red Cross writes to me (in a letter sent by hand): ‘The Ghetto is deserted. It was surrounded by troops armed with machine-guns, and all those who were still there were dragged away—men, women and children. In one house a woman and a child of eight had hidden in the attic, leaving a baby of one month in the room below, for fear that its cries would give them away. When they returned, the baby was gone. In short, all that we had heard about the treatment of the Jews in Poland, we have now seen here.’

  Many members of the Foreign Office have disappeared—including our friend M. R. and her husband, who, with another couple, have set off on foot for Naples. It seems, however, very doubtful whether th
ey will get through, as we hear that south of Frosinone the German patrols have orders to shoot at any civilians going southwards. The complete German control of the country is all the more remarkable in view of Kesselring’s admission to a German woman married to an Italian, that, on the day of the armistice, he was taken completely unawares, and found himself isolated at Frascati, cut off from all other German troops, and with no orders from Germany or from his Embassy. At that moment, he said, nothing would have been easier than to have turned the Germans out of Italy. Within a few hours, however, it became clear that the Italian troops had received no orders: in spite of sporadic fighting—notably by the Piave Division and the Granatieri—the Germans became the masters of the situation. Confronted with the threat of the bombing of the undefended population, Count Calvi di Bergolo (the King’s son-in-law who had taken charge) accepted the German conditions—and so they once again entered Rome, as masters. They then, having possessed themselves of the Italian ciphers, issued orders of surrender all over the country—and thus became once again the rulers of Italy.

  Yesterday Antonio talked with Marshal Caviglia who had come to Rome for two days. Antonio asked him what, in his opinion, an Italian could do at this moment for his country.

  ‘What life are you leading?’ asked the Marshal. ‘A peasant’s,’ replied Antonio. ‘So am I—there’s nothing we can do but wait.’

  NOVEMBER 24TH

  Return from a week in Florence, having gone there by car. The roads empty and peaceful. Occasional filled-in holes by the roadside show where mines have already been laid by the Germans. The larger bridges of Florence (though not the Ponte Vecchio) have also been mined—as well as the electric plants, gasworks and telephone. The town itself seems, at first glance—except for the German troops—almost normal. It is only after a day or two, when one has begun to talk to people, that one realises the extent of the underlying apprehension. The new Italian S.S.—formed on the German model, but apparently chiefly consisting of irresponsible boys of seventeen and eighteen (some, according to rumour, taken from the boys’ reformatory, the Minorenni Corrigendi) has already got to work; at night, after the curfew, its members amuse themselves by a lavish use of their revolvers and hand-grenades. Moreover they have proceeded to numerous arrests—some on the charge of having given assistance to British prisoners, but some merely on vague unspecified charges—so that no anti-Fascist can feel safe. The arrests generally take place in the early morning, when the victims are in bed, and their families are left in complete ignorance of where they have been taken. The questioning is often brutal and prolonged. Sometimes, if the right strings have been pulled by their friends, the arrested are let out after a few days—sometimes they disappear completely. The complete capriciousness in the choice of victims (since many well-known anti-Fascists are still at liberty, while some obscure citizens, innocent of every political activity, are under arrest) produces a peculiar uneasiness—and there are few houses where a ring at the bell, after dark, does not cause alarm.

 

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