大象传媒

Message 1 - Re: The piano in the piazza

Posted on: 10 July 2005 by Peter - WW2 Site Helper

I read your story with great interest and I think it is a valuable contribution to an archive on WW2.

Understandably, perhaps, the literature on WW2 mainly records the more extensive looting carried out by the Germans and, later, by the Russians - not that of the western Allies. Perhaps things were more lax in Italy at the height of the war. Had the piano incident taken place in Britain, where punishment for looting was draconian, the outcome might not have been so happy.

If I can give some recorded examples from Juliet Gardiner's book "Wartime Britain 1939-1945":

"An auxiliary fireman, for example, was sent to prison for five years for filling two buckets with food from a bombed-out grocer's shop (though this was quashed on appeal), and there were cases of ARP wardens being prosecuted for pocketing lumps of coal, picking up a couple of tins of food that were lying around, taking some sodden cardboard boxes that were no use to anyone. The man in charge of a Heavy Rescue Squad found a quarter-full bottle of gin among the ruins of a London pub which he passed round to revive the spirits of his fellow workers who had been labouring for hours to dig for victims of that particular bomb incident. Leonard Watson was sent to prison for this crime."

Regards,

Peter