大象传媒

Sicily 1944. Through the open windows of a white, square building in Messina, the music of a dance band escaped brazenly into the sunlit evening air. Inside, British sailors and marines danced with Sicilian girls. The girls wore white dresses and had coloured ribbons in their hair. In chairs along the walls sat the mothers of the girls, dressed in black. Italian and Sicilian males were excluded from the dance by order of the Commanding Officer.

Outside, a small crowd of soliders in grubby, olive green uniforms of the Italian army, thronged the locked doors. They were newly released from a prisoner-of-war camp and had arrived in Messina the day before to be shipped home. They shouted, and banged on the doors with their fists and lobbed stones through the open windows. The doors were unlocked and there was fighting in the street. Suddenly, the short sharp crack of a pistol rang out. The fighting stopped. All eyes watched a sailor who had slumped to his knees. Blood ran from his mouth and nose and formed big red clots on his white tunic. The sudden, falsetto voice of an Italian broke the spell. "Andiamo! Andiamo!" Most of the soldiers got away.

That night in the railway sidings, searchlights and machine guns were used to subdue the Italians. Fourteen of them were killed.

After handing in the ammunition the marines returned to their huts. Marine S. was a slim youth with long, slender hands. He himself had shot dead an Italian and displayed a bloodstained forage cap and a wallet to prove it. He emptied the contents of the wallet onto the grey blanket of his bunk. With his long fingers he spread out the few lire, a one page letter and the creased photograph of an old woman. His fingernails were neat and white-tipped.
"I shot the top of his head clean off!" said S.

At the sailor's funeral parade the sky was blue and cloudless. The padre wore a hip-length surplice. At times a breeze lifted dust in small clouds from the sandy soil, and the surplice billowed and fluttered like a sail. The padre bowed his bald head and placed his hands together. He prayed. He said that God is full of goodness and mercy and that we are all His children. He beseeched our Lord that the soul of the dead man be saved and it be received unto the Kingdom of Heaven. When he finished his prayer an uneven murmuring of "Amen" rippled through the ranks.

The Commanding Officer stood on the platform, just in front of the padre. He was a big man with a smooth, pink complexion. He turned to the chief petty officer and ordered the parade to be dismissed. When he raised his arm in salute the gold braid on his sleeve gleamed in the sunlight.

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