Read also  “Arthur Page’s Memorable Walk,” “Una Bella Passeggiata (A Walk in Wartime Italy)—Installment 1,”  “Una Bella Passeggiata (A Walk in Wartime Italy)—Installment 2,” and “Una Bella Passeggiata (A Walk in Wartime Italy)—Installment 3.”

© Michael Page · Permission to share the memoirs of Arthur Page, Una Bella Passeggiata (A Walk in Wartime Italy), has been granted by the family of Arthur Page.

Chapter 15—The Americans Drop In

Since the beginning of January ’44, Allied offensives against the Gustav line had been going on. They halted at Monte Cassino. On January 22nd came the landings at Anzio but 35 miles from Rome. The American commander was overcareful in advancing and a great opportunity was lost. February was spent in making the bridgehead safe for the Allied troops who had landed. On February 15th the monastery at Monte Cassino was bombed and shelled, but the Germans held on. In the fighting for the monastery the 1st German parachute division were heavily engaged and fought tenaciously. When I was recaptured at the Gran Sasso the previous September, the young German who spoke 5th form English had been in that division; I wonder if he survived.

The bombing of the monastery was an early part of the combined British and American Air Forces effort to so bomb Central Italy’s supply arteries that the German presence would be starved of military supply. It went on for six weeks. Foligno’s rail centre was bombed, the ominous but hopeful noise reaching us in the mountains. On clear days fleets of American Fortresses could be seen patterning the blue sky as they droned north or south overhead, to or from targets.

One such sunny day—in early March I suppose it would be—from Rocca Franca we watched one squadron returning southward overhead, when suddenly to our amazement we saw white puff-like shapes blossoming underneath one of the craft. It was the phenomenon of parachutes opening up. Yes, one plane had smoke emerging from its wing. The wounded plane droned on, on automatic pilot I suppose, as the number of parachutes increased; seven, eight, at least nine came floating down toward the east-northeast, San Martino way. 

Next day Piet and I set off to attempt making contact with them. We ascended the ridge that connected our own height with that of Monte Cavallo, crossed its saddle, and at the same time stepped from the province of Umbria to that of Le Marche. Enquiry led us to three or four of them, for the ‘grapevine’ was working overtime. They were safely in the hands of Slav partisans. We found them still rather bewildered by their precipitate descent into a completely foreign change of surroundings, and rather wary and nervous of the sight of hammer and sickle badges in the headgear of their hosts. And who would expect to find Yugo-Slavs in the middle of Italy?—rather disorientating, I would have thought, at least for patriotic Americans.

They were greatly pleased to meet British comrades, another surprise behind the German lines. We quickly acquainted them with much of their new situation, geographical position, safety margins and the like and, having thanked their hosts, they returned with us to Croce della Rocca Franca. The families were quite curious to meet their first Americans, especially as they had just dropped in from overhead, as it were.

Needless to say, the Americans were patiently shared out among the families, taken onto their ration strength, and fitted into their houses. 

Over the next few days we advised the Americans how to handle their new situation and survive. From the start they had firm ideas regarding the possibility of early escape. For them it was no good hanging around. In some ways they were well furnished with escape materials such as maps printed on scarves, compasses resembling buttons, etc., and above all a goodly supply of Yankee escape dollars. The almighty dollar; the Spuntarellis looked at them with awe: they could buy anything. We Brits had to do our escaping on the cheap by contrast. On the debit side they were, of course, abysmally ignorant of the ways of Italian rural and wartime life, and not one of them had any Italian. They were either officers or at least some degree of sergeant and used to high standards of living in their unit’s messes. They would have to get used to plainer and stranger fare and less of it.

In the crew were two brothers of which we had the elder with us. He was a tallish chap, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles as I recall, and had a degree of authority among the crew. He was naturally anxious about his younger brother, but the local Italians began to provide news of the other crew members and they were gradually brought together. Piet and I on one occasion took a few of them to link up with a couple of the crew. On the way back we stopped at the house of Pietro’s sister-in-law, who lived alone. One of her sources of income was the making and selling of cheeses from the milk of her sheep and goats. She accorded our quite large group the hospitality of favoured guests, providing bread, wine, and one of her cheeses, circular, about eight inches across and two inches deep.

She kept Piet and I talking about recent news, leaving the Americans to themselves, otherwise we would undoubtedly have given them a lesson in local etiquette, the etiquette of the not-so-well-provided. I had heard one of them say how good the cheese was. On rejoining them, to our horror and I am afraid to her amazement, the Americans had eaten lots of the cheese and little of the bread, in their brash style, as though there was lots where that came from. They had demolished the whole of the God-damned good cheese and, unknowingly, deprived their host. A local Italian would never take advantage of a host’s generosity. We quickly put them right on this facet of behaviour and they were, of course, most regretful. Their hostess could not fail to see their distress, and this together with our translation of their apologies mollified her, to our relief.

It was a pleasure to see the brothers reunited. Within ten days the whole crew were together once again, thanks to local effort, and were settled in the village of Monte Cavallo (co-named with the mountain on the side of which it stood), a further ten or twelve kilometres to the east of San Martino. They were spread among the various families of contadini in the townlet, who rallied round to a man—or woman. They became the centre of attention and the objects of much generosity of thought and effort.

Many had kept their parachutes and the material was shared amongst the families, who put it to good use. The woman folk of Croce della Rocca Franca received some, and turned it into vests, pants, and panties and the like and generously supplied Piet, myself, and the Americans bountifully from their efforts.

The next thing they needed was to get out of uniform and to look more like Italians. Piet and I undertook another journey to Rasiglia and its little cloth factory and they, after hearing our story, generously contributed sufficient cloth for suiting the lot of them, at three metres to the man. It was a bountiful gift to the Allied cause and our immediate needs, and a generous load for Piet and me to carry. We then humped it back via snow-covered roads and tracks to Verchiano, over Croce della Rocca Franca, over the crenella and Province boundary, through to San Martino and beyond, and on to Monte Cavallo, a distance there and back of about thirty miles—and a tough journey it was through the snow to boot, with much climbing. Fortunately for Piet and me the weather kept fair.

Incredibly, that village produced suits for nine men and, despite a forgivable envy of their dollars, I believe charged them not one cent. 

We stayed with them for a time and met during our stay the village priest, who as spiritual leader of the flock was much involved in these transactions. Like many of his kind the simple village priest often came from the same stock and shared their hard life and poverty. Seeing all this cloth going to the Americans, he succumbed to the sin of envy to the extent of taking Piet and me to one side to seek our endeavours in procuring three metres of cloth for himself and then, turning and lifting the hem of his cassock he revealed to us the patched and patched again state of the seat of his trousers as ample proof of his dire need. We could hardly forbear a grin at what his cassock concealed, but today I sorrow for not having answered his need. He deserved a 30 mile walk from us as much as—if not far more than—did the Americans.

Before our departure the leader of the American group, he with the brother and horn-rimmed spectacles, revealed to us that they had already made contact with a British officer who had an escape scheme which might succeed through his contacts plus the American dollars, which would be used to buy a fishing boat. Then, by sailing out into the Adriatic and heading south they would come in to land well south of the front line. It seemed a workable plan for the Allied air offensive had gained air superiority over the Luftwaffe and little was now seen of them. He promised that, in view of the efforts we had made on their behalf, we should go with them when the day came.

With this assurance, we returned to San Martino well content. What a deal of walking this would save us; and we would avoid those damned mountains in the Gran Sasso. Before we reached San Martino a blizzard challenged us just as we were crossing the saddle of the Monte Cavallo ridge and with such ferocity that we lost our bearings. If you stretched out your arm you could not see your hand. After an hour it blew out, otherwise we might well have not finished the journey. In the event we were able to reorientate and so stumbled down into San Martino where, in the osteria, we drank of the vino locale which to some extent soothed the pain in a pair of noses, ears, and cheeks as the warmth brought them back to life.

We wanted to stay with our usual family that night but, as they had no indoor room, we ate with them and then they found us lodgings in the house of a female neighbour who was temporarily living alone. We were most grateful to her for, in that area, the slightest hint of scandal such as having a man in the house would ruin a girl’s chances in the marriage market for life.

By then the blizzard had blown up again and we thanked our lucky stars for the luxury of a real bed, in a real bedroom, in a house protected from the elements outside by thick walls. In those days and in the mountainous regions there were seldom any other forms of internal heating beyond the main fireplace, but comforts you had never experienced were not missed.

There was one ‘luxury’ that Piet and I had learned to take for granted back home and sadly missed, and that was an up-to-date toilet and bathrooms within one’s four walls, although truth to tell in my own case back in Walthamstow, London, bathrooms were not to become a common domestic feature until some years after the war. We used the scullery in lieu of bathroom, and each Friday night the family would follow one another into the tin bathtub, water replenished from the boiler—coal fire heated, of course.

But the lack of lavatories often caused us discomfort, problems, and—until we became used to the practices and understanding of country folk on this point—embarrassment. The average contadini fattoria, or farm, relied on water from a well or at best a hand pump, so there were no flush toilets from that water supply. Neither did I ever come across a specially built closet with removable container for excrement as was the case in the English shires even beyond the end of the Second World War, not to mention the earth or ash closet in which, after each closet visit one would, from a handy container take earth or kitchen ash and cover the excrement. Thus, the night-soil man, after dark of course, would spade this refuse out from a little door in the back of the closet into his cart. Where did one go for one’s personal relief in the Italian country home? As I have already said about the town of Verchiano, you went into the stack-yard, or one could descend below via outside steps or a drop through the trap door into the stables, there to perform in the warmth and comfort provided by brother bullock and so from there to be gathered with the dung for muck spreading. There was the simple ‘gabinetto’, a deep hole in the ground with small hut above and wooden seat with hole to sit on, but I never came across one.

Not in the towns of course, but out in the countryside the attitude was that, if you had something you needed no longer you dropped it. This led to quite a litter problem after the war. But to get to the point, it was not unusual therefore to be walking along road or track and to spot a woman or perhaps two squatting by the roadside and, shielded by their skirts, long in those days, performing one function or the other. At first we ex-POWs would get into a dither and try to avoid the good ladies but, of course, if by accident you intruded into such a situation the procedure was merely to offer a polite “Buon Giorno”, always graciously returned, and continue on your way chatting the while as if you had passed a fellow traveller, which indeed you had. Our embarrassment continued to reflect the squeamishness of the long past Victorian era, whereas the contadini had never suffered from it and were purely responding to the call of nature. They were fastidious in other ways.

But I must make some point out of this digression and get back to my story.

Piet and I were very comfortable in our bedroom in San Martino until we felt the need for an indoor lavatory. Lacking that, of course, we peered under the bed and, not finding what we sought, we frantically searched the room. To our horror we realized that we had no vaso di notte! Now, had we been in the manor house in Shakespeare’s England we would have gone behind the wainscoting, but we had to think in contemporary provincial Italian terms, but with no wainscoting nor any other item of help. We were not venturing out into that blizzard into stack-yards, garden, or gutter. Luck came our way in the form of a voluminous old newspaper, and we solved our problem and threw it out of the window. It took quite a few years more before the contadini in the country areas were able to leap out of a semi-medieval existence—which lacked, however, a garderobe—into the twentieth century, with the help of electricity and piped water. These may not yet be available in some mountain districts?

In 1960, I revisited one family whose farm was in the lower hills and only two or three miles from a fairly large town, and their house still depended on the carbide lamp, the well, and the stack-yard for the ‘loo’, although they did apologise for this last. Now things are strikingly changed. Many of the old dwellings are abandoned and forlorn. Nearby stands the replacement: three-storied, architecturally modern, and boasting most modern fittings. They do not replace the beauty and charm of the old. Fortunately, some of the old houses have been modernised. We British tend to like to hang on to the old; the Italian contadini, as I have said before, once they have no use for a thing, in contrast, prefer to drop it. To me their attitude seems to reflect little nostalgia for the past (considering its harshness, can one blame them?), an absence of consideration for how their properties affect the appearance of the general surroundings, and thus indicate a lack of planned development.

Chapter 16—Surprise Moves

San Martino, being high up in the Apennines and hard to get at in winter, gradually became a resting place for the partigiani. They depended much, of course, on the local contadini’s generosity. We were well acquainted with them, but they stressed their political views in such arrogant fashion that we were put off from actually joining them. Besides, our intention was still to get through the line somehow.

Since the winter blizzards had hit us, military activity had been minimal in our area, although at the front they were fighting in mud and snow around Cassino. Everyone awaited the thaw, the campaigning season, a resolute Allied effort by the Allies to finally break through the Gustav line, reach ground where their superiority in armour could be brought into play, and then start a general offensive northward. Then would come the partisans’ chance to be really useful. But the quiet period in our area was about to receive a nasty shock. 

It must have been in late February. Piet and I happened to be in San Martino. The partigiani were much in evidence, but we found a lodging place and evening meal with a contadino acquaintance, sharing the byre with the bullocks. At this farm we had always been awakened in six-star hotel fashion with a mug of warm milk brought to our straw palettes at first light. It had probably come straight from the cow, not that I know much of such matters.

On this particular occasion, however, our awakening was different. With a jolt we were awakened from deep sleep. On coming to our senses, we knew that it was far too early to expect milk and, in any case, the excited gesticulations of our host’s grown son assured us of the need of urgency, not the usual slow supping of milk as we luxuriated in our straw. The partigiani outposts had come in at the run to warn of an imminent rastrallamento forming up near the edge of the village. The partigiani had already departed.

Because we were sleeping in the semi-rough, we had not discarded much clothing and within minutes we had our boots on and were outside with the barest glimmer of dawn to the east. We instinctively knew in which direction to go. Fortunately, San Martino, unlike Verchiano, is more a village than a townlet and is therefore more spread out. We reached the tail end of the usual evacuees who, like ourselves, had good reason to avoid an interview with the enemy. In gasping breaths we were assured that the republican fascists were already in the far end of the village. We did not slow down to check their veracity.

Amongst those fleeing was a member of the family who had been giving the Italian colonel sanctuary apart from our irregular visits; you never knew, someone might be made to talk, but that happened rarely. Apart from what he carried in a bag, he had a precious possession in the form of a brand-new pair of all leather boots hanging round his neck by their laces. On his feet was another pair in similar condition: they were a relatively well-off family. We couldn’t help laughing as one of us expressed the thought that he intended to run until one pair wore out and then discard them and keep on going in the other pair.

It was a well-planned coup meant to catch a ‘red’ village napping. As we travelled, we learnt that there were Austrian Alpine trained troops in the vicinity. Piet and I decided that it would be better all-round if we went east rather than west back to Croce della Rocca Franca. We set off to rejoin our American friends in Monte Cavallo. Despite the warnings and rumours, we arrived at the townlet safely and I felt sure we had taken the best direction. As we walked up the main, narrow street we were soon told that all the ‘Americani’ had gone. We dashed off to the priest’s house to get the details from him, for they had not fled from the rastrellamento but had been gone twenty-four hours or so before on their escape jaunt. They were on their way to the Adriatic coast. They had gone without contacting us. They were not ready to expend a single one of their dollars on us British, except upon the English officer, of course, but that’s just good old Gaddamned Yankee business boy. Those were the ideas that stormed through our minds.

We were angry. All that sweat, risk, trouble, and effort; the miles we trekked through snow on their behalf; the friendship expressed, the promise made by their leader, and when the crunch came what did they expend on us? I had never seen Piet Van Rensburg so angry. All his feelings he expressed in his more natural Taal and the terrible noises he made were most suited to the occasion. The upshot was that we decided to follow them, there and then. Our packs were already on our backs and, after getting what further information we could, headed east. We were assured that somebody in Monte Cavallo would let the Spuntarellis know of our move and our need for haste. They had expected us to leave for the south with the thaw in any case.

At first it was an easy trail to follow. They could speak barely one word of Italian, they looked and acted like Yankees and, at this stage, even if they had had the sense to split into groups, there were a lot of them. In fact, that very night we slept in the very room in which some of them had slept only a night or so before. It was a house in the village of Capriglia near the strada statale leading south to Terni and beyond. Its occupants were two French girls of about twenty to thirty years of age, the older being married to an Italian at the time absent from home.

The evening was well advanced when our knocking brought them to the front door. In those times the later the hour of day the more careful the occupants of a dwelling had to be in responding to unexpected callers at the door, especially if there were no menfolk in the house. There was no telling who the caller might be. After careful appraisal through the window, they decided to open the door to us and soon recognized us for what we were, wandering ex-POWs. Generously, they assured us of a night’s lodging and a meal and, to our further delight, soon confirmed that we were well on the track of the Americans.

It appeared that but two nights earlier they had entertained the two brothers amongst other members of the American aircrew and, whereas most evenings were a monotony for young French women trapped in an Apennine winter, that one had proved very diverting. One of the Americans spoke good French, and this had helped provide an unusually convivial evening. It was clear that they anticipated another such in view of our presence but, alas, my French could not compete with the American’s and our conversation stumbled along. I must confess to a childish sense of inadequacy, resentment, and jealousy that the Americans should have made such a hit—prompted, of course, by our recently born dislike for them.

Although we had arrived under the partial cover of dusk, I have no doubt that contadini neighbours were quite aware of our being entertained by the French girls. I have no doubt also of the interpretation they would have put upon the type of ‘entertainment’ they provided us with, which is unfair for the visitations thrust upon them by us and the Americans alike left them quite guiltless of anything more suspicious than a bit of a lark. But to the contadino mind unchaperoned social mixing of the sexes could only mean a total fall from grace and virtue. They had very strict ideas of decorum where their women were concerned and any signorina who strayed, however vaguely, outside their rules might well spoil her chances in the local marriage market. But we were all ‘stranieri’ (foreigners), not good Catholics, and therefore all ‘pazzi’ (mad).

The next day we continued eastward and so commenced to traverse the Apennine range called the Monti Sibillini. This was the last of the real mountains that lay between us and the eastern foothills, the Adriatic, and the spring of 1944, for down there the thaw had already arrived and the stirring and activities of the spring season had started.

The close of the day brought us to the outskirts of the small town of Fiastra. Since our morning departure we had met no one but a long file of partisans who passed us at a distance of about 200 metres, checked us with binoculars, and then showed no further interest in us. There was much partisan activity in this district, based on the town. It was well led and well organised and was to achieve quite a name for the quality of its activity.

About half mile short of Fiastra, we found a tiny community of ex-POWs who were living in an abandoned cottage. They had evidently been there for quite a time and knew the district well. Some may have been there since soon after the mass exodus from the prison camps and may even have come from Servigliano camp itself. I had begun to realise that, as the crow flies, it was only 25 kilometres distant. Piet and I were very tired, otherwise we might have chatted more. From what they had heard some Americans had passed through the district recently, so we were still on the right track. We did not wish to discuss our reasons for wanting this information in too great detail so, with hardly the makings of a meal, we turned in early.

Next morning one of the group, a guardsman, accompanied us into the town, plying us with questions the while regarding our business as though it were our duty to tell him. We left him scrounging a cigar from one of the townsfolk, but we carried on beyond the town to a point where we needed to decide as to our next route.

We were standing at the entrance to a steep-sided valley that would lead us ENE. Through it flowed a river, a tributary to the River Chienti, one of the larger mountain rivers that flowed into the Adriatic Sea.

South of the river and roughly parallel to it was a very well-defined cart track capable of taking petrol vehicles. It was an easy, more direct, walking route with only slight gradients, but we did not fancy being suddenly overtaken by a car, especially in the narrower, more gorge-like stretches of the road. The steep slopes on the northern side of the river were the lower slopes of Monti Fiegni. A smaller track climbed up this for a bit, then flattened out to continue well above but in the same direction as the river. A caution developed by six months gallivanting about wartime Italy influenced us to take this route. I do believe that in doing this we diverged from the Americans’ route. I will bet my boots that they took the easier route. We were thinking in our terms, not theirs.

Even now, in my early seventies, I should love to meet some of that aircrew and compare belated notes. My guess is that the track took them to Main Route 78 and this they crossed (I do not think that even they would have walked along that) and then travelled past Montegiorgio (the town that seemed to tower over us in the prison camp in Servigliano) and on to the San Elpidio district. A later event seemed to confirm this in part. These Americans did not like walking for they often joked to us that they joined the Air Forces to fly, not to walk; they would choose the physically easier route.

Along our chosen track two Italian lads in their late teens overtook us, so we joined forces and carried on together, especially as they assured us of food and a place to sleep in the village that was their destination. We gained height steadily; the snow was not deep, so walking was a pleasure. The valley below provided stark but beautiful scenery. (The Ramblers’ Association should know about this route.) It grew overcast and a slight snow began to fall. Piet and I were a little apprehensive in case this was a precursor to a blizzard, which we did not fancy at this height. But our companions did not seem bothered, so we put our thoughts by.

We chatted a bit and then, to cheer us all along our way, they began to sing us songs. We joined in of course, “Oh Maria dimmi si, si, si, voglio sposar te, te, te” (Oh Maria say yes, yes, yes,  I want to marry you, you, you)—“Tutta la sera soto quel fanal’, presso la caserma” (Underneath the lamplight by the barrack gate)—“Mama son’ tanto felice perche ritorno da te” (Mother I’m so happy because I’m coming home to you). In this we completed a long day’s journey in fine style:  it left me with good memories. Eventually swinging northeast away from the river, we realized that day was fading.

Since leaving Fiastra, barring our companions, we had not seen a single person or a human habitation, not even a barracca (hut), in either mountain or valley. (The track by the river below us is, today, a first-class road, and further along the river has been dammed for a hydroelectric scheme, thus providing a lake which is now a favourite picnic spot).

It was just about dark when we reached the outskirts of the village we sought. Here we were challenged by a partisan outpost of two young fellows. Our companions were obviously known and there followed the inevitable conversation in Italian at breakneck speed. They then bid us farewell, whilst we were shown into a house which was obviously the temporary headquarters of the partisan group. There we slowly realised that we were in custody awaiting somebody’s arrival. They were suspicious. I am sure they thought me German. One had asked were I “Deutsche?” probably using his complete German vocabulary, to which I had unwisely replied, “Nein ich bin Englande.”

We were kept waiting for about half hour, until a rather studious-looking bespectacled man of late twenties mounted the doorsteps. After a brief colloquy with the guard, the group leader, for he was clearly that, came over to us and addressed us in German so rapidly that I could barely catch the odd word. I stuttered some sort of reply in my hesitant classroom German, at which he laughed loudly for he certainly knew that I was no German. We greeted each other in Italian, our army AB64s were produced (paybooks, a means of identification), and all was well.

Having established our credentials, we were made very welcome, fed handsomely, and finished the evening winebibbing and conversing as best we could. Those of the group we were among were a typical mixture of partigiani from 14 years to 55, mainly contadini but some townies too. They were a socialist group and, as a consequence, some were inclined to be anti-church. One elderly educated member was constantly irritated by the amount of blasphemy interspersed with our talk. In Italy you do not so much swear as blaspheme. The favourite is ‘Porca Madonna!’ but, even worse, some of the lads were giving vent to the occasional ‘Porca Dio!’ (Pig God) as a matter of juvenile bravado, and that was really the ultimate blasphemy. It was the first time I had heard that expression and it shook me somewhat. “Non bestemiare!” the older member would call out every now and then and, in despair, he would beg the leader to influence the younger members to pay more respect to Holy Mother Church, much to their amusement. I was sorry for the poor old chap. His world was undergoing rapid change.

Enquiries about the Americans came to nothing so, reluctantly, we had to admit to ourselves that we had lost their scent. There was not much we could do other than to continue eastward to the coast and hope for a stroke of luck. Next day then, with the usual ‘Arrivederci,’ or ‘see you again,’ we left and began our descent into the eastern foothills. We were soon clear of the Apennines. The Americans, we felt sure, having left the isolated safety of the mountains would have the sense to split into small groups to take separate routes that would converge later. This might improve our chances of picking up news of one of the groups. Travelling together they must have been as noticeable as a party of hiking holiday makers out on a ‘beano’, not to mention the feeding and sleeping problems such numbers would create, being enough to stretch the generosity of the contadini to breaking point.

As we put distance between us and the mountains that day, and as we lost height as a consequence, we realized that winter had changed into spring. A few miles back in the high country the snow still lay thick as though settled for the year, but now it only lay in the sheltered patches that King Sol could not reach. A few days ago we were still apprehensive of possible blizzards, but down here we felt the sun on our backs and the countryside was regaining its colour. This bolstered our morale, despite having lost track of our quarry.

By mid-afternoon it seemed that our erstwhile noisy Americans had quietly vanished into thin air, but our hope for an early lead was being replaced by the urge to reach the coast for its own sake—so we plodded on. I did not realize then or even give it a thought, for the old campo concentramento was not on my map, but Servigliano was not far distant, and I had completed a round distance of 900 kilometres, or some 550 miles, since leaving it in September ’43.

At the end of it all and after approximately six months I had gained no ground towards the front line. Rather I had lost ground. But I had profited from experience, had ‘Italianised’ myself, been deprived of but had regained freedom, lived among good Italian folk, gained a great chum and, in all, I had survived: the main object of the exercise.

Chapter 17—The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

I feel sure that the village or townlet where we had experienced the little misunderstanding with the band of partisans must have been Cessapalomo. From there the general trend of our journey was downhill away from the mountains. We made good progress, for the nearer we approached the Adriatic the more surely it acted like a magnet drawing us on. The dispositions of the hills and valleys made us travel somewhat north of east. We must have crossed Route 78 near Loro Piceno, and thus we entered the valley of the River Cremona, which provided a natural route to the sea, clear of main roads.

After rather more than fifteen miles we were south of the town of Corridonia. It was early evening and we stopped at a farm situated on a steep southern slope of the River Cremona. The northern side of the river sloped up to a ridge and on its crest stood the old walled town of Corridonia. The far side of that ridge descended into the broad valley of the River Chienti. The Cremona joined the Chienti nearer to the sea. Beyond the hills to the south of the River Cremona was the valley of the River Tenna in which stood my old prison camp at Servigliano, a day’s walk away.

The day’s work was just ending at the farm and the family, quite a large one, were doing the finishing touches prior to preparing the evening meal. We made the usual enquiry as to whether any Americans had passed that way. The answer was ‘No’, but they did say yes to our request for a place to sleep and a meal. The family’s name was Tamburrini. There were nine of them and, starting with the oldest generation, there was Pasquale and his wife in their sixties, then their offspring, the oldest son Pietro and his wife Blandina, his brother Giovanni (recently back from the fighting in Greece), and two daughters Maria and Natale (their ages ranging from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties), and last of all the third generation—the children of Pietro and Blandina, Dumiglio and Giuliana, aged six and four.

During the evening meal, we decided to confide more fully in them and related the happenings since the rastrallamento at San Martino. They showed more than the usual interest and said that, given a bit of time, they might come across some information if the escape attempt was taking place in the neighbourhood. At the time we credited this remark with little significance. We had travelled fast and far and slept soundly in a warm bed that night.

The next morning, after idly assuring them of our return in case of their discovering any news about the Americans, we hurried on and revelled in the anticipation of reaching the sea that day. We were climbing the umpteenth rise by midday and our eyes cleared the crest; and there it was, even on a cloudy day, clear blue sea stretching out ahead to the horizon. At least it seemed clear and blue to us two romantics. Yes, the Adriatic Sea lay below us but still at a few kilometres distance. We celebrated with an impromptu jig, feeling immensely pleased with ourselves. The sea had been the panacea to all our ills; and we had got there.

Then the reaction set in, “What do we do now?” What we did was simple enough, but what came out of it was incredible! Quite suddenly the efforts of the last few days caught up with us and we felt rather tired. We felt like a pick-me-up and the only chance of something akin to that was a glass of the vino locale. We decided to try our luck at the nearest farm.

     The main coastal road and railway, the lifelines to the German’s front east of the Apennines, were still some kilometres below us so we turned right along a secondary road that ran parallel to them along the hills. It was not long before we came to a farm and there we sought refreshment, “Qualcosa da bere?”  (Something to drink) and, of course, information. The refreshment was quickly forthcoming, but the information took rather longer.

They apparently knew nought of any Americans arriving in the vicinity so, aided by the refreshment, we chatted on in a desultory fashion about this and that. We spoke of where we had come from, of why we had decided to make this particular journey, and—prodded by more wine and a few questions—went into more detail of the events of the past fortnight. ‘Il capo della famigilia’, the head of the family, surprisingly asked if we had any kind of proof as to our nationality, identity, etc., so out came our AB64s and, after examining these as best they could, they began to talk among themselves, hesitantly at first, but soon quite animatedly.

After a while they clearly came to a decision and the master of the house went over to a dresser and from a drawer took out a piece of paper. Before proffering it to us he expressed regret for the need of such care and deception, that I indeed did look very much like a Tedeschi (German), and he was sure we would understand the need for caution. We unfolded the note and read the contents, written in pencil and in English! The first note written in my mother tongue in Italy was that placed on the table in the restaurant in Consuma, near Firenze and that had thrilled me. So did the second such note. It was from one of the Americans to some of his comrades giving instructions to meet in front of the church in ‘San’ E’. That would surely be San Elpidio, and we were back in business for the lower route from Fiastra would have led them to that area.

As the significance of this truly incredible stroke of luck began to dawn upon us, Piet and I, British and Boer though we were, unashamedly clasped each other and danced another jig in front of our small audience, much to their amusement. To follow so immediately our arrival at the coast to make our first enquiry at the very house where this note had been left seems more like a desperate twist in a badly contrived plot, too ‘pat’ and unrealistic even for a cheap, yellow-backed detective novel. I can only protest that this is precisely what happened.

The note written by the American to his comrades I kept in my possession along with my AB64 (Army paybook), which I still have. The note, alas, went missing during our last house removal from old Huntingdonshire to Northwest Norfolk, to my great regret. I can find it nowhere.

Since leaving San Martino we had never been far from the trail of the Americans and, sooner or later, we would have got news of them. The fact that our gift from the gods came sooner saved us considerable time hanging about the district making enquiries. The Americans, in small groups perhaps, certainly appeared to have sojourned here and there in the area for a day or two. They would not have gone unnoticed and eventually we would have extracted some information from somebody. Now there was no ‘eventually’ to bother about, but we did need to know their destination. In this our helpful family could give us no lead.

At this stage of the game the would-be boat buyers would certainly take pains not to reveal the venue where the transaction was to take place. It was this thought coming to mind that made us decide to take a chance and backtrack to that Tamburrini family we had stayed with the previous night. They had said that they might be able to get some information about the Americans. We spent the afternoon retracing our footsteps and were back before the evening meal was served.On our arrival we recounted to the Tamburrinis all that had transpired. This was listened to with evident interest and the matter was concluded with an assurance from Pasquale that he intended to contact a relation of his, a citizen of no mean standing, who might be in the position to help us.

Surely enough the gentleman in question arrived the very next evening and there was very good reason for his rapid response to Pasquale’s enquiry. Incidentally, the old boy must have made the climb up to Corridonia during that day; he was quite used to walking up there to mass on Sundays. One must remember we had not the common usage of the public telephone in those days.

Old Pasquale, with unashamed pride, introduced us to the visitor, “Farmi presentarvi al signore Ercule Ercule, Professore delle Belle Lettere” quoth he (Allow me to present to you Mr Hercules, Hercules Master of Arts). He was certainly a man of some significance. To this day I do not know all that much about him, but it is enough to say that he had detailed knowledge of the planned escape. I never found out for certain, but he must have been quite high up in the underground movement in that district. Having ascertained for himself precisely who and what we were, our campaign details, where captured and which campos concentramento we had been in, in recent history up to the present, he then gave us the whole story.

Briefly, the English officer had negotiated with an Italian fisherman who kept a coastal fishing craft near Porto Recanati. A sale had been agreed, launching arranged, and departure was imminent. Departure was so imminent in fact that our only chance was to make contact with them tomorrow and so persuade them to include us in the escape attempt. We would have to leave that very same night. Porto Recanati was 25 kilometres due north of us, meaning a walk of 15–20 miles by minor roads and paths. Pasquale’s oldest son, Pietro, was informed of the precise position of the fisherman’s cottage which stood in a small hamlet in a river valley (the Potenza, I am fairly sure) near its estuary. We would need to cross the rivers Chienti and Potenza by bridge and this posed special problems.

Pietro was to be our guide, of course, and would be invaluable in getting us to our destination with an extra margin of safety and without loss of time. On our own and in the dark there was every chance that we might get lost, but with his guidance we would step out confidently and not be slowed down repeatedly by diffidence as to route. As to safety, he would know the places to avoid. It was best to keep clear of bridges as they were frequently under observation, at the least by Carabiniere, at worst by Squadristi. To ford the rivers would cause delay and possible wettings for they were now in spate so, to avoid both, the two main bridges would be approached with Pietro fifty metres ahead. He would have a ready-made excuse on his lips to justify his nocturnal journey whilst we, hearing his footsteps stop, would lie low to await events and, if necessary, would ford the river and hopefully rejoin him farther along the road.

Ercule, Pietro, and ourselves discussed all this outside the house, but hearing family prayers in progress we rejoined the others inside. Pasquale, as head of the family, led the usual evening prayers in the kitchen and that night, I feel sure, was extra fervent having his son’s night’s work in mind and on behalf of the two strangers, I like to think. Piet and I also picked up the place in the intoned prayers, “Prega per noi Iesu”, etc., for we had learnt to respect and take part in this daily ritual.

We were off before midnight after imparting our effuse thanks to everyone and travelled rapidly and, apart from the two bridges, unhesitatingly throughout the night. Pietro’s knowledge of the terrain made the going easy and the hills flattened considerably the farther we went. We left the route completely in Pietro’s hands, and with night’s obscurity Piet and I were travelling quite blindly, so the details of our route must also remain obscure. By the first light of dawn we had halted some distance short of the hamlet. As daylight slowly developed Pietro was able to indicate the position of the fisherman’s cottage. He wished us well and invited us to call in at his farm should things go badly for us. With that he turned back to yet another fifteen miles walking, with probably a day’s farm work at the end of it.

Piet and I lay low, munched some bread and salami the Nonna (grandmother) had given us, rolled and smoked a fag or two, and waited for the first signs of daily activity.

We were lying on a slight ridge twenty feet high or thereabouts looking down into a shallow valley with a small rise on the far side and we were somewhere near Porto Recanati, although the sea was not in view. Well spread out along the side of a track running the length of the valley were five or six quite small cottages. The one we needed was the second along the track, as far as I can recall. We scanned the area carefully before making our move toward the cottage. Everything seemed normal. A surreptitious approach would have been foolish so, in as Italian-like fashion as we could muster, we stepped out along the track, softly talking with an occasional Italian-like gesture.

As we passed the first cottage I could feel eyes upon me. We approached the second. The door was half open. Piet tapped on the door and we looked inside to a small kitchen. A middle-aged woman, the fisherman’s wife, wide of eye and obviously frightfully nervous, was turning towards us. As she recognized us for what we were, listening to our morning greeting, the anxiety in her eyes turned to terror. There was no need for our “Siamo Inglese” to be uttered (We’re English). For moments she stood speechless. I had never seen anybody so scared in my life. Then she unleashed a torrent of hysterical Italian: “Mama mia, via, via, per amor del cielo! scapa subito” Iesu Cristo!” (For heaven’s sake go away! Run, at once, quickly!) she went on amid a flood of tears and pushing us with her hands as though physically trying to evict us from the house. With great difficulty we managed to calm her a little and coaxed her story from her, garbled though it were.

There had been meetings held at the cottage between the Americans and the fisherman. They had been coming in broad daylight. Too many. Too often. And so on.

The whole business had led to catastrophe for somebody had obviously talked, word had reached the wrong ears, the republican fascists had laid a trap and, even before we had set out the night before, had sprung it taking all the Americans and others involved in one fell swoop, except only for her husband. She had pointed to a back window via which he had escaped with very few moments to spare. Hopefully he was making his way to the safety of the mountains.

She was now pushing us once again to the door in her haste to be rid of us and see the back of the whole affair. We left expecting at any moment to be apprehended as we walked back along the track. We felt relieved to cross the low ridge once again without hearing any shouted commands and then we distanced ourselves as fast as we could until we reached cover among some trees and bushes. We could see no signs of trouble, so at last we relaxed. We became the victims of anticlimax. We had had a scare and felt shocked and dismayed. The whole business had ended so abruptly and upsettingly. We had been anticipating with some relish our surprise reunion with the aircrew, our accusing looks, their shame and of course our inclusion in the great escape. We felt very deflated.

We feverishly rolled our cigarettes and as we inhaled gradually felt soothed. Our previous ire against the Americans evaporated and we felt a genuine regret for their so short period of freedom behind the line. We were lucky not to have followed them into the trap. It was just as well that they had failed to trouble contacting us before they left the mountains. Such were our thoughts. As we calmed down and began to feel safer so petty arrogance took over. We directed our anger at the English officer. He must have been a fool, said we, to have handled it so carelessly. With what pomposity we decided that if the Yanks had honoured their pledge with us, they would still be free; we would have seen to that—no daylight meetings in the mass. All that walking for nothing! What a mixture of thoughts disappointment can bring you. Finally, we came to our senses and, although not knowing what to do next, we walked away thinking how lucky we were to be able to do just that as our own masters. We began to remember how, once again, the contadini had befriended us and undertaken considerable effort on our behalf in order to give us a chance to escape. Once more they had shouldered responsibility for Italy’s ex-prisoners of war. We decided we would drop in on the Tamburrini family again.

Chapter 18—A Partisan Interlude

After the midnight-to-dawn dash north to the Porto Recanati district, we felt disinclined to tramp back to the Tamburrini’s farm straightaway, as Pietro, their son, had done. We had traipsed many kilometres in the past four days and the calamity revealed to us in the early hours of that morning had left us decidedly listless. We dozed and smoked, between wandering a kilometre or two, quite aimlessly. Our intention was to find a place to eat and sleep that night in the locality and tackle the walk back on the morrow.

My guess is that we were somewhere in the triangular area described by three towns. Porto Recanati stood on the coast. Six kilometres west of it, on a high knoll, perched the walled city of Loreto. Five kilometres southwest of this was the inland town of Recanati. The day’s and night’s happenings took place in this area as far as I can conclude. Had we been touring Italy intentionally in peacetime we would have known from our holiday brochures that the city of Loreto was certainly worth a visit, being an ancient place of pilgrimage for Catholics the world over and a place of alluring antiquity for all, certainly as important as Lourdes in southern France. Being tourists by accident and not design, however, we had only our eyes with which to extract the myriad tourist delights which abounded in the districts we had passed through. But living with the people and just seeing had been enough to make me fall in love with Italy.

In those days in war-torn Italy one memorable event was likely to follow quickly on the heels of another. So it was that in early afternoon we fell in with a phenomenon of the times, a band of, shall we say, urban partigiani—or should it be urban banditti (bandits). There were three of them, their leader being absent, and not one over twenty years old. They had with them a bevy of three or four equally young ladies, good-looking, well-dressed, especially for the times, and certainly not contadini girls. To me they smacked of the city, Rome perhaps, more akin to the girl I had lunched with near Gubbio. Of course, they recognised us for what we were and invited us to join them. They were sitting outside a pleasant farmhouse and soon we were enjoying prosciutto, salami, and bread, washed down with the house wine—for each farm had its own in those days. Afterwards we smoked not fags rolled from cigar leaf, not even the cheap Popolare, but real Macedonia Extra if you please, the best brand known to us. This was something new to us. They were different from anything we had met with in Italy. We could not figure them out for what they were.

The contadini of the farm were separate from them but knew them as though they had been paying guests for a day or two. Later, their leader arrived and was introduced as Aldo, again a young man, handsome, dark and with the lack of inhibitions towards the opposite sex which smacked of the city, not the provincial contadini. He greeted his girlfriend with quite ardent embraces most unlike the general behaviour we had become accustomed to in rural Italy. It had always maintained a strict Catholic conservatism regarding such matters.

We were invited to join their banda and, being at the unsatisfactory end of one project and with minds empty of any definite plans for the future apart from moving down to the front line, we agreed to join them if only for a few days.

The girls now left us, giving the Italian lads very fond farewells, and went back to town: which one of the local three I do not know. Aldo, speaking slowly in Italian well adjusted to our meagre ability in the tongue, carefully explained that we were to pay a visit to a republican fascist family that very night. This action appeared to be based on information gathered in the city of Loreto that morning. We had been looking forward to and would have much preferred a good night’s sleep alongside brother bullock in some stable or other, but it was not the time to start argument.

We left the farm which had provided hospitality, the Italian lads now carrying useful looking rifles. Aldo carried a Berretta automatic pistol in a belted holster underneath his jacket. We walked, and a little before sunset we arrived at our objective, a profitable looking farmstead.

The escapades (I can think of no better term) that we were to become involved in during the next few days would show us another facet of post-Armistice Italy in turmoil. They were too adventitious, bearing little relationship with the serious military purpose of the mountain partisan groups. Except that this family were bad fascists, the object of the visitation was not made clear to us. We could only tag along as spectators to a performance in which we would not understand but a word or two of the dialogue.

We entered the farmyard, and our numbers and weapons soon drew the family out. The fascist opposition looked a very soft target to me. The ‘capo da famiglia’ (head of the family) was in his sixties and his following were made up of two or three women of varying ages and one of their husbands.

They talked in the yard with usual Italian rapidity, continued so in the kitchen, then Aldo started a noisy tirade; everybody grew excited, (except Piet and I, who just stood and gaped). Guns were flourished and Aldo and a companion went off to search the bedrooms; the family made wailing protesting noises from beyond the muzzles of the other two heroes’ guns. There came a loud whoop of triumph from the master bedroom. He had found the object of the search. No—not secret documents, weapons, or the like—but a large bundle of Italian currency ripped out from the old man’s mattress. The family’s protesting noises grew to a crescendo; Aldo shouted them down. Apparently the main partisan business of the night had been brought to a successful conclusion.

For good measure, however, and because of a pony and trap-like conveyance found in the stable, these two items were harnessed up and we proceeded to pack the trap with hams and other Italian meats that hang from the ceiling in most Italian farm kitchens; some sacks of grain were added. I confess, with genuine regret, that Piet and I helped in this. It was now quite dark, and we left to the accompaniment of women’s wailing and men’s curses.

It was a pleasant night to travel in, with the stars and a half-moon to light our way. It must have been about one o’clock in the morning and, despite our tiredness, Piet and I enjoyed the experience with the sea, well below us, reflecting the moonlight. On our way we passed the residence of Gigli, the singer, a native of Recanati. We entered Porto Recanati very carefully for we had to cross the railway, then the main road supply line mainly used at night by the Wehrmacht for feeding their eastern defences. The railway was crossed with ease and then, with the pony and trap about 200 metres behind, Piet, myself, and two others approached the main road at an S-bend. We all had to lie flat in the grass verge as a few German trucks rounded the bend scanning us all with their headlights. Then, after checking the road in both directions, the pony and trap was signalled on, the road was crossed, and it was not long before we were in another road that ran alongside the beach.

We might well have been on Brighton front. On the inland side of the road were the tall boarding houses and small hotels one would associate with Brighton or dozens of other seaside resorts in Britain. On the seaward side was a wide promenade, then below that the wide stretch of beach and finally, not the Channel of course but the Adriatic lapping gently on the strand. 

Our destination was a tall house of at least three floors plus attic rooms in a terrace of similar houses. There we stopped to be instantly greeted by a woman in her early forties I would hazard who had been obviously keeping a watch for us. Unloading was swift and quiet. We went inside leaving Aldo to take the pony and trap a part of the way back from whence we had come, to be left in a quiet spot to find its own way home. We ate and drank and then turned in to sleep in comfortable beds. The thought struck me that I was about to sleep in the middle of a fairly large town for the first time since being in Italy.

Life in the boarding house, for such it had been, was relatively luxurious with plenty of food, cigarettes, indoor lavatories, and everything except something to do. Time passed reasonably well the next day for Piet and I had much sleep to catch up with, or we had the novelty of peeping out of the window to watch the activity below us, such as it was, for the holiday maker was absent and the promenade well-nigh deserted.

We found the second day boring but for the plentiful and excellently cooked food we enjoyed. We had been asked to keep to the upstairs rooms and not to draw outside eyes to the house by peering too often through the windows. This rather dull state of affairs was brightened by a sudden visit by a bevy of damsels in early afternoon. There were the girls we knew already from our first meeting with the band plus a couple more—for curiosity’s sake, I suppose. It was delightful to enjoy their curiosity whilst lounging on the beds, answering their questions in our painful Italian. Their sophistication was that of the city, not the countryside. None of these had ever wrung the neck of a hen or rabbit in preparation of the day’s meal; their hands showed not a sign of toil with the zappa or spade. They were the daughters of businesspeople from Loreto, Recanati, and even Macerata. The whole set-up reminded me of an American film about campus life, the banda being the college football team, and the girls the cheerleader types and fans of the lads playing the partigiani game, showing them their adulation. It seemed far removed from the reality of war.

Our life of ease lasted a couple of days, during which time Aldo was often out ferreting for information about, I can only assume, recalcitrant fascist families. The only target made clear to us was that we were going to plant a bomb at the house of the leading fascist family in the old city of Loreto. On seeking details as to our activity beyond that assignment the further purpose of the patrol, or whatever you might call it, seemed vague. We were going out into the countryside, and we could extract no more information than that. There seemed to be no links with a chain of command higher than Aldo himself. The group seemed small and isolated. From what we had gathered they wrung money and foodstuffs from the naughty fascist families but for what wider, military purpose we could not fathom. The purpose appeared to stop with the group.

We left early in the evening, whilst it was still quite light, with weapons ill-concealed under loose coats. These seaside towns clung to the coast, were long and with little depth, so we were soon across the main road and railway and in the cover of the hills behind the town. There had been few people in the streets and no undue attention had been paid to us. In the fading light we walked the four or so kilometres toward the ancient fortress of Loreto and as we tackled the final steep slope it appeared to hang menacingly above us. It was dark by the time we were walking at the foot of its crenelated outer wall.

Since 1944 I have been inside the city walls on several occasions to tour its streets, marvel at its towering cathedral and watch the pilgrims gather in the piazza before the great door together with their halt and lame, there to hold an outdoor service in the hope of a blessed miracle.

Numerous crutches left behind by the cured give mute testimony to past blessings, or many a citizen will provide vocal confirmation of miraculous happenings. Old Pasquale Tamburrini loved to assure this unbelieving Protestant of their truth for had he not been a witness—a blessing in itself—to the crutch flung down and the joyous, “Hallelujah” and this assurance he delivered always with a hint of smugness. As with ‘Our Lady of Walsingham’, so with the ‘Madonna of Loreto’ were miracles traced to the sanctity of her house built here centuries ago and now surrounded by the cathedral, which in turn had its outer bastions. Since medieval days the city had been a front-line fortress against the Moslem powers just across the Adriatic.

As our group of partisans walked outside this city, second only to the Vatican City itself in the eyes of good Italian Catholics, I wondered if it might, within the year, suffer as did Monte Cassino but a short time ago. I knew nothing then of Loreto’s inner miracles; indeed, there was not a pious thought in our heads for we were intent upon planting a bomb. The near proximity of holiness certainly seemed to have no effect upon Aldo or his lads.

The night that was to follow would confirm Piet’s and my suspicions that we were dealing with a group of college-boy-like amateurs who were far more self-seeking than patriotically inspired.

The city had spilt over its western walls, and it was into this more modern part that we entered to seek the ‘bad man’s’ house. In the gloom we walked into a Carabiniere, doubtless on his way home from duty. He was promptly held up and, and after some rapid talk we could make nothing of, he was searched thoroughly. They wanted to appropriate his gun, a small automatic, but we two could see that he was begging them to spare him this humiliation and probable disciplining to boot. We felt sorry and embarrassed for him and chipped in a word or two on his behalf. In any case the gun was empty. He was allowed on his way. We continued to the scene of the ‘job’.

In whispers Aldo explained what was to happen. On the other side of a not very wide street, a dozen yards or so distant from us, stood the house in question gleaming pale white under a risen moon. The streets were deserted and the rows of houses that lined them showed little if any light. Conditions were good for planting the bomb, even in the middle of a small city. The bomb in question turned out to be a ‘Red Devil’, the hand grenade of the Italian Army—a tin canister containing explosive and odd bits of nasty little pellets and painted red to justify the name. It lacked at least half the power of a British Army hand grenade. If this was all he had to make his point, so well and good, but then came the plan. As we faced it the right-hand end of the house was by a street that made a junction with the one we were in. The front door was about ten yards from this corner.

Aldo was to stay where we were, on the side of the street opposite the solid looking front door with the grenade, and we were to cross the street and wait round the corner of the house. Aldo would throw the grenade at the front door and run for our corner before the grenade exploded. (If he had been holding a British grenade he would be asking to die). I tried to suggest just walking up to the front door, pulling the grenade pin out, placing the grenade against the door and running for the corner, but all that Italian was too much for me, so I was ushered across the road.

Aldo, who had guts, stood at the far side of the road directly opposite the door, put the grenade to his mouth, bit hold of the rubber tongue attached to the safety pin of the grenade, pulled the pin out with his teeth, and threw the grenade at the stout door; then he ran like the Dickens for the corner. The grenade hit the door, bounced out into the street towards Aldo and detonated. Aldo ran diagonally for the corner of the house, along the hypotenuse of a triangle as it were—the longest side of the triangle. It was a trifle too long; he got two pellets in his cheek. Piet reckoned it served him right for being so bloody stupid. The narrowness of the street magnified the bang and there may have been at least two pellets in the door, and that was all. A patrol of junior Boy Scouts could have done a better job. We all ran.

Clear of the town Piet and I agreed that the best thing to do now was to disappear into the hinterland, as the saying goes. Aldo led us on a blundering course through the middle of the farmyard of every farm we passed, so setting off the guard dogs. Before the echoes of one dog had expired, we were upsetting the next. This is a gross exaggeration, but so it appeared to us. We left behind us a very trackable trail. Even so, Aldo decided to seek refuge and rest for the night at the next farm. We entered the yard and with no further ado Aldo walked up to the front door and knocked firmly. By now it was too late to expect any God-fearing farmer to throw open his door to possible evils of the night. Aldo continued to knock until, at last, the window above was thrown open and the voice of a man brutally disturbed from his rightful sleep asked why “In dannazione” his family should be so inconsiderately disturbed at this time of night.

A parley commenced with Aldo requesting shelter for the night, for which he would reward the contadino. This latter was not having any, so Aldo asked of good Italian patriots’ food and shelter for his partisan group. Perhaps the farmer was a bad fascist for he refused, having likely enough spotted the guns, with which Aldo lost his temper and threatened break-in and looting. The reply came with a double-barrelled shotgun being thrust through the window and each barrel fired in rapid succession. In a flash that farmyard was clear of partigiani. Piet and I stood at the yard entrance and for some time could make no contact with the rest of the band. We called and gradually regrouped to decide what to do next. Aldo was for breaking doors down and ransacking the place but gave way to other opinion. Piet and I had had enough, and it looked as though the young partigiani were tiring of these night manoeuvres, so when we two stressed the need to travel a few miles avoiding human habitation they readily agreed. So, we led the way, left the tracks going across country—that is to say across tilled fields and vineyards—until we reached a fair-sized river, no doubt the Potenza.

To make distance we travelled for some time along its bank against the current so as to get away from the Loreto district. Even as we walked Aldo still continued to be a nuisance, for suddenly there was the ‘crack-crack’ of a pistol. We looked back and a few feet behind us was Aldo with drawn automatic having fired a couple of rounds at a bush standing at the bottom of the riverbank. He swore he had seen a man move. 

The first sign of dawn showed and—after stressing that we would wake no one up, that we would hide our guns, that we would be polite and pay our way—we kept our eyes open and were eventually rewarded with permission to sleep in the barn of a very early-risen contadino.

We awoke with the sun risen to mid-morning and to warm milk, bread, and salami, paid for. It was then that Piet told the group of our intention to carry on our journey down to the front line. They showed regret, but we would not change our mind. Aldo then offered some of the recently acquired money, but we said we had no need of it. We said our farewells and made tracks for the south. Perhaps we were wrong in our suspicions and, if so proved, would abjectly express our regrets.

Chapter 19—Pasquale’s Farm

In pursuing the possibility of escaping by sea the two of us, since leaving the San Martino district, had gradually worked our way northwards, increasing our distance from the front line by fifty kilometres or so. Now it was turnabout and tramp south once more. We would drop in on the Tamburrini family and let them know what had happened to us, and after a few days’ rest continue down to the vicinity of my old prison camp at Servigliano. From there we would repeat my journey of September last year toward the Monti della Laga and the Gran Sasso, but this time we should have the help of my precious map and the guidance of experience. When the newly-freed POWs set off for the front line last September, the signs of approaching winter were beginning to show. Now budding foliage was beginning to unfold, and spring was on the move. The campaigning season was in sight. We were still full of hope.

By nightfall of the day we left Aldo’s band, we were once more sitting at the Tamburrini’s table sharing their food, their prayers, and all the news and gossip we could muster in our weak Italian. We stayed a further day or two and it was during this time, during the evening table chat, that we were told of the two British officers, a captain and a major, who were in hiding close by.

The Tamburrini’s farm was one-third of the way up the southern slope of the Cremona Valley and, the very next morning we descended by the path which led from the farmhouse down to the wooden bridge that spanned the Cremona, turned left to follow the path that ran beside the river along its north bank, then shortly turned slightly right to follow a path that led obliquely up the first slope in the rise up to the ridge on which stood Corridonia and separated the Cremona Valley from the larger, wider valley of the River Chienti. Shortly, we halted at the farm that had been indicated to us by Pietro. It was but a ten-minute walk.

Our tapping on the door was answered by Dora Pistolesi a signorina in her mid-twenties. In answer to our request to see the British officers, she first went back inside to see if their honours would grant us an audience. “They must be an uppity pair” muttered Piet, “I’ve got the feeling that they don’t wish to be disturbed”. However, we were ushered in and there sat two long-legged fellows by a table, their eyes staring suspiciously towards us. Piet gasped and burst out laughing, the other two rose to their feet and joined in the gasps and the laughter, and all three shouted and chattered in a strange tongue that I knew was the South African Taal, for Piet had taught me a bit. Then, remembering me, Piet made the introductions naming them as Mike Kruger, who stood over six feet, and not a lot shorter was ‘Yank’. This last was so named because, although a genuine Boer he had served in the American Navy and answered now to no other name. They came from the same officers’ prison camp as Piet, but only as humble rankers of course, serving in the camp administration. Back in South Africa they all hailed from the Johannesburg district. It was a fortuitous meeting, but we were to make a well-knit, happy group, and would spend a lot of time together. They had been settled in the farm for some time, knew the area fairly well, and the upshot was that Piet and I, after discussion with Pasquale and Pietro, decided to stay in the valley for a while. They had a connection with the ‘resistance’.

The farming system we found ourselves in was typical, I believe, of most of Italy at that time. The average holding was just large enough to be worked by the farmer and his wife, with support perhaps from other near relations and their eventual offspring of course. The basic crops in Central Italy as I remember were wheat, barley, maize, and of course their vines which interlaced part of their acreage, perhaps festooning other trees, which bore figs, olives, peaches and so forth. In the harvesting sequence the maize (Gran Turco) and the grape harvest (the vandemonian) came last.

If the family was fortunate, it owned its own farm;  but many were run on the ‘padrone’ system whereby a wealthier person, often a town dweller owning a shop or two or in some other type of small business, had invested in a farm which a contadini family would manage on roughly a 50-50 basis. This family would own its own poultry, geese, ducks, hens, doves, and animals, bullocks of course—mainly to work the land, pigs, rabbits (hutched), of which the padrone would receive a share of the eggs and meat. The Tamburrini farm was of this category, but they were saving desperately hard with contadini canniness against the day when they would buy their own.

The extent and value of our labour in their fields was certainly a poor return for the food and comfort they afforded us. We were treated almost as members of the family with the exception that they gave us generous allowance for the fact that we were not ‘Abituati al lavoro duro’ (used to hard work). But as the weeks rolled by we did some duty wielding the zappa—a long pole with a single, hoe-like blade rake positioned, used with a pick-like action meant to break up lumps of stubborn soil or to take out weeds or too many seeds. In early summer, when haymaking was in process, we took our position at the end of a line of about twenty scythers, male and female, the acknowledged position of the weakest workers in the line, to our shame, where we tried to uphold the honour of our countries. There we trailed behind in echelon formation where we could do the least possible damage to the ankles of the others. We haymakers broke off frequently for draughts of wine (never water, for this induced perspiration, whereas wine did not and also provided energy and did not sap it; or so said Pietro Tamburrini). At our belts were hung horns of bullock, goat, or ram containing water and a blade sharpener with which we kept our long, curved blades honed. Many a cut to the top of our thumbs, of the right hand, did we two amateurs suffer as we repeatedly went through this process of keeping the blade keen, so essential for good scything. Hot lunch was brought out to us in the fields—slabs of steaming maize polenta, pastasciutta, home-baked bread and gulps of wine straight from the bottle. Then gradually our chat would fade, and we would snooze until the ‘king’ of the line would call us to order, the scythers would form their line, and at a shout from our leader our scythes would swish again through the grass. So it went on for three days. Lord how we two amateurs worked and—my God!—how the others worked!

At the end of the first day’s scything, we British ached in every limb and were very tired indeed. We longed for a hot bath, which was impossible. Despite their day in the field, the womenfolk still had to give Nonna and Blandina a hand with preparing the evening meal. They had scythed like men all day, putting Piet and me to shame. The men were busy feeding the livestock and doing such end of day jobs; it was growing dark and heating water was obviously not going to be squeezed into their fading day’s agenda.

I confess that we dodged further work by stripping to the waist and washing by the well. The Tamburrini brothers merely grinned and pulled our legs about our lack of staying power. They would eat and sleep in their dried sweat before tomorrow’s harsh demands. I believe their attitude was that they would get the job done first and then clean up ready for Mass on Sunday.

Next morning we awoke stiff in every limb and feeling very doubtful about being able to swing a scythe. After serious discussion we decided to make the effort rather than bring disgrace on the British working man. Our work that day was clumsy and painful, but gradually became more bearable. Our stiffness eased as we swung our scythes.

That night we slept in our dried sweat. We were too damned tired to wash other than cleaning our hands ready for eating.

A sound sleep brought us to the field of honour next morning feeling in much better shape than the morning before. Our stiffness was gone, and we put in a sound day’s work. Luckily the job was concluded that day for by its end Piet and I, despite having conquered our stiffness, had utterly used up our stamina.

On the morrow Piet and I took the day off, abandoning the farm to pay a call upon Mike and Yank. The family did a normal day’s work as though they had made no special effort over the past few days. For them there were no days off except for religious festivals. They respected no trade union hours of labour. They were working for themselves. They were going to save up for their own farm or bust! It took them many more years, but they finally did it. They saved every centissimo; they deprived themselves—the children especially went without the little luxuries normally accorded to childhood, I imagine; but they did it in the end. Could the generation that followed after Dumiglio and Giuliana ever be as tough and as good as they?

When the rows of cut grass dried sufficiently, we helped pile up the rick around its central pole in the rick yard, at the same time hiding within it and from government official’s and padrone’s eyes barrels of grain.

At the end of that day, Piet and I warned everybody that we were insisting upon having a bath, albeit a cold one. The sweat ran still warm on our skin with a plethora of minute, torturing scraps of straw scratching at our backs, under our armpits, in crotch and hair, as we filled the animals’ water trough with bucket after bucket from the adjacent well. In we plunged, quite naked, clutching a piece of soap apiece (still Red Cross parcel stuff), whilst Pasquale shooed his unmarried daughters away from vantage points inside the house. Pietro’s wife, Blandina, being married, had greater freedom and was laughing her head off. The water was damnably cold and so the bath was short but satisfying.

One job I loved was giving brother bullock his feed and water and settling him down for the night whilst listening to his grunts and sighs of satisfaction—and cleaning his muck away from the stables underneath the living quarters of the house.

Our labour was always invited and never demanded, and often Piet and I would sneak away mid-morning to join old Pasquale in the cantina for a crafty glass or two of wine. He, being ‘capo della famiglia’ and of pensionable age, allowed himself this privilege most mornings.

Every two weeks we would make a show of helping Nonna and Pasquale in the heating of the fornaio ready for bread baking. We loved to sample the new batch, hot out of the oven. Were she in a good mood, she might let us dip our bread in water and then in the family’s precious sugar store to make a sweetener. She generally was in a good mood, being the lovely old lass she was.

Pasquale had, obviously, brought his family up in a strict Catholic fashion. He was a devoted member of the Catholic Church, very religious and extremely proud of, to put it his way, having ‘given’ two of his daughters to the Church. What they thought about it I do not know, but I did meet one of them on holiday in Italy, having come all the way from South America where she had spent most of her church life as a teaching nun. This was a quite recent meeting in August 1991, and she was in her early eighties and appeared quite content with her vocation after so many years. Should he hear any member of the family blaspheme, including we foreign guests of course, we would be firmly put in our place and often given a homily including lurid reference to our possible lot in the next world; the nether one naturally. But he was not above letting rip himself with some descriptive earthy phrases, one of his favourite being “Mondo di merda” (world of shit). He strictly barred his unmarried daughters from the indelicacy of viewing any animal giving birth—were it cow, pig, or even rabbit—although they were approaching thirty years in age. Hens, etc., did not count, for they were not like us.

One thing that, to my mind, made Pasquale compare favourably with many other heads of contadini families was his attitude to the family dog.

At the worst many dogs were treated as of little value. Stock animals raised for family eating or farm income were fed appropriately and reasonably cared for. It appeared to me that dogs, being neither future food nor profit were, as a consequence, left off the ration strength to fend for themselves.

At best many received a poor return in terms of food or consideration, let alone affection, for their contribution to family and farm.

Many of the worst kept were the guard dogs kept permanently on a chain, unable to forage for themselves so quite dependent on what scraps were thrown to them. Some were quite possibly kept in a semi-starved state deliberately to make them ferocious, but I believe that more often than not it was just lack of thought.

Better advantaged were those who had the freedom to range the farm and help controlling livestock, thus enabling them to hunt and forage for food, thereby keeping down the vermin. Though many were fed, many had no place on the farm ration strength and were not given food on a daily basis apart from odd scraps.

For example, Pietro Spuntarelli of Rocca Franca had affection for his dog, and it roamed the farm with its master having opportunity to hunt and forage as well as receiving kitchen scraps. Thence came its main diet. Whilst we were cutting wood for charcoal burning in the ‘bosco’ (woods) it happened to catch a brace of rabbits. Alas, this doubly well-earned food was not for his benefit. His only share of this ‘windfall’ was the guts. We enjoyed the rest in the farmhouse as an additional late supper. Tough on the dog, I thought, being a typical English dog lover.

Pasquale on the other hand, not only made a point of feeding his dog each evening, if only a slice of bread, but obviously derived much pleasure from this daily ritual and showed a genuine fondness for the animal.

It was a small dog, rather like a cairn terrier in appearance, and roamed at will benefitting from occasional kitchen scraps. Its only official function benefitting the farm work was to keep vermin down and bark when visitors arrived thereby acting as doorknocker. Piet and I helped to improve its rations and we also periodically cleared its body of those awful, blood-sucking ticks.

Sunday was an absolute day of rest, bar feeding the animals and cooking meals, and meant for piety. Mass was a definite must for all Tamburrinis and all the better for you spiritually, incurring as it did a walk of five or six miles, half of it up a steep hill. Good Friday and even the Saturday were experiences of absolute gloom in the house, Pasquale saw to that. One conversed in lowered voices. Smiles were all but banned. You did not even raise your voice to the dog. It was a period of studied dolour. Even the meals were of the plainest. Pasquale nightly and unfailingly led evening prayers but on Good Friday he led them with extra fervour. Up to that Easter I had considered Italian Sundays much jollier affairs than the Puritan-possessed English ones, not even to mention the alcohol-lacking Scottish ones or the chapel-serious Welsh. I was reminded of my early years in the twenties with no cinema-going, no ball or such-like games, only walks or quiet sitting down games, and Sunday school at least, if not morning church as well. Your Italian Catholic went to mass, confessed his peccadillos once in a while, and went his merry way, but Pasquale’s Good Friday set my ideas aback for it was more sombre than any childhood Sunday I could recall.

Still, he made up for it on Easter Sunday for, on the family’s return from mass, all was changed into joy and we sat down to a midday meal of seven courses! True, many of the sweet courses were very similar with war shortages inhibiting the feast but what an effort was made in the kitchen that day. Pasquale had shown himself sorrier than most for Good Friday’s tragedy, short of scourging his own back, and more pleased about the Resurrection than anyone else in the whole of Le Marche.

Regarding Sunday games, the one we played on Sundays in the Cremona Valley was what is now recognised in France as ‘Baule’ but played with ancient wooden balls in the farmyard of the farm where our two new members of the British group resided. As for Pasquale Tamburrini, he took his religious festivals seriously, was a good man, and showed more generosity toward and gave more help to a wandering Englishman and South African Boer than ever they thanked him for; may he and his wife rest in peace. In addition to this, he was ever faithful to his religion and obeyed his church superiors to a greater extent than, perhaps, they gave him credit for.

After the war I saw Pasquale during two visits in holiday time (I was then a schoolteacher). In 1956, during the time we were invited to stay with my old friend Silvano Petrazolli in Firenze, my fiancée and I also searched for the famiglia Tamburrini. We were on my Norton motorcycle and had halted by the main entrance to the old town of Corridonia. I was trying to recall my way down to the valley of the Cremona without success, mainly due to new buildings that had been built outside the town walls. At first I did not recall him, but I was accosted by an Italian who evidently knew me. It was Guglielmo, the old partisan leader whose group had rescued me from a German patrol of which I shall tell you more later. On his Italian ‘pop pop’ he led me to the Tamburrinis, but in the Chienti valley now—not the Cremona. They still worked for a padrone on a farm in the flat lower farmland in the rich Chienti valley, saving desperately for their own farm and living most conservatively and frugally in order to achieve this. Pasquale stood yet in the full dignity of age. After a few days we left and I took a photograph of him, elderly and proud and, to my delight, wearing a corduroy jacket that Piet and I had procured for him during 1944 for which he delivered us a homily about the sin of stealing.

Two years later, now married and with a friend, we arrived there to find him smitten with a stroke that would kill him. He was still just coherent and certainly knew me. We had to leave the same afternoon and, as I left him he wept. Our holiday group was travelling in the car of our friend, who knew little of the significance of the moment, and so we left although, somehow, I should have contrived to stay for a day or two. Very often I have regretted not doing so. Pasquale never ended his life in his own farm; after all those years of hard work and hard living, scraping and saving every centissimo, it seems an almighty pity that he could not be spared that.

At night Piet and I slept, not below in the stable with brother bullock, but in the house in a small room with Giovanni, the younger brother of Pietro. We got on well with him for he was nearest to us in age and therefore in outlook. Like Piet and me, he had served in the infantry and had taken part in Mussolini’s invasion of Greece from Albania. After prayers and in the privacy of our bedroom, we chatted most nights before blowing out the makeshift candle and picked up much useful Italian from his coaching. We conversed of things young men talk about: girls of course, (and our exaggerated bragging on this subject would surely not have pleased Pasquale), life back home, jobs, prospects, war experiences, and so on. It was good teaching ground for Piet and me. We learnt much about Giovanni during these nightly talks:  the horrors of the mid-winter counterattack by the Greeks that showed the Italian conscript the true face of war and the human cost of Mussolini’s land-grabbing; his good luck in being able to make it back home after the Italian-Allied Armistice (Pasquale still had one soldier son not yet returned and, hopefully, a prisoner in the Balkans).

He confessed that he was now courting a local girl from the nearby town of Mogliano, where the family originally came from, with serious intentions of marriage. It also gradually emerged that his future prospects were not all that good as a candidate for married bliss, being a younger son and with the family putting everything into buying a farm which Pietro, being the oldest son, would of course manage. Not that he complained for it was the system. Meantime, he worked hard for his keep and to help the family plan.

He did marry her, and my then-girlfriend and I visited them during my first return to Italy. They were running a small farm together, on the ‘padrone’ system of course, and were very happy. She was, indeed, a lovely girl. When my wife and I visited them some years later their prospects seemed more assured. They were living in the house of an elderly gentleman as housekeepers. The understanding was that if they cared for him until his death, the property, a fine modern one built outside the old town of Mogliano, would become their own. This all came to pass. Whether this responsibility affected their family life I am not sure, but they had only one child, a son. He is as handsome as his father, ex-Italian Navy and now a long-distance lorry driver, married with a son, and lives with his mother. Giovanni died of heart trouble in 1989. Piet Van Rensberg and I had always felt a bit sorry for Giovanni, the youngest son with little prospect back in 1944. It was good to see his life turn out well.

But the person Piet and I depended upon most was Pietro Tamburinni. Pasquale was the elderly head of the family but Pietro, as eldest son, had already assumed his responsibilities and was the family’s driving force. He was short in stature, short in the leg as I am, stocky and strong. His movements were quick, his stride short and rapid. Homely features and ready smile and laughter reflected his good humour by nature. He had ‘una faccia amica’ (a friendly face).

He was about thirty-seven years old to my twenty-four and, whereas Pasquale was paternal to us in a padrone-like manner, based perhaps on his strict sense of duty to fellow Christians (although non-Catholic) in distress and need, Pietro was paternal in a more comradely, protective way. “Faro io cura di te” (I’ll take care of you—you can depend upon me) was his way of expression when trouble loomed ahead of us. Even when the German troops were retreating through our neighbourhood, he still insisted that we sleep in the house with his family. Such was his generosity. Short of my parents he, Attilio Tulli, and Pietro Spuntarelli and their folk did for me as no other person has ever done. Whatever happens I cannot forget what I owe them.

His wife Blandina was slightly taller than he and, physically, more handsomely endowed, but above all, she had an angelic disposition. She worked extremely hard as a wife, mother, cook, and housekeeper and was often in the fields doing her stint despite a weight problem which must have taxed her strength sorely.

She was to suffer from poor health after the war and died in her sixties. She was a very good person to us all, meek and mild but strong in religious faith.

I recall the occasion when my wife and I, accompanied by Pietro and Blandina, returning from near Pisa on a visit to their daughter Giuliana who was then a teaching nun, stopped in Assisi for a brief diversion. At my insistence we went into a cafe in the main street for soft drinks. The proprietor of the small establishment was young, modish, slick, and out to get rich quickly at the expense of the pilgrims and tourists. His prices therefore were greatly above the usual amount. Despite his superior attitude and ‘proud man’s contumely’ towards the common contadini, both Pietro and Blandina gave him a firm dressing down for taking advantage of a saint so humble and blessed as Saint Francis in order to make filthy profit for his own greed. At first I felt the Englishman’s usual embarrassment at making a public scene but after hearing what they had to say, and in Saint Francis’ own town to boot, I felt proud of them. Seeing justice upheld in those simple terms was a refreshing experience. Mafia beware.