In Parma, in the north, where we also had to go, I again noticed the same spirit of confidence in Italy’s future. The Republic was going to be a good thing and Fascism was dead, even if a few diehards were lingering on, and Italy was now one of the democratic powers and a nation to be reckoned with before many more years had passed. The CO called on the sindaco of Parma, who greeted him with tears in his eyes, and spoke feelingly of Anglo-Italian co-operation and his friendship for England. It was in Parma that a doctor had been shot by the Germans for treating one of our wounded prisoners in his dispensary. He left a widow and son. There had been many other helpers in this area, and it was in Parma that the seven sons of Farmer Cervi of Gattatico met their heroic end, and Farmer Cervi was later decorated at a public ceremony by the Italian Government.
In Florence there were a few more visits to be paid, among them a call on the chief of the Carabinieri, a brigadier general of the corps, to thank him for all the valuable assistance his men throughout Tuscany had rendered to our officers on all occasions. There was a farewell visit to the sindaco, Professore Pieracini, an outspoken friend of England, followed by a call on Siena’s Carabinieri HQ too. On 1 March a ceremony took place for the distribution of certificates at Pontremoli, in Massa, where the bishop, Sismondo, made an impassioned speech. He was so frankly pro-British that I remarked on it to Captain Edgar afterwards, who was doing the liaison work on this occasion, and was told that His Eminence was famed for plain speaking and courage. Thanks to Bishop Sismondo’s help during the war, Major Watson had been able to save the town of Pontremoli from destruction by the Allied Forces and had driven the Germans out before the arrival of the Allies. There was great enthusiasm at the Pontremoli presentation ceremony, where the sturdy hill-folk came in their cloaks and thick boots to collect their certificates. A large crowd milled outside the town hall before the CO arrived and again as he drove off, on his way through the mountains, after the ceremony; the celebrations must have continued for the greater part of the day. I was very impressed by the bishop, a tall, imposing figure in his robes of magenta silk, his refined aquiline face alert with good humour and intelligence, and his white hair surmounting eyes of remarkable honesty and penetration. He was indeed the Father of his Flock in that area and they looked to him still, as they had in the dark days of the Occupation, for leadership and guidance.
Another remarkable personality I encountered at this time was Professore Moschowitz of Terni, also a helper – a great savant and believer in international friendship and understanding. Unfortunately, time was too short and distances too considerable for all the contacts that had to be made. We went north once more and paid a brief visit to the mountains, to Val d’Aosta, to see helpers who had arranged the escape of many British and Dominion prisoners into Switzerland in 1943. I rode a mule up the valley, led by a robust bersagliere (rifleman) in an Alpine hat with trailing feathers. It was not an easy mode of travel in a tight ATS skirt and must have afforded my escorts some amusement, but nevertheless they seemed to be delighted to be photographed in their dashing uniforms. The CO was taken in a mule-drawn sledge. The air was too misty, so that we could barely discern the line of the pass, over which the fugitives from Nazi imprisonment had made a desperate bid for freedom; the perilous peaks on either side were completely hidden from view. But we did see several helpers and one of the places in a hotel where the prisoners had hidden, even when Gestapo agents were in the village and on the lookout for them. What a tension there must have been in that small mountain village! Yet all had to appear normal and unconcerned. The inhabitants had many yarns to tell to while away the long winter evenings, as they clustered with their beer-mugs round the porcelain stove in the inn-parlour.
On one of our last visits in the north I lived through a highly unpleasant experience. I began to feel ill in the car between Milan and Verona and when we came to Verona felt so bad that I was helped, almost fainting, into an Italian restaurant by the proprietor. He rose to the occasion magnificently and produced a coffee cup full of vinegar, which he made me both sniff and swallow, and so restored me more or less to consciousness. But back in the car I became worse again, and on arrival in Padua had to be rushed to the MO in a collapsed condition. The MO examined me and found nothing wrong beyond general fatigue from travelling. I was useless for work, so the CO spent the afternoon in GHQ and I in the room of a girlfriend from the SSAFA, nursing the most appalling headache imaginable.
We left for Milan again at about 5.30 p.m., but once again the attacks started, more violent now. I could hardly breathe as they came on, I was losing all the strength in my joints, and had red and blue spots in front of my eyes. To crown all this, I was now becoming delirious and the CO told me much later, rather grimly, that I had addressed the German driver in his own language and told him, ‘Ich liebe dich’ (‘I love you’)! It is to be hoped that over the noise of the engine he heard nothing. At Gardone I felt the end had come, but the CO was very patient, and by speaking sharply to me and ordering me to pull myself together, he somehow kept me from going under. At Verona, we stopped again, and this time a waiter from the same restaurant told us he had a brother who was a porter at the hospital (thanks be to the close family ties of Italy!) and he guided us thence. After a whispered conversation with his brother, we were admitted into a small casualty department, where two doctors examined me on an operating table and prescribed various pills and an injection, which was administered in private by a medical orderly. He was aged about 70 and looked just like Hindenburg, complete with long drooping moustache.
The doctors declared I was suffering from some form of intossicazione, but just what they could not determine, although they wanted to ascribe it to alcohol or tobacco – but I indignantly assured them that I neither drank nor smoked to excess. They catechised me as to what I had taken during the past 24 hours, and shook their heads rather severely when I admitted to two small Martinis the day before, when we had been meeting an important functionary in Milan. While I was having my injection, the next patient was being attended to, a woman who had some form of cut in her head, perhaps from a motor accident, and she howled and screamed quite bloodcurdlingly – so I was glad when it was all over for me. But the doctors said I was not to travel further that night. The CO was not too pleased about the necessary change of plan, but he was very worried about me, not relishing, as may be expected, the idea of explaining to the commanding AT in Italy that I had passed out for no known reason between Milan and Padua. We therefore had to find accommodation at a small hotel, and next morning I was much better, though still rather ‘nervy’.
Meanwhile the driver had discovered the cause of the trouble. The exhaust pipe was broken, he explained, and furthermore there was a hole in the boot just under the left side of the seat where I had been sitting, and carbon monoxide gas had been pouring in and up just beneath me. When he had opened the boot that morning a cloud of it nearly knocked him out, though in fact it is neither visible nor has it a smell, which is why no-one thought of it the day before. But Heinz had known a man killed by it when servicing a car and so doubtless I had been lucky; both he and the CO then admitted that they also had endured terrible headaches the previous day, and one could not but feel that if the driver had been as affected as I was, our joint fate might have been disastrous. After our return to Rome, a student friend of mine told me it would be about a year before I was really over the phenomenon and so it proved, though I still hate enclosed or stuffy atmospheres to this day. The remarkable thing about the Italian doctors was that they would not take a fee, so I sent the hospital a small sum afterwards and a letter of thanks, also explaining the real cause of the trouble. In reply I received a courteous and charming acknowledgement.
39
A Rivederci!
A t the end of March, the CO had to make his final visit to Padua to make arrangements for the closing down of the commission and the launching of the new, small abbreviated unit which was to take on ASC’s job and, it was hoped, finish it by
the end of September 1947. The CO himself had decided to resign and leave the GSO II to carry on. Among his team, the latter was not always the best or most suitable man for the job – nearly everyone wanted to stay in Rome and there was the keenest competition – but unfortunately a few were allowed to go who would have been of greater value than some of the non-Italian speakers who remained. However, ‘maleesh’ (‘never mind’) – whatever shortcomings there may have been in the commission, either at its inception, in its heyday or in its decline, I am sure in general it accomplished much in the cause of friendship and understanding between Italy and the Allies.
Meanwhile, some officers and men had already been released, and others were going. There were farewell parties, many handshakes, much writing down of addresses, and doubtless not a few regrets.
As for me, I was sorry to be leaving Italy, for the new unit would have no vacancies for AT officers, but I had not been home for nearly two years. Having never done purely admin work in the ATS, and having always been one of those rather suspect persons, an intelligence staff officer, it gave me an inferiority complex every time I mixed with ATS admin officers and I felt only half one of them. I therefore wanted to change over to admin and gain experience and confidence in that direction. The head AT at GHQ was both surprised and delighted when I told her I wanted to change to admin and furthermore attend a refresher course at Windsor after my disembarkation leave. Most people wanted to do the opposite. And so I signed on until 1948, and I felt that that would give me time to think things over, and also see how the service was going to turn out – for plans were afoot then for short-term commissions, and even a permanent service, which later of course materialised.
And so I was to forsake drill and go back to England, to battledress and the barrack square. I did not know how it would seem after three years overseas. And it was with a heavy heart that I said ‘A rivederci’12 (not ‘Addio’13) to so many kind Italian friends, including Irene, the maid who looked after me at the Continentale, Pietro my cheerful room porter, the little man in the vestibule, who in spite of a lame leg was always smiling and cheerful, the dear Signorine Giulia, my little plump dressmaker in Rome who had transformed one of my service dresses so miraculously into a smart black costume trimmed with corduroy, and many other people of all sorts and kinds, in Rome and elsewhere. I suppose Italy left her mark on most of the forces who were there at some time or another, even on those who were apparently least receptive to her influence; others, like myself, have lost their hearts to that country and its people, who are so generous and gay. Even the most Philistine cannot but appreciate to some extent such a wealth of art and natural beauty, or be quite insensible to the vital life of this country and its people.
– FINIS –
Notes
12 A rivederci (See you again!) from Italian arrivederci (Goodbye).
13 Addio (Farewell, Adieu).
The Author
Lucy de Burgh, née Addey, born 1919
H er father, William Fielding Addey, was born in 1873 and brought up a Unitarian, one of the many Protestant sects famed for their strict morality, hard work and frugality. After being schooled at home, learning French and German, he attended Hanover University to study philosophy and also learnt to ride, fence and sing. He was an excellent pianist and would teach his daughters to play. Not until he was over 40 did he start studying medicine at University College London. There his friends included A.E. Housman and Havelock Ellis, the pioneer of sexual psychology, later a patient in Suffolk, some of whose books his daughter still has.
Addey was the son of a successful cotton merchant in Manchester who died when his only child was aged 4. The closest relatives and childhood friends from her father’s family were second cousins John Addey, later to be a gunner brigadier, and his sister Catherine. John’s son is a Queen’s Messenger and Catherine’s grandson is the 5th Lord Acton.
During the First World War Dr Addey served in the RAMC and met his future wife, Edith Wilson, in the casualty station at Liancourt, France. She was a nurse who came from a family of Aberdeenshire farmers, all of whose children became professionals. The only brother, Ronald, was a military physician, killed in a motorbike accident. There are many photographs of Ronald holidaying with the author and her sister in childhood and teenage years.
Very prominent among her photographs is a very beautiful little girl, Barbadee Knight, her closest childhood friend who would later marry Captain Sir Anthony Meyer, Bt, Scots Guards, after he recovered from serious wounds incurred in the 1944 invasion of France. Meyer later became a diplomat and Conservative MP. He earned celebrity as a critic of Margaret Thatcher, particularly when he stood against her for the leadership of the Party in 1992, precipitating her downfall.
In Ipswich, where Dr Addey went to open a private practice after the First World War, he was an unusual man. Atheist, republican and member of the Liberal Party, he stood out in the conservative and hierarchical Suffolk of the 1920s. However, this did not make him enemies, because his charm and empathy appear to have endeared him to rich and poor alike. As did many physicians in those days, he charged the rich high fees that he might serve the poor for nothing. As late as 1982 when his grandson was seeking adoption as parliamentary candidate for Suffolk Coastal, an elderly man rose from the audience to say, in Suffolk dialect, that everybody should vote for Dr Addey’s grandson because the doctor was ‘the most wonderful man; he would help the poor until he was exhausted and then give them money to buy soup.’ As a child Lucy Addey was often taken to Ipswich Hospital, where her father was consultant and on the board, ‘to cheer up the patients’.
Both daughters attended first Ipswich High School and then St Felix, Southwold, of which their most potent recollection is of playing cricket five times a day. From an early age Lucy and Elizabeth Addey were imbued with a strong sense of public service. The Addeys were unusual for those days in that both girls were expected to seek careers in which they might serve their community and their country before considering their own desires.
Lucy Addey went up to St Anne’s College Oxford in 1941 to take the degree in German and French. She was fluent in both, as her father had sent her to board with families in both countries and in Switzerland. Her best friends were Dorothy Folkes, daughter of Nottinghamshire farmers, who married fellow student Robin Chadburn of a Lincolnshire brewing family, and Jean Asquith, who married Tony Barber, later Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lucy Addey was active in the Labour Club and regularly sang the Red Flag to infuriate the Tories – whose chairman was Jean Asquith. This did not damage their friendship, which, with many others, continued all her life. Affection also developed between her and the daughter of refugees from Berlin. She taught English to Berlin professor of dentistry, Dr Fritz Munz, in return for German conversation with his family of a boy and two girls, of which one, Hilde, has been a lifelong friend with whom she continues to correspond in German several times a month by email.
With England fighting an epic struggle against totalitarianism in 1940 her parents encouraged their elder daughter to volunteer for the Army, where her languages might come in useful; her younger sister Elizabeth would later become a district nurse in the new National Health Service.
She started her army work on the Atrocities File, for MI9/19, recording the most vile activities of the Nazi troops as they slaughtered their way around Europe. Reports came in many languages and many of those working with her were multilingual refugees. They also included psychiatrists; the work took place in Latimer House, Buckinghamshire, where captured German officers were interrogated and also secretly recorded talking with each other. She has never spoken about this work – in fact her book has no Military Intelligence detail – because she was very conscious of the Official Secrets Act.
Keen to get away from her ghoulish activities she leapt at a foreign posting which took her first to Algeria – she has vivid memories of the plague of locusts – and then with our invading army to Italy. There she was engaged on strategic planning in
the Royal Palace of Caserta, headquarters of Field Marshal Alexander. She witnessed battles, including Cassino; she saw the Occupation of Rome by Allied forces. But mostly what she remembers is the poverty and destruction around her, the awful detritus of war. Because of this, for much of her later life, no matter how difficult her own circumstances, she worked for the alleviation of suffering, in particular through Save the Children Fund.
These are some of the things she has said in recent years:
Wherever I went there were beggars, stick-thin children without shoes or shirts, crying out for anything to eat. People made fires in the ruins of their homes to try to keep their babies and their grandparents alive.
When we arrived in Rome we gave a reception for the important people of the city. They arrived in beautiful clothes sagging over emaciated bodies. They arrived with large handbags; while the Allied officers fasted and pretended not to see, the snacks we had put out were shovelled into those handbags to be taken away to feed families.
Every night outside the soldiers’ barracks hundreds of women queued, from teenagers to grandmothers, selling themselves for a meal to keep their loved ones alive.
My Italian Adventures Page 44