大象传媒

Chapter 11

The Day I will never forget

Every morning at exactly 10.00 o'clock the sirens were on for a few minutes as a test, but one morning we heard the sound 10 minutes earlier than usual. It was the 23rd of July 1943 in Bologna northern Italy, it was the day that completely changed my family's life. I remember that tragic day being very hot with no clouds in the sky, when the sirens went on we did not take much notice because we were used to hearing them every morning for the usual regular drill, their sound was on only for 30 seconds but this time it didn't stop, it meant only one thing, the warning for a real imminent air-raid.
I was off duty that day having swapped my day off with somebody else but my brother was working at the hotel that day. I was at home and didn't know what to do, my mother panicked and started to cry and I was trying to calm her down as best as I could but she was terrified. It was the first time we found ourselves in those conditions but I knew we had to go out of the house because if a bomb hit the house it would have meant death for everybody.
We ran downstairs to the nearby field in a rudimentary shelter excavated in the ground, it was a hole covered with a metal plank but it was big enough for 6-8 people to sit down on benches. Everybody was taken by surprise but it was the rule of war and we were not exempt from such an ordeal and so far we had been lucky. I was almost 15 and my brother 17 year old.
We could hear the distant humming filling the air and that really seemed like a depressing warning of death approaching inexorably without being able to stop it. Then the ground started to vibrate caused by the explosions around us. Even now after such a long time I have flashbacks of that terrible day and the thought of my brother buried under the ruin of the hotel, as we did find out later. It was the day when my life was turned upside down in a painful twist of events, events which affected my family for several years.
The rumble of the planes flying over the city was very intimidating, Bologna was an important railway crossing and prone to be attacked any time, many times we heard the planes above us but their objective were always either Milan, Turin, Naples or other cities where the big factories or important harbours were. It was a terrifying experience.
The fearful thud of the exploding bombs and the flack above us was nonstop, two women in the shelter became hysterical, my mother was deeply disturbed and crying thinking at her son in the centre of the city. Such an experience has to be lived to explain what one feels in those circumstances, but we were at war and we were paying the consequences of it.
When the sirens started again to signal the end of the air raid we all came out of the shelter, the bombs fell mainly in the centre of Bologna while others not far from the fields without causing any damage but we could see dense smoke rising from the town. We tried to ring the hotel but the line was dead and couldn't get in touch with the authorities. The transport in our part of the town was at a standstill, we were not able to know what happened and my mother was in a desperate state of mind not knowing what happened to my brother.
It was a desperate situation for us because we lived far from the centre of the city and nobody could give us any information, my mother suggested I could walk all the way to find out hoping to see my brother alive and well. It took me a long time to reach the destination because there was chaos on the roads. When I arrived near the hotel I had to stop as the roads and many buildings around the hotel were destroyed, the police didn't let anybody go through for the danger of unexploded bombs and there were quite a few of them.
A vast zone around the hotel was destroyed, I could see only one intact corner of the hotel, I couldn't see the rest. I was thinking for the worse and I couldn't stop crying for the fact that I couldn't find out what happened to my brother. I was there for ages under the hot sun and didn't know what to do, a policeman asked me why I was crying, I explained to him the reason of my desperation, after he talked to the other policemen he took me near the hotel, a terrible scene was right in front of my eyes. The hotel was half destroyed!
I felt a sense of despair and anguish at the thought of my brother lying dead under the destroyed building, I shouted "no, no, no it cannot be true, it cannot be real, it is my brother there, no, no". I didn't want to believe it, I wanted to have a glimmer of hope because I couldn't see him dead, I couldn't face it, never.
It was for me a moment when I could have disappeared in the bowels of the earth. I felt I
couldn't go back home and tell my mother the bitter truth, I don't know why but in my mind I had the conviction of him being still alive, it was only a hope. I was looking around me expecting to see him again telling me he was there, I was looking at everybody's faces to see if could distinguish his face from all the others smiling at me.
It was the day when I lost my brother for ever. He died there, he was only seventeen years old, he died because of Benito Mussolini, a man who was inebriated by dreams of glory and by vision of an empire vanished two thousand years ago, he was an opportunist who joined a maniac called Hitler hoping to gather some crumbs that fell from his war of aggression.
The heat was intense and the awful smell of the dust emanating from the ruins and desolation was terrible to breathe. I was sweating and my face was full of tears, people were looking at me asking themselves why, I think they had they knew answers, I didn't move from there because I had hopes, the hope to see my brother again, I was thinking that he could have saved himself by going in a shelter but I had no answer to my questions and that was excruciating me immensely. I did not want to think of having lost my brother, also I couldn't face my mother and pretend not to know what happened.
Nobody could go near the hotel for the three unexploded bombs and the police were quite firm about it, they advised me to come back the day after and see if the army could make them harmless. I went home and told my mother the hotel had been hit and that there was hope he could be injured and still alive, she was crying surrounded by neighbours, I told her she had to have a rest and go to lie down, she was continuously saying: "I lost my son I lost my son".....
I did not know if my brother was dead or alive until I had seen his body, I still wanted to believe he might have been taken to hospital. I went back the day after but nothing changed, nobody knew if there were bodies under the ruins, there were too many destroyed buildings and the excavations to clear the rubble would have taken a long time, also it was July and very hot and the smell of putrefied bodies from other ruins was overwhelming. With the help of my cousin we went to the hospital but we were told to come back after a few days when the situation got clearer, it was a chaotic situation and impossible to find out anything.
We went to the main cemetery together to see if his body was brought there, we had to go in the underground where long rows of decomposed bodies were waiting to be recognised by their families, some of them were mutilated and unrecognisable. There were piles of body parts as well.
It took almost an hour to check one by one the bodies but we did not see him.
The bombs didn't touch that part of the city where the cemetery was and the transport was running normal. I and my cousin left and took a tram to return to the city centre but while searching for my brother's body our clothes became drenched with the smell of the decomposing bodies, it was the smell of death. The putrid smell was overwhelming and the passengers kept their a distance from us, it was tragic, it was so bad that even now after 60 years that fetid and malevolent smell lingers in my nostrils like poison bringing back those awful moments of my life.
The fourth day I went to the hotel again but the unexploded bombs were still there but made safe, they were very big and if they exploded when they fell it would have caused a much worse catastrophe because one bomb fell in the cellar without exploding, nearly all staff and many customers took refuge in the cellar of the hotel trying to escape the bombs.
I met some staff near the hotel and asked them if they could help in giving me information of the last moments before the bombs hit the hotel. Nobody could or would tell me anything, but I was told by one of them that the hotel manager asked the staff in the reception to remain there to guard against possible trespassing by intruders, but nobody said anything about the fate of my brother.
I was left with no hope to see him again and started to move away when I heard somebody calling me, I turned and saw the chambermaid who had her son working in the hotel's restaurant, she was crying and rather perturbed trying to tell me she couldn't help me but she also added that last time she saw my brother and the other few staff was when she was trying to go down the cellar, she heard them saying they were going to take refuge down the well near the lift shaft because that place was sunk from ground level surrounded by very thick walls and felt safe there.
The chambermaid kept crying uncontrollably and holding my hands, I was crying too and then she told me about her son who only a few months earlier was called in the army and sent to Russia, he was recently sent back alive but severely crippled, he was 19 years old and her only son.
This is the tragic price people pay when maniacs like dictators use the lives of others as if they were pawns in a chess game. Only a few months earlier I and my brother, together with all the other staff working in the reception area, were looking at those very thick walls in the well shaft remarking how good that place would have been against an air raid. The irony is that it all depends where you are when a bomb falls.
There was nothing left of the part of the building where my brother was working, only ruins. I knew then that he was dead. My father organised a hired squad of workers to clear the ruins where my brother was supposed to be, it was difficult to find people to do heavy work because most of the men were away at war.
The day after my father informed me he found 4 bodies and that one of them was my brother, they were grouped all together near one another, one receptionist, one bell boy who started the job just a month before, the telephone operator and a receptionist.
My father told me he was surprised to have found my brother intact but without clothes, it seems that he was not hit by the blast but only by the pressure wave caused by the explosion and that might have caused an instant death and the loss of the clothing. The day before at the cemetery I saw bodies who had been subjected to the same effect as my brother did, intact with no clothes on and blackened by the blast.
The following day I had to return to the part of the hotel left intact to collect our belonging from the room where I and my brother were sleeping, I also went down the cellars where all the staff took refuge during the bombardments to have a look at the holes left by the unexploded bomb, it was still there but made armless, from the cellar I could see the sky through 4 floors, the bombs outside were still there but were made safe by the gun artificer. The staff had been very lucky to have escaped such a fate.
On the way home I was desperately looking for his face between the many in the crowd, I was looking for him and seeing him again in every street coming towards me with a smile telling me he was still there and that everything was only a bad dream; no, it was not a bad dream, it was the reality which my mind couldn't come to terms with.
When I arrived home I told my mother the harsh truth, we embraced one another crying and calling his name, I was feeling as never felt before, very strange and with a sensation which made difficult to face and accept the reality. I laid down on my bed and from there I could see his photo on the bed table looking at me, hello Giancarlo, I said with tears in my eyes.
My father told me to go to the morgue to see his body lying on a slab ready to be sent to the cemetery's church. I went and saw his naked intact body but his flesh was black and his eyes were hollow, I could see the scar in his leg where it broke years before.
Yes, it was him lying there cold and rotting away without a sign of life. I wept and wept, repeatedly wept and calling him, to see my dear brother in that condition was breaking my heart, he always protected and loved me and now he was no more with us. I was exhausted and full of grief.
My sister was still at boarding school run by the nuns outside Bologna, she was safe being in the middle of the countryside and she did not know of the tragedy, for the moment we kept it away from her. My mother was greatly disturbed and couldn't believe she couldn't see him anymore and that he was gone for ever, the reality was very hard to accept but it had to be accepted because death is part of our lives.
Now she wanted me to go away to a safe place, she said that it was her duty to try to save me because she didn't want to lose another son. I advised my mother not to come to see his body, it would have added too much pain for her.
The day after I went to see him at the small cemetery's chapel before his burial, I found his coffin on a kind of a small catafalque covered by a black blanket with gold and purple edges in the middle of the church, there was nobody around and in spite of the outside heat it was cool, there was complete silence, I approached the closed coffin and put my arms around it......... I was alone with my dear brother and started to cry uncontrollably trying to talk to him but I knew my words were not heard, finally I said:"Good bye dear brother, we cannot play together anymore".
I was there for a long time attached to the coffin, I couldn't leave the church and it was getting dark, but for me the time did not mean anything in that moment.
It was the Parroco (parish priest) who came there to tell me he had to close the chapel for the night, in tears I embraced the coffin again for the last time saying "I'll see you again one day Giancarlo, good bye" and went home with my grief.
I cried then and I cry now after more than 60 years.
There are many other chapters to read but not here. (Partial End)

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.