War in Val d'Orcia

by Iris Origo

  JANUARY 1ST

  The first severe snowfall. We have been completely cut off—the road to both Montepulciano and Chianciano impassable—no post, no light, and consequently no radio. A telephone call yesterday told me that a workman had arrived at Chiusi from Turin at two a.m., with his two little girls, on their way back to La Foce. The eldest of them, Nella, had been taken back to her home in Turin by her mother (who could not bear the separation from her) a few weeks ago—but since then Turin has been bombed again, and now the father has come down to implore me not only to take Nella back, but also her little sister. There was no means of fetching them, the motor-buses had been requisitioned by the Germans—and they could find neither food nor shelter in the half-destroyed station. After several hours and much distracted telephoning I succeeded in getting the children taken in by the nuns at the Chiusi orphanage. Today, at last, a car has brought them as far as Chianciano, and they have walked the last four miles through the snow. In Turin conditions are very bad. No oil and no fats have been available for over three months. The bombing continues. Many of the war factories have now been destroyed: and there are continual strikes in those which are still working. When the strike is general there are few consequences; but when any single factory strikes alone, the retort is simply to shoot a tenth of the workmen. Meanwhile the partisan bands in the mountains are constantly being reinforced, and receive clothing and arms from the factories, and food from many of the landowners.

  JANUARY 13TH

  After a grotesque and brutal trial, eighteen out of the nineteen members of the Great Council who voted against Mussolini were yesterday condemned to death at Verona. The five who have been captured—Ciano, De Bono, Marinelli, Gottardi and Pareschi—were shot this morning. The newspaper reports of the trial render all comment superfluous. Ciano (who had escaped to Germany and had been sent back to Italy on the clear understanding that his life would be spared) and De Bono were equally certain, until the actual reading of their sentences, that they would be acquitted—De Bono having even written from prison to his family to get his room ready as he would be coming home at once.

  JANUARY 14TH

  Anatole France, in his old age, intended to write a novel, of which the title was to be Les autels de la peur. The Altars of Fear—could a better title be found for an account of our times?

  JANUARY 15TH

  Go to Florence for three days, and on my return find two disquieting pieces of news: one of the refugee children, Maria, has got scarlet fever, and a thousand German paratroops are arriving at Chianciano. Moreover, the vice-Mayor of Chianciano informs me that the Capo della Provincia has decided to quarter them here and at the Castelluccio, turning us all out. After twenty-four hours of anxiety, however, we hear that the Germans have preferred to occupy all the Chianciano hotels. Nevertheless, in view of the probability of the arrival of other troops, we begin to pack up our best furniture, mattresses, books, etc. and send them in ox-carts to remote farms.

  Refugee children

  JANUARY 18TH

  Rumours of imminent Allied landings; the bombing of railway-lines and junctions intensified throughout central Italy.

  Nevertheless, Antonio, returning from Bolgheri, reports that the German Command in the Pisa-Grosseto area is confident that there will not be a landing there. The port of Livorno has been blown up and the town evacuated, but the rest of the coast is completely undefended.

  JANUARY 19TH

  The paratroops at Chianciano have come from Cassino, and are here to recuperate and train new recruits from Germany before returning to the front. The Germans are a formidable lot of veterans, from the Russian front and Crete, commanded by a major of sixty-five. Their interpreter (who comes up here with one of the officers, to requisition oil, wine, sheep, etc.) says that frequently the maintenance of discipline has to be enforced by their officers with a revolver. Their rations from Germany are not arriving regularly (no wonder, after the continual bombing), and they see no reason why sheep, pigs and geese from the local farms should not replace them. Occasionally, too, when they are drunk, there is trouble in the village, where they bang at the doors at night, shouting, ‘Out with the women!’

  The nerves of the Chiancianesi, already considerably shaken, are not improved by such incidents, nor by the troops’ A.R.P. drill. Shelters have been hastily built, and in these a considerable part of the population (many of whom are evacuated from Naples or Messina, where they have already been severely bombed) spend each night, as yet quite unnecessarily. Several families have already arrived at our farms, bringing their bedding with them, and have demanded, rather than requested, to be taken in. And this morning three terrified old ladies, refugees from Naples, drove up to see me to ask for shelter. Far too urban, in their high heels and moth-eaten furs, for any farm house, but penniless, since for months they have received no money from home and are living on the evacuees’ allowance of eight lire a day, they constitute a difficult problem—but I hope I have succeeded in finding them rooms in an, as yet, fairly safe village some miles away. Meanwhile the bombing continues, and now both the Siena-Chiusi and the Florence-Chiusi lines are cut (at Poggibonsi, Foiano, and Arezzo) so that we are completely cut off from the north. The BBC states that the Pisa-Rome line is also cut, so that now the only railway line in the country still working is that along the Adriatic coast.

  Maria, the child with scarlet fever, is dangerously ill. None of the others have yet developed it.

  JANUARY 20TH

  Allied prisoners are beginning to come through again, three yesterday, two today. The farmers who have given them shelter until now are beginning to be nervous, as the number of Fascist militiamen in the district is increasing, and there have been several arrests of prisoners and of the peasants who had hidden them. The latter will be shot. The prisoners need warm clothing, blankets, a ground-sheet for sleeping out in the woods (the nights are bitter) and, most of all, information. What way shall they go? and where are the Allies? We supply all that we can, but warn them that getting through the lines at Cassino is now practically impossible. Only a few days ago one of our own British prisoners, who had nearly got to Cassino, was caught there, poor devil, and succeeded in sending us a message as he passed through Chianciano on his way up to Germany. One of his companions, while the prisoners got out to get a drink, managed to hide under a bench in the waiting-room: the porters pretended not to see him, and when the train went off he escaped across country. But it’s a hell of a life for them now, and no one has more cause than they to regret the Allies’ slow progress. In these last few days, however, there appears to have been a much more determined attack on the Garigliano and there is a general expectation of some fresh event.

  JANUARY 22ND

  The news has come: this morning Allied troops landed at Nettuno, thirty miles south of Rome.

  JANUARY 23RD

  The landings continue, so far with only slight German opposition, but they are said to be massing for a counter-attack. The paratroops at Chianciano have left, and all last night long columns of German lorries were rumbling down the Via Cassia.

  Meanwhile we have our local problems to deal with. The Mayor telephones that a German officer will be coming up shortly to inspect the Castelluccio and this house, with a view to quartering about a hundred soldiers there, and the Maresciallo of Pienza comes over to inform us that the Colonel of the Fascist Militia in Siena has ordered him to keep us under special surveillance as suspect persons, guilty of having given funds to the partisans and of inciting our peasants not to report for military service. We are even supposed to have paid the sum of fifty lire to each man who fails to report! The Maresciallo himself, a very decent fellow of the old school, has accordingly come straight to Antonio to warn him. He confides to us that he himself has not as yet taken the oath of obedience to the Republican Government; if he is asked to do so, he will resign. Throughout the country the Carabinieri have taken a similar stand: seventy per cent of the officers and ninety per cent of the NCOs preferr
ing to resign from the Service rather than take the oath. Wherever they still remain they stand for stability, decency and order.

  JANUARY 24TH

  The German officer turns up: a parachutist, covered with medals of both this war and the last, in which he served as a volunteer at the age of sixteen. He inspects the Castelluccio, is unfortunately delighted with it, and a notice, stating that the castle has been requisitioned, is placed on the door. Mercifully our own house is not required—as yet.

  In the afternoon we walk up to Pietraporciana—a lonely farm on a hill-top at the top of our property—to see if we could take all the children there, if we are turned out. There would be thirty-six of us.

  JANUARY 26TH

  Spend the day sorting furniture and books to be hidden in outlying farms. Schwester Marie, the babies’ charming Swiss nurse, who was to have returned home at this time, decides to stay on with us and see us through, in view of the possibility of our being arrested and the children left alone. Our relief is very great, but she may soon be completely cut off from her home.

  Antonio returns from a day at Siena, having met long German columns on their way to Rome. An acquaintance had just arrived from Rome, in a car which was machine-gunned on the way, and reported that the water system in Rome has now been mended, but that there is much anxiety about food, as all the roads leading to the city are now blocked. A ‘state of emergency’ is to be declared there this afternoon.

  JANUARY 28TH

  Move the best furniture out of the Castelluccio before the Germans arrive. Walking back, notice a man following us in the woods. We stop and he comes up: he is a South African POW, needing information and food. We advise him to push on in the direction of Bolsena, avoiding the main roads, and await events there.

  A lady from Chianciano arrives, asking for a room for her invalid daughter and a nurse—which I am obliged to refuse as the house is already filled by the refugee children. She clearly does not believe me. Half an hour later an officer of the Fascist militia turns up—the worst type of ‘gerarca’—covered with medals, conceited and bullying. He has run away from Rome with all his family (in a large car, with a motor-bicycle preceding him) and requires for their accommodation nothing less than the whole of the Castelluccio. Take some pleasure in informing him that it has already been taken by the Germans and that he will find their label on the door.

  After dark a family of six arrive on foot from Chiusi asking for beds for the night. We put them up as best we can: father, mother, uncles, and three children. They come from a village near Cassino, have lost everything they possess, and have come to Tuscany to pick up their two little girls, who were at school at Castel Fiorentino, and tomorrow another child at Montalcino. The wife is a Frenchwoman, gay and tidy in spite of her extreme fatigue and the high-heeled chaussures de ville, which are causing her agony. I provide shoes for her, and tomorrow (since there are no trains) they will all go, on foot, to Montalcino and thence to Siena and Florence—where they hope to get a train to the Val d’Aosta, their home. They say that all the land round Cassino is flooded. So indeed (for fear of Allied landings) is the whole of the great Ferrara bonifica, and also five thousand hectares near Ravenna, and the Ostia bonifica near Rome—all land recently reclaimed which is thus again becoming a swamp. Moreover, all the machinery has been taken away to Germany. Thus all that was good in the work of the last few years is being destroyed; what is bad is still with us.

  JANUARY 29TH

  The bombing of central Italy is increasing. Within the last three days Orvieto, Orte, Terni, Arezzo, Foiano, Siena, Poggibonsi, Pontedera, Pontassieve, have all again been bombed. Yesterday a train, carrying Allied prisoners and civilians evacuated from Rome, was hit on the bridge of Alerona near Chiusi. The arches of the bridge were also hit, and some of the carriages plunged into the river: there were over four hundred dead and wounded. Such incidents, however horrible, are a part of war. But the almost total destruction of a little town like Arezzo, including the districts furthest away from the railway—and of country churches, like the Convento dell’Osservanza outside Siena—these, and the machine-gunning of the civilian population, cannot easily be explained. It is difficult to believe that public opinion in England, if fully informed, would approve of all this.

  JANUARY 30TH

  A German interpreter, who has come up to the farm to buy oil, complains that after the bombing of the bridge at Alerona, when some of the wounded were brought to the hospital of Chiusi, the population brought water and wine to the British wounded, utterly disregarding the Germans.

  Hear that a small band of British and American prisoners is hidden in the woods above Spineta, living in a charcoal-burner’s hut. One of them has come down by parachute, and they have a radio-transmitter; some of their supplies are brought to them by plane.

  FEBRUARY 3RD

  Our radios are blocked by order of the Fascist Government. We are given a choice between the Rome and Florence stations, and since the latter includes the German news and concerts from Vienna we choose this. We also conceal two smaller radios in the nursery and in my bedroom, and continue to listen to the BBC as before.

  Drive to Florence, starting at six a.m. to avoid machine-gunning or bombing on the way. Everything perfectly quiet and normal on the road, and we only meet a few German lorries beyond Siena. At Poggibonsi the destruction caused by the second air-raid is even greater than that caused by the first; this time the station has been hit, but also most of the town and some farms outside. The streets are deserted. In Florence the hotel is filled by Germans, Fascist officers and plain-clothes policemen; large German lorries stand before the door, and cars continually drive up, with people feverishly hurrying away from Rome or towards it—according to their circumstances and their political opinions.

  FEBRUARY 4TH

  The atmosphere is extremely tense. The hall of the hotel is like a police station in an operetta, in which the frequent irruptions of large bodies of police suggest to the innocent observer the arrest of some criminal, but, in fact, generally merely herald the arrival of some member of the Government. Last night two old Italian generals, who had fled from Rome and had attempted to spend the night here without showing their papers, were arrested by the Germans during the night. People who have friends in Rome telephone to them (by means of large bribes to the telephone girls) on the German lines in the hotel. Their conversations are very curious and elliptical. Arrivals from Rome say that it is now expected that the Germans will defend the city. The Pope has told his parish priests to warn their congregations that his efforts to obtain promises safeguarding the city, on either side, have failed completely. Here in Florence the German military attitude has considerably altered—not perhaps unnaturally—since the attempt on the lives of German officers last week (bombs thrown in the Excelsior hotel and at the station), and though the curfew instituted a few days ago has now again been removed, the amenities which previously existed have come to an end. The town is placarded with revolting photographs of corpses in the snow, said to have been found in a ditch near Vines in Croatia. The photographs bear the captions: ‘A Second Katyn’ and ‘Anglo-Russian-American Civilization’.

  There have been some more attempts against the lives of Fascist officials, and several officers and militiamen have been killed. And now, of course, there will be reprisals similar to those last month when—after the murder of the Fascist Colonel Gobbi—five anti-Fascists who happened to be in prison, and who had nothing whatever to do with the crime, were immediately shot. So long, however, as these incidents only concern the Fascists and their opponents, the Germans show no interest in the matter.

  The Gh.s arrive from Bolgheri, on the coast near Livorno. Their house and the houses of the owners of neighbouring properties have now all got Germans quartered in them. The machine-gunning on the roads from Allied planes is not agreeable; not only is any car upon the road attacked, but a woman and children have been fired upon on the beach, and old Count G. in the middle of a paddock.
/>   FEBRUARY 8TH

  A good deal of firing during the night. Generally it is merely the younger Fascists letting off pistols for fun (but occasionally hitting someone)—but last night a militiaman, who was leaning on the embankment of the Arno looking at the river, received two revolver bullets in his neck from a man passing by on a bicycle. The oddest story circulating in Florence is that a meeting took place in the Grand Hotel a few days ago between the German military and civil authorities to discuss, in cold blood, whether or not the city (when the time comes to retreat) shall be sacked. The Consul and other civilian officials were said to be against the looting, the soldiers in favour. The ultimate decision is not known, but it is certain that, at the present rate, there won’t be much left to be sacked, as all that is left in the shops is systematically being taken off to Germany. [1] Ugolini, for instance, told me that in the last few days ninety-six thousand lire worth of woollen goods has been removed from his shop—and as he spoke a large lorry was going down Via Tornabuoni, collecting goods from each shop in turn. Some of these goods are, theoretically, paid for—with enormous quantities of paper money, specially printed in the Vienna Mint, of which every German soldier carries great rolls in his belt.

  FEBRUARY 9TH

  Stray Allied prisoners continue to come by—two yesterday, a French-Canadian and an Englishman, and one, a boy from Inverness, today. The first two had jumped out of the bombed train at Alerona, and the Canadian had been hit on the shoulder by falling stones and fragments of the destroyed carriages: the shoulder was badly bruised and sprained, but not fractured. The nurse and I took some bandages into the woods and tied him up—and he and his companion set off again in search of friends nearby. The young Scotsman, who has been caught and has escaped again no less than three times since the armistice, was bound for Anzio: he wanted some news and a shirt. We now generally advise such travellers to hang about in the wild wooded country between San Casciano and Bolsena until their troops arrive. But when will that be? The news from the beach-head is increasingly discouraging. The area occupied by the Allies is now only ten miles long, and is continually under fire from the Germans, who are said to have brought down nine divisions to this district.