A SILKEN INTERLUDE
鈥淢y Zeide fought in the war and won a hundred meddles鈥 read the proud message pinned to the corkboard at my grandson鈥檚 kindergarten class. Grandsons are very special, with unlimited license in regard to facts and spelling. His cousin, my grand-nephew, a little older, wanted more specific details about my war experiences 鈥 鈥渨ere you captured 鈥 did you escape?鈥 and was not satisfied with my answer.
鈥淲hat do you mean, yes and no?鈥, he said. And at his probing, I began to remember鈥︹︹︹.
It was embarrassing for them and for us. We were finishing off the duckboards to the small Bailey bridge; the rest of the unit had pulled back and five minutes more would have seen the four of us in our truck with the job completed - the Wehrmacht patrol, an armoured scout car and a six-wheeled truck, swirled around us in seconds, and we were in the bag. The sergeant鈥檚 English was fluent, but heavily accented; he motioned the three sappers into the six-wheeler, and pushed me into the rear seat in the scout car. It took them only minutes to strip and disable our vehicle before we roared off northwards.
The sergeant sat next to the driver, half-turned towards me, his pistol carelessly waving in my direction while he questioned me on our unit, our strength, our armour. Despite my routine name-number-and- rank answers he persisted in firing questions at me. Eventually, he gave up, but still sat half-turned, covering me with his pistol. We were traveling quite fast, swerving to avoid the many potholes and washaways in the road. I was waiting for the opportunity to hide my dog-tags with their dangerous HEB letters stamped next to my name when the field radio crackled and there was a quick conversation in which I could make out his report of taking four unarmed prisoners and asking for instructions. A knowledge of Afrikaans, and a bit of Yiddish helped. He switched off the phone and said 鈥淕erade auf Rimini鈥 ( straight to Rimini) to the driver, and then called up the support truck behind us to relay the same orders.
The front at this time, the so-called Gothic Line, was very elastic and, particularly inland in the mountainous area where we were, positions changed rapidly. We kept up our speed, and the bumps grew more pronounced, until, on taking a curve, we hit a huge washaway where the road had collapsed completely, and I was hurled into the back of the driver. The sergeant鈥檚 head, half-turned as he was, smacked into the metal surround of the windscreen, his pistol dropped at my feet, and a trickle of blood eased below his cap as he lay, hunched forward, and quite still, and the driver brought us to a stop.
鈥淥ut, quick, I鈥檒l stay with him鈥 snapped the driver 鈥 I didn鈥檛 know he spoke English 鈥 鈥淟eave the gun and go.鈥 He was very young, and probably terrified at the responsibility of looking after a prisoner 鈥 far better to let me 鈥渆scape鈥 in the confusion of the accident.
I needed no second bidding. I scrambled over the inert body of the sergeant, one quick glance down the road confirmed that we had outstripped the cumbersome six-wheeler ( I wasn鈥檛 going to hang around anyway) and I was into the scrub and well away from the road within minutes. Some miles back, I had seen a battered signpost to 鈥淥rtucchio鈥 and as this looked like a secondary road, I had my mind made up for me. I scrambled through the bushes and set off back to the turnoff, keeping the road in sight as I knew the six-wheeler could not be far behind us when we crashed. I heard its whine before I saw it, and had time to lie flat as it passed. I caught a glimpse of one of the sappers behind the canvas flaps of the backbed of the truck. I never saw any of them again.
It was late afternoon, and already early June, but high as we were, it was becoming quite cool. I sat down to count my assets. A sturdy pair of boots, a khaki shirt and shorts, under a long-sleeved overall, long socks and anklets, underpants and vest, and my beret. A handkerchief in my pocket, a small Swiss army knife (we had not been searched once it was established that we were non-combatant and unarmed), and that was that. Here I was, in the middle of Abruzzo 鈥 that much I knew- I calculated we had traveled about a hundred kilometers since we were captured, and with the front in the see-saw it had been recently, it could be some little while before I saw the welcome sight of British troops. Maybe I could hole up somewhere, a farm perhaps, and wait things out. Although the local dialect was quite distinctive, it was similar to the Napolitano we had encountered in the South, and I had been able to make myself understood. I had no fears on that score; my major concern was the Germans, and somehow I felt moving upward towards the mountains and away from the coast roads was my best bet.
The tarmac on the turnoff to Ortucchio was very thin, and disappeared altogether in many places. I scrambled alongside the road, about twenty feet away and stumbled over the low scrub, some stone walls and the occasional wire fence. There was no traffic on the road, the landscape was quite deserted. Every so often, I heard the crack of light artillery, but it was distant and very sporadic. The road climbed quite steeply and I welcomed the small rivulet that ran through a culvert under the road. The water was deliciously sweet, unpolluted snowmelt, swift running and sparkling clean.
The sun dipped early behind the mountains, and it was near dusk when I approached the village which straddled quite a substantial stream. Here the ground seemed a bit more cared for, occasional beds of vegetables, a few fields sown with what I subsequently learned was barley, but mostly ground grasses that looked like sheep grazing fodder. I saw a few sheep, thin straggly looking animals, but the whole area appeared listless and primitive. There were quite a number of small groves of olive trees, randomly spaced, with no attempt at order. I was surprised that I saw no-one, either in the fields or, as I skirted the village itself, in the streets. The road seemed to end in the village; only two or three farms lay to the west, in the young foothills of the mountains. Beyond that, the ground rose steeply, rocky, low-scrubbed and empty.
As I climbed behind the village, I had the height to overlook the whole valley, and the road I鈥檇 come along. The village was small, and spread out on either side of the stream. I was surprised at the number of piles of rubble; one, next to the church, was huge and looked as if a large building had been bombed. The road ended in a circle, the church on one side and, the only double-storied structure, a row of shops, all shuttered, on the other. One building stood separately, probably the Uffici communnale, the City Hall. It was the only one newly-painted, and showed on its side wall, in thick, black, foot-high capitals, the Fascist slogan CREDERE OBIDERE COMBATTERE (to believe, to obey, to fight) that Mussolini had splattered on every Government building throughout Italy.
Behind them was a soccer field, with a group of boys kicking a ball about without skill or enthusiasm. A dusty bus ambled up to the circle, dropped a few passengers, and after a wait, went back the way it had come. It was only when the single church bell tolled that I realized it was Sunday, and a small stream of people, mostly women with scarves over their heads, made their way into the church.
From my point of vantage, I could see some farms below me, one of which had three buildings, and another stream coursing through it, down the mountain toward the village. Olive trees lined the stream, and three large heavily-leafed trees grew behind the buildings. If I wanted any place to lie low, this was it. I could see well down the incoming road, the stream was an attraction, and one of the buildings looked like a barn, quite well away from the other two. It was near dusk, and quite cool 鈥 the barn looked deserted, and an ideal place to hole up in.
I approached it gingerly, and eased open the door. There was a sharp, pungent, vaguely familiar smell, not unpleasant, and it was warm out of the playful breeze that swept down from the mountain top still coated with traces of snow. It was dark; I could barely make out a stack of what looked like wooden doors, one atop the other in the centre of the barn. Underfoot, were heaps of leaves, and I now recognized the smell - mulberry leaves. There was a continuous sound, like rain on the roof, and this grew louder as I came near the stack. I peered over the topmost 鈥榙oor鈥 and, sure enough, I was looking at, and hearing, thousands of silkworms busily munching through piles of leaves. I crept behind the stack, made a rough mattress of leaves, and gratefully lay down to draw an easy breath for the first time since we鈥檇 hit the hole in the road.
I must have fallen asleep. I woke to the sight of two very large black eyes, wide with surprise, staring at me from the face of a young girl, holding a hurricane lamp high to see just what she had found.
鈥 Shh鈥 I said quickly, 鈥淪ono soldato Inglesi鈥 (I am a British soldier) 鈥 脠 ci tedeschi qui鈥 (鈥淎re there any Germans here?鈥
She shook her head, and scampered off into the night. I wondered who she would come back with, but in the meanwhile, I brushed the leaves off my overalls, slicked down my hair with my hands, and tried to look as unthreatening as possible.
There were four of them. Mama, sturdy, broad-shouldered, fortyish, held a large rake while her three daughters clustered behind her, one of them holding the lamp. I spoke quickly, my hands shoulder high, palms forward.
鈥淚 am a British soldier 鈥 escaped from the Germans 鈥 the British will be here soon 鈥 I need to hide until they come. I won鈥檛 hurt anybody.鈥 Mama slowly looked me up and down. We all stood, in silence, while Heaven knows what thoughts whirled through her mind. Finally, 鈥淧otete tagliare i fogli. Non ci sono tedeschi qui鈥 鈥淵ou can help with the leaves,鈥 she said. 鈥淭here are no Germans here.鈥 A long pause -鈥淎vete fame? Are you hungry?鈥 And this was my introduction to the Muratori family----and the silk industry.
The meal they brought me was simple; I hadn鈥檛 eaten since my field breakfast of a slice of bread and a cold strip of bacon early that morning, and I tucked into a bowl of thick vegetable soup with a large slice of barley bread. I couldn鈥檛 budge the knot on the thong holding my dogtags 鈥 I finally cut it and buried them in the earth just outside the barn door. My beret rolled up in overalls made a passable pillow, two thin blankets and a pile of mulberry leaves made a rough but comfortable bed, and I slept surprisingly well.
I was introduced to the shredder early the following morning. It was made of rough planks in the shape of a horse-trough standing about four foot high and with a hole in one of the sides. With a large wooden bung, a stout blow through the bed of mulberry leaves stacked in the trough forced a small amount to project through the hole, and a primitive scythe, pivoting on a spike, sliced a shower of shredded leaves into a paraffin tin. The right-handed blow with the bung, the left hand slicing downward, was the pattern of much of my daily life for the next five weeks. It was hard, unrelenting work. At Mama鈥檚 suggestion, I stripped to my shorts, pulled on one of her dresses, and, with a large straw hat and a pair of sandals made out of a discarded tire, I looked more like a scarecrow than anything else 鈥 certainly not like a young man who would have stuck out like a sore thumb in an area that had been harshly denuded of all males of military or working age. 鈥淪arai la mia cugina vedovata da Terni. You will be my widowed cousin from Terni鈥, she explained. Terni, a steelworking armaments town, had been mercilessly bombed, and there was no shortage of widows.
For the next five weeks, in the shelter of the barn at night, shredding leaves by day, I came to know something of this foster family of mine. Paola (Mama to us all), Lydia tall, slim, sixteen and angry, wore a petulant scowl most of the time, Sylvana, fourteen, stocky and broad like her mother, the cheerful, freckled, willing horse of the family, with Maria Louisa, my discoverer, ( she always insisted on her full names) a bundle of delight, at six years of age. She was never still, bouncing around at full speed, singing and chuckling, bringing a smile to everyone鈥檚 face. Mama was a third generation Orchiettina; the farm was her dowry when she married Salvatore Muratori who had come from Ancona to work on the rebuilding of the church after the earthquake of 1925. This explained the piles of rubble that still pockmarked the town; the large one had been the Town Hall, not yet rebuilt eighteen years later. Eleven of her family rested quietly in well-tended graves on the hillside; simple wooden crosses bore the dates of their living. Salvatore had been conscripted in 1941, and sent to the Russian front, Luigi, the eldest son and Lydia鈥檚 twin, had been called up for labour, but had chosen to disappear into the mountains with the Partigiani. Neither had been heard from for months.
Before the earthquakes, the villagers had raised large flocks of sheep, farmed wide fields of barley, olive trees and vines had thrived in a modest, contented community. The earthquakes, the second and largest in 1925, had devastated the entire region, many farmers had been forced to leave, and those that remained had faced a precarious future, not yet fully restored. The Muratoris, their livestock reduced to a few cows and chickens, their lands strewn with rocks that had tumbled down the mountain, were reduced to a meagre living, and welcomed the offer from the co-operative in Rimini to use their mulberry trees for sericulture. Although seasonal, it rapidly became a valuable source of income, and the latter weeks of spring and early summer became periods of intense activity. I arrived in the middle of this.
We soon established a routine. I was woken with a bowl of oatmeal porridge, milk still warm from the udder, and a large slice of barley bread. I soon discarded the lard spread. After a swift toilet, ( I was permitted access to the gabbinetto, the two-footstepped ceramic hole in the ground just behind the kitchen, and the wash in the clear waters of the stream was cold but invigorating), my daily labour began. Lydia stripped leaves from the trees, Maria-Louisa shuttled between us with laden baskets which she emptied into the trough. I bunged and sliced, the shreds fell into a paraffin tin which was replaced when full; twice a day Lydia and I would rotate the trays, scattering fresh leaves over each one. They were not heavy, but quite big and a two-man operation was needed to restack them one by one as they were replenished. There were sixteen trays, each one numbered and accompanied by a tabular record providing the date the worms were hatched, the twenty seven days of feeding before crunched pieces of newspaper were strewn, giving crevices into which the worms ( now caterpillars )would crawl to begin cocooning.
This brought no respite; although the cocoons required no food, the ancient Reo truck would wheeze up the hill, bringing the next sixteen trays, a new set of numbers, a new batch of hungry worms; I bunged and sliced again. Lydia kept the record in a surprisingly neat hand 鈥 each day of each tray, and its feedings meticulously recorded. This lasted about ten to twelve weeks, although there was talk of breeding a hybrid worm that would enable two, or even three, crops per year. I shuddered at the thought.
The first day was excruciating 鈥 I ached in every muscle including some I never knew I had, but slept like an exhausted log. The second day was much better, but I was awakened that night by a glimmer of light at the door, swiftly extinguished, not before I caught a glimpse of a white nightgown. A hand gripped my shoulder tightly, a finger placed across my lips, and Mama whispered fiercely in my ear.
鈥淪e tu tanto quanto il tocco uno di mie ragazze 鈥 if you as much as touch one of my girls鈥, she hissed an immediate threat of handing me over to the Germans. 鈥淐apisce? Capisce? Do you understand?鈥, and she shook my shoulder repeatedly. However, since she was there........
There was no mistaking her intention. I soon realised that her slow and steady appraisal when we had first met was not limited to my possible contribution to sericulture. Whether she felt this would preempt any possible interference with her daughters, or for any other reason, this was never discussed. These visits, for there were quite a number during the weeks I was there, were brief, intense, and conducted in absolute silence. Nor were they ever referred to, by word, look or gesture outside the barn.
Maria-Louisa was my constant companion. Inbetween bringing fresh baskets of leaves, and keeping me well supplied with mugs of sweet stream water, she would clomp in a circular march around the trough keeping time with a repetitive song
鈥淓viva la torre di Pisa che pende che pende e sempre sta su.
Hail to the tower of Pisa that leans and leans but always stays up
Eviva la torre di Pisa che pende che pende e mai non vien giu.
Hail to the tower of Pisa that leans and leans but never comes down
Se tu verrai comme, Maria-Louisa, la guarderai e poi esclamerai
If you will come with me, Maria-Louisa, you will watch it and exclaim
O Mama mia che effeto mi fa
O Mama mia what effect it has on me.
Eviva la torre di Pisa che pende che pende ma mai non cadra.
Hail to the tower of Pisa that leans and leans but will never fall down鈥
She wore small pink rubber boots, festooned with the three-circled faces of Topolino, Italy鈥檚 Mickey Mouse, and she double-skipped each time she sang her name. There was an intermediate canto, which she inserted every so often before the inevitable repetition. I can remember every word.
She also brought me my meals, simple tasty stuff, soups, salads, and the inevitable pasta or barley bread. The salads were from a large vegetable tract at the back of the house,on which an old crone, bent almost double, and dressed completely in black worked every day. She never spoke a word, but was there every morning when I awoke and waddled down the road to the village mid-afternoon. They all called her la Vecchia 鈥 the old one. After three days, Maria-Louis issued a shy invitation from Mama to join them for the evening meal.
Sylvana wasn鈥檛, at that time, involved in the silkworm effort, although I believe it was her job that had come down to me. She meanwhile, mucked out the shed housing the cows and chickens (this was the original one-roomed farmhouse until Salvatori built the new one), wheeled the barrow taking the vegetables, eggs and cheese down to the village for sale, bicycled to Pescina to pick up the rationed articles, and helped Mama in the kitchen. She and Maria-Louisa accepted me readily and unconditionally from the outset; Mama kept her own counsel, but Lydia, at first, ignored me beyond the occasional monosyllabic word necessary for our joint operations with the trays. In the evenings, after the meal had been cleared and the olive oil lamps put on the table (the power went off after seven until five the next morning), I was able to tell them something of where I had come from. I had originally introduced myself as a British soldier; we had seen, in the south, the terror that greeted us when we said we were from South Africa. Africa to the Italian meant Abyssinia and we had come to avenge the horrors perpetrated by their soldiers. They were pathetically ignorant of anything outside their immediate vicinity, and I drew maps and described some of the rest of the world. Within a short while, there was no more informed quartet on the land and life of the south-western Cape in the whole of Italy. Lydia pretended not to listen, but the others were openly absorbed in learning about a land and way of life entirely foreign to them. Time and again, I thanked my lucky stars for 鈥淒icky Dook鈥, our geography master at Muizenberg High, who had imbued in me a deep and abiding love for this miraculous planet of ours, and how it worked. Never more so than after the eclipse.
Clearly visible in a cloudless sky one night, a shadow crept across the moon. The next night, in the bright light cast by the lamps clustered on the table, I slowly walked around the room holding a melon on which I had drawn a rough equator and marked our approximate position with a large dot. I speared this with a wooden crochet needle of Mama鈥檚, held it at an angle while Sylvana walked behind me, rotating the melon on its axis while Maria-Louisa, an orange held high to simulate the moon, whooped like a banshee as she circled around us. The light and shadows enable me to run through the whole gamut of the seasons, the eclipse, the difference between the hemispheres. Another large dot on the melon was Cape Town. Dicky Dook would have been proud of me.
When I left that night, my usual 鈥淏uona notte e grazie Good night and thank you鈥 brought the response鈥漞 grazie a Lei鈥, 鈥渁nd thank you to You鈥, according me the third person singular reserved by the Italian for marking respect to a person of status. From then on, I was fully accepted, even by Lydia, and the lamp-lit evenings around the kitchen table ( I never ventured further into the house) became a real pleasure to us all.
The war, of course, was distant, but with us all the time. There was the continued grumble of artillery, mainly to the east, the stab of searchlights in the North in the evenings, the constant drone of coveys of bombers on their way to the industrial north of Italy, the oilfields of Ploesti, the southern towns of Germany and Austria. There was no military presence in the village; Ortucchio was road-head, nothing lay beyond us to the West besides the young foothills of the mountains. On a few occasions, a Kumbelwagen, the German equivalent of the jeep, would visit the farm, to buy food, eggs, cheese, or vegetables. Maria-Louisa was my alarm; her acute hearing gave her sufficient time to warn me, and I scuttled into the cowshed until they had gone.
It was Sylvana who brought us the news. She dropped her bicycle as she skidded into the farm. 鈥淪ono andati! i Tedeschi tutti sono andato! They have gone! All the Germans have gone!鈥 Their headquarters in Pescina were deserted, the hated black and red flags pulled down 鈥 the whole populace was in the streets as their convoys headed North. From that moment onward, I hardly drew breath. It took a moment to retrieve my dog tags, slip on my overalls, boots and beret, and become a soldier once again.
The leavetaking was brief, but emotional. Mama proferred a chaste cheek, but her grip on my shoulders strong and painful, sent a different message. Lydia surprised me 鈥 taking my head in both hands, she planted a hearty, closed-mouth kiss on my lips. Sylvana gave me a hard, tight, full-breasted hug, and murmured 鈥楢uguri鈥 Good Luck鈥 into my shoulder. Maria Louisa, the only one who cried, clung wordlessly
(she had lost a father, a beloved brother 鈥 now me), until Mama peeled her off like a mustard plaster.
With their 鈥渂uona fortuna鈥漵 echoing in my ears, I flung a 鈥淩itornero!鈥 I will come back!鈥, (I never did) over my shoulder as I sprinted for the bus just turning for its run back to Pescina and the main road. No one took any notice of the uniform in their midst, (my presence must have been an open secret); they were all gabbling excitedly at the prospect of a life without the Germans. I left the bus at Pescina and took the road south; it was not long before I met the troop carriers, tank transporters, and armoured vehicles of the back-up of the British 30 Corps. The advancing tanks were already far to the North. I flagged down a Brengun carrier, (it was the first one that seemed to notice me), they called up the advance HQ on the field telephone, and told me to wait just where I was. Within a half-hour, I saw the welcome red-topped caps in the Military Police jeep, I was bundled back to Iesi, and a Lysander two-seater aircraft whisked me to the airstrip at Caserta.
It was late afternoon when I was dumped at the Imperial Palace of Charles III, now the Divisional Headquarters of the Eighth Army. I was directed to a small entrance, probably the servant鈥檚 access, but it opened up into a magnificent hall with an enormous stone stairway vanishing into the high reaches.
The duty officer sat at a small table. He glanced at the route form given me by the Military Police, and his watch.
鈥淭he admin guys are through for the day 鈥 grubs鈥檚 off 鈥 grab a bunk downstairs and I鈥檒l put you on the 鈥業鈥 Officer鈥檚 orders for eight o鈥檆lock tomorrow morning鈥. He gestured towards an archway below the stairs, and this spiralled me down a narrow stone staircase. It was dimly lit by a black electrical cord, looped through large iron circles driven into the walls, interrupted periodically by small low-watt globes. I was going down to the dungeons!
It was an eerie feeling, the dim glow revealing a scene-set for any Hollywood movie. I half expected Douglas Fairbanks, sword in hand, to challenge me round the next tight bend. The massive wooden doors of the dungeons, four of them, stood mercifully open, and the double-bunks that lined the walls looked inviting enough, if you could ignore the great iron hooks above them. One of the cells had been converted into a shower-room - scads of luxurious hot water 鈥 and although I expected the tortured ghosts of my predecessors to people my dreams, I slept well, breakfasted well and, as promised, found myself, at eight o鈥檆lock, before the Intelligence Officer.
A full colonel, but an obnoxious little ferret of a man, he was convinced that I had abandoned my men, deserted and malingered in the countryside 鈥 and it showed. Jerry鈥檚 Front Radio had already broadcast the names of Sappers MacCallum, Quest and Rademeyer as prisoners, but it was only when I mentioned the regimental flash on the door of the six-wheeler that some measure of credibility was accorded me.
鈥淲hat did it look like?鈥 he barked.
鈥淎 white, star-shaped flower with a cluster of gold in the centre. The young driver also had a metal one on his cap.鈥 I said.
His Staff Captain, bright, young and far-better mannered than his superior officer murmured quietly.
鈥淭he Edelweiss, Sir鈥, he said 鈥 Mountain troops, the 100th Gebirgsjager Regiment, - General Herr鈥檚 76th Panzerkorps. It fits.鈥
They wanted to know what troops I鈥檇 seen 鈥 beyond the scout patrol, only two kumblewagens, each with two soldiers, foraging for fresh eggs and vegetables , what partisans I had come across 鈥 there were some grim people who had come to the farm on a similar quest, and who Mama dismissed as 鈥淐ommunisti鈥 from the red neckerchief they wore ( warned by my pink-booted alarm, I kept well away, hiding in the rafters of the cow shed), what items were rationed, how did they collect them, - endless questions to almost all of which I had had to say 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 see any鈥. Finally, they realised I knew nothing more, endorsed my record (I saw it months later) - 鈥 At Iesi, taken POW, escaped and rejoined unit鈥 - and let me go.
I scrounged a ride on a RASC three tonner and as we headed back to my company who were then repairing the airfield at Cattolica, I went over the questions they had asked.
鈥淥dd鈥, I thought, as we bumped along. 鈥淭hey weren鈥檛 at all interested in the silk industry.鈥
Nor were my fellow engineers when I finally made camp. It was mid-afternoon, and I had the mess tent to myself. Charlie, the cook, was all ears as he dished out a spam sandwich and a mug of tea. So were the rest of the men when they came off the airfield for the evening meal 鈥 but they all wanted to know more about my 鈥榟arem鈥 of four Italian women 鈥 lots of ribald comments 鈥 and had no interest in the silk industry.
Later that evening, I spent a quiet half-hour with the O.C. in the orderly room caravan, and he briefed me on some of the action I had missed, some of it quite hairy. He listened patiently while I gave my story once again, then clapped me on the shoulder and welcomed me back. He wasn鈥檛 interested in the silk industry either.
But I remembered it well, this silken interlude, as I did all the girls in my foster family. I wonder how they remember me?
(5053 words)
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