War in Val d'Orcia

by Iris Origo

  The weather has chosen this inopportune moment to break, and all day it has been pouring. The firing becomes louder towards midday, and we realise that the German batteries have been moved down the road. Up to lunch-time the Germans tell us, ‘You can keep the children here’, but after lunch the colonel sends for Antonio and tells him that he advises him to move the children away, ‘to any place that is not on a road, on a hill-top, or on the side of the valley facing Radicofani’. We then, together with the chaplain (whom we discover to be a Capuchin missionary, Father Leopoldo), discuss what we had better do. We reject moving the children to Chianciano or Montepulciano, or any of the farms (which all face the valley or are on a hill-top), and finally reach the conclusion that the trench we had prepared in the woods, half a mile away, is probably the best place after all. It has, moreover, the great advantage of enabling us not to desert the place, for everyone agrees that, if we leave the house empty, we will return to find it destroyed. But it has begun to rain again, and the prospect of one or more nights in an open trench, with a three-month-old baby and a dying man, as well as all the other children, is not wholly agreeable. However, there is a piece of waterproof sheeting, big enough to form a sort of shelter about ten yards long, for the children, and another smaller one for the ill man, and with that we must be content. Antonio and the men begin to place the supports for the roof, while I return to the house and prepare the food supplies and children’s clothes. We shall take the pram (which, under its hood, will be the one completely dry place), pack most of the children’s clothes in it, and put the smallest babies to sleep in it in turn. The other children will have a blanket and a pillow apiece, a jersey and a change of socks. Straw to sleep on—plenty of bread and cheese—and a cow tethered in the woods for the babies. If only it would stop raining!

  All the day, during these activities, there is the haunting undercurrent of the terrible news from England, and the longing for further details. Only the German troops have a radio, and it is being used almost exclusively for military orders. But in the late afternoon, as we are standing by the trench, a sergeant comes up and tells Antonio with glee that die Vergeltung is going on splendidly. The details, he says, come from the neutral radio, Swiss and Swedish. They say that it has been going on steadily since the 15th, and that the whole of London and the south coast is aflame. There is no possibility of the landing in France continuing, and the troops there will be encircled. ‘What wouldn’t I give to see it!’ he cries. I feel sick and blind with misery, and go back to the house. Oh, England, England!

  JUNE 19TH

  This morning the paratroops have moved to Monticchiello, but have immediately been replaced by some gunners, under command of a stout Herr Major. His men are far less brigand-like in appearance and behaviour than the paratroops, but he has placed his batteries all round the house, and after lunch they begin firing in good earnest. The Allied fire is as yet directed on the main road and on Contignano, but presumably sooner or later they will respond to the fire from here. The Allied infantry, judging by the direction of the German fire, would seem to be at Contignano, just opposite. Meanwhile a persistent drizzle continues to fall, the trench (in which a small shelter has been erected) is deep in mud, and the prospect of a night or two there becomes less and less attractive. Moreover, the gunners are unanimous in reversing the advice of their predecessors, and in saying that, in their opinion, the children would be much safer in the cellar. Eventually the C.O. comes to see the cellar, and another smaller underground room beside it, where we propose to put the dying young partisan, and says that both will do. He will let us know, he says, when it is necessary to move the children there. We shall be about fifty people there, as, in addition to the twenty-three children, their two teachers and ourselves, there are all the men and boys of the fattoria (the fattore’s wife and family have preferred a cave in the cliff ), the members of our household, and several little peasant girls and women who have taken refuge with us from the Germans.

  All the afternoon the gun-fire is very near and loud. At eight p.m. the major appears and says that they are leaving at once. ‘And your batteries too?’ I ask. ‘Yes—but they will at once be replaced by others.’ We learn with dismay that these will be paratroops again. The major can only tell us that they will arrive ‘some time in the night’, and adds, ‘Get hold of an officer at once, if you can’. Antonio accordingly decides not to go to bed tonight. The news (according to German soldiers) is that der Tommy is already at Perugia, and that this district forms the last line of the local defence, so that we may hope to see the Allies soon. Another two days perhaps, the worst, will see us through.

  For two days we have had no milk for the babies, as the cows have been let loose in the woods (to prevent their being stolen) and though one of the keepers succeeded in finding and milking them the milk was seized by the Germans, as it was being brought back to us. We only hope that they will not find the cows, too.

  No more news of England.

  JUNE 20TH

  At five-thirty a.m. a deafening noise informs us that the paratroops have arrived. They are all round the house and in the farm, and are trying to break in the front door, but Antonio is able to prevent this on the ground that it is a Kinderheim. They are camping in the front garden, together with two stolen donkeys laden with goods, and a sheep. They have also broken into the farm larder.

  We take mattresses and benches down to the cellar, and get the children dressed and fed. The Germans look unspeakably worn out and dirty, and it is clear that all discipline has come to an end. Their O.C., however, is civil, examines the cellar and says it is pretty safe, and adds that he does not think anything much will happen until this afternoon. He gives orders to his men to keep out of the house, but whether they will respect this order up to the end, remains to be seen. They are placing machine-guns behind the parapet of the lower garden and of the vine-pergola, and have mined the roads.

  All through the morning there is a lull, except for some Allied gunfire on Contignano, already largely destroyed. We sit about in a desoeuvré way, with our overcoats and waterproofs, like people waiting at a railway station, and try to keep the children occupied. In the course of the morning we hear that a neighbouring farmer has been shot by a German because he made a fuss over giving up his pig, and is now lying dead in a field. His daughters, in tears, come to take refuge with us. The Allied gunfire moves on from Contignano to Castelvecchio, which is also destroyed, and the German guns are now firing on Contignano, from which we conclude that the Allies have arrived there.

  The day drags on interminably, but at about three o’clock the shells begin to fall on the Castelluccio hillside, and we move the children down to the cellar, blocking up the windows with sand-bags. The children are rather amused by this novelty, and not, as yet, much frightened. We also carry Giorgio down to a little underground room beneath the oil-mill. His appearance is tragic. Already his face has the drawn, shrivelled look that precedes the end, and it seems brutal to cause him the suffering of being moved. But it would be still worse unnecessarily to expose the two women who are nursing him, or to leave him alone.

  The day drags on and on, with sporadic shelling on both sides. Two dead Germans are carried down (killed by mines that they themselves had laid) and are buried late in the evening in our churchyard. Giorgio grows worse, and begs for morphia, which is given him. In the evening some German officers tell us that there is likely to be activity during the night, so we decide to settle all the children in the cellar, four small babies (of whom at least one is always wailing), twenty-three other children under ten, and about twenty adults, including some of the peasant women.

  Three other German officers turn up and demand beds in the villa for the night, firmly stating that nothing will happen until after midnight. So Antonio and I decide to sleep upstairs, in our own beds (leaving everyone else below, for greater safety)—but at eleven p.m. we hastily spring to our feet, as some shells come whizzing past our windows, very near. I arrive in the
cellar with only one shoe and rather shaky knees. Antonio, however, says that they are not very large shells. We then spend the night in the cellar, all the babies mercifully sleeping well. I am haunted all night by the thought of what these nights must be in the London shelters. If only, only, one could have news! The German soldiers all believe that the new weapon will bring the end of the war, but this may merely be propaganda to raise their morale. We have, however, no means of ascertaining the truth, and so one continues to wonder.

  JUNE 21ST

  Giorgio dies at dawn, quite quietly, without suffering, under the influence of morphia. We still don’t know whether the name and address he has given us are the real ones; only that his mother is waiting for him, somewhere in Bergamo.

  The children are none the worse for the night, and in the morning there is a long lull, which enables us to pop up to the kitchen and get breakfast. Then, at about nine, the German firing begins again, and five Sherman tanks are to be seen at one of our farms in the valley, only five miles away. Surely they will soon arrive! But there are still German batteries all round us, and the roads are mined, including the one just outside the front door. A Moroccan prisoner, with a turban and large moustaches, is brought in to the German O.C., the first member of the Allied forces to reach La Foce.

  The day drags on. In the lulls the children play under the vine-pergola outside the cellar door, and when the shelling gets worse, go underground again. They are very good on the whole, but their voices are nearly as deafening as the guns. A wounded German comes hobbling up, supported by two others, and receives little help from the Red Cross unit here, because he belongs to another detachment. Indeed, all through these days, we have been increasingly impressed by the curious inefficiency and apathy of the German Field Hospital Units. They hang about interminably with nothing to do, and never seem to be where they are really wanted, nor do any of the German troops show the slightest interest in, or helpfulness towards, members of other units than their own.

  A great increase of activity at about two p.m., and in the evening we hear from a German sergeant that at that moment the Allied troops (we learn later on that they are a battalion of the Scots Guards) had broken through, about a mile away, but were then driven back again by increased German firing. Now they are circling round and trying to come down the hill-road track from Sarteano, but there are German batteries there, too. After supper the firing increases in a new direction, and when I go upstairs to my room to fetch some soap, some shells again come whizzing just past the window, one bursting in the garden just below, and one in the stables. I suddenly realise that I am quite alone in the upper part of the house, scurry down the stairs in the dark, and reach the cellar with my heart in my mouth, to find the children crying and the noise pretty loud even there. After a few minutes, however, it calms down, and we get the children to bed, and there are only two other bad bursts of shelling during the night. Benedetta, sharing a bed with her nurse, was very brave; not crying, but holding my hand or Schwester’s very tight, and saying in a slightly quivering voice, ‘But even if the bangs get louder still, they won’t really hurt us, will they?’ and then, as they get worse, ‘Are the Germans really coming to eat us up?’ A sack of bread, which had been placed between two vats, came tumbling down on the head of one poor woman, who believed it to be a bomb. All through the night, lying awake, and thinking of all those who are lying in shelters in England, under a greater menace, I went over and over the course of events, wondering if we could have taken the children to safety elsewhere, if we had been more foreseeing. In the morning Antonio told me that he had been doing the same. But the sequence of events has been such that I really do not see at what point we could have behaved differently. Ten days ago, when we meant to take the children up the hill, the farm was still full of partisans, and later on the German mopping-up was taking place. Earlier still, when we might have gone to Florence, the roads were practically impassable, owing to the bombing, even if we could have got hold of any transport. Last week all the Germans agreed in advising us not to take the children to Montepulciano or Chianciano, as most of the hill-towns near the main roads have been badly bombed—and indeed in these last days we have seen Radicofani and Contignano destroyed. Our trench in the woods was also condemned by the German gunners, and since then mines have been laid all round it, and bombs have burst nearby. If we were alone, or only with our own babies, we would have taken to the woods, and tried to get through to the Allied lines, but with this pack of children, it is out of the question. There is nothing for it but to trust to the partial security of the cellar, and stick it out.

  JUNE 22ND

  The day begins badly. During the first lull in the firing a tragic procession begins to struggle down to our cellar: those of our farmers who, until then, have preferred to take shelter in the woods. All night they have been under fire, and their drawn, terrified faces bear witness to what they have been through. They thankfully take refuge in the cellar and the vat-room—old men, women and children—about sixty more people to shelter and feed. An old grandmother from a neighbouring farm is among them; half paralysed, with a weak heart, she has been dragged along by her son and daughter, and now collapses, utterly exhausted. The babies whimper from cold and hunger. The older children go and whisper to ours, frightening them with the tales that I have tried to spare them until now. We go up to the kitchen (since fortunately the lull still continues) and produce hot barley-coffee and bread-and-milk, the keeper having succeeded in finding and milking the cows. The farmers’ account of their nights in the woods is not such as to encourage us to try to get through to the Allied lines with the children, a plan which again, this morning, we had considered. Sporadic firing goes on all through the morning.

  This glimpse of a tiny segment of the front increases my conviction of the wastefulness of this kind of warfare, the dis-proportion between the human suffering involved and the military results achieved. In the last five days I have seen Radicofani and Contignano destroyed, the countryside and farms studded with shell holes, girls raped, and human beings and cattle killed. Otherwise the events of the last week have had little enough effect upon either side: it is the civilians who have suffered.

  LATER

  The above reflections were written during a lull in the shelling, in the kitchen, while boiling some milk for the children. But, in the midst of them, a louder burst of shell-fire than any we had experienced brought me down to the cellar, where we turned on the gramophone and started songs with the children, and waited. ‘Now,’ we felt, ‘it really is beginning.’ It had already been evident for some hours that shells of larger calibre were now being used, and both Antonio and I (though fortunately no one else) realised that the cellar was by no means proof against them. After a while, in another slight lull, the door opened, and a German sergeant came in: space would at once be required, he said, in the cellar (already filled to overflowing) for some German troops. A few minutes later an officer appeared: ‘You must get out,’ he said, ‘and get the children away. You can’t keep them here. And we need the cellar.’ (That same morning we had again asked this officer what we should do with the children, and he had said emphatically, ‘Stay on!’) ‘If you get out at once,’ he added, ‘you may be able to get out of range during this lull.’ There followed a few minutes of considerable confusion. Antonio and I were besieged by a crowd of terrified people, asking when and where they should go, what they should take with them, what they should leave behind, and so on. We could only answer: ‘At once. To Montepulciano or Chianciano, wherever you have friends. Take only what you can carry with you—the clothes on your back, and some food.’ The babies were howling, and, with Donata in my arms, I couldn’t help Schwester much, but we managed to pack a basket with the babies’ food, and the pram with some of their clothes and nappies. I took a tiny case, which we had in the cellar, containing a change of underclothes for Antonio and me, a pair of shoes, some soap and eau de cologne and face powder, my clock and Gianni’s photographs; and t
hat is all that we now possess. Each of the children carried his own coat and jersey. The grown-ups each carried a baby, or a sack of bread. And so, in a long, straggling line, with the children clutching at our skirts, half walking, half running, we started off down the Chianciano road.

  I did not think, then, that we should get all the children through safely. We had been warned to stick to the middle of the road, to avoid mines, and to keep spread out, so as not to attract the attention of Allied planes. German soldiers, working at mine-laying, looked up in astonishment as we passed. ‘Du lieber Gott! What are those children still doing here?’ Some corpses lay, uncovered, by the roadside. A German Red Cross lorry came tearing up the hill, nearly running over us. And all the time the shells were falling, some nearer, some farther off, and the planes flew overhead. The children were very good, the older ones carrying whatever they could, the smaller ones stumbling along as fast as their small legs could carry them. Donata shouted with glee on Antonio’s shoulder. No one cried except the tiny babies, but now and again there was a wail: ‘I can’t go so fast!’ and someone would pick up that child for a few hundred yards. The sun was blazing overhead, the hill very steep, and none of us had had any food since early breakfast. But every stumbling, weary step was taking us farther away from the cellar, and from what was still to come.

  When we got to the top of the hill before Chianciano we divided into two parties. Those who had friends in Chianciano went on there, the rest of us, sixty in all (of whom four were babies in arms, and twenty-eight other children) started across country towards Montepulciano. The road itself was, we knew, under continual shell-fire, but we hoped to be able to cut across to the Villa Bianca cross-roads. The first part went well, and when at last we had a ridge between us and La Foce, we called a first halt. The children fell exhausted and thankful on the ground, only to rise again hastily, having sat down on an anthill. They made, indeed, much more fuss about the ants than about the shells.