Legacy of Sorrows (4 page)

I couldn't answer him; the words that confirmed my family were all dead just wouldn't come out of my mouth.

Pietro slowly nodded his head as if understanding without hearing any words.

‘Did the Germans come to your house Bruno?'

I nodded.

‘Did they harm your family?'

Again, I nodded.

Pietro took a deep breath before asking me, ‘Are any of them still alive?'

I looked up at him for the first time and said in a clear voice, ‘They are all dead. I saw it happen to them and to my aunt and uncle at the farm.'

Pietro held me close to him and said, ‘Bruno, you can stay with us tonight until we think this thing through. The Germans were also here today and killed a lot of villagers; however, I don't think they will return tonight so we should be safe enough to get some rest and have a talk in the morning.' He took me by the hand and we walked through the village to his house. I saw that some villagers were openly weeping on the streets, and I realised for the first time the extent of the killings the Germans had brought on us.

Pietro told me that the Germans had forbidden anyone, on pain of death, to bury any of the dead villagers. The Parish Priest, Don Francesco, had tried to bury some of his own parishioners but was discovered by the SS. They executed him on the spot without mercy.

Eventually, we arrived at Pietro's house, a small terraced villa facing the village piazza, and only a few houses along from the Church. His wife, Giovanna, made a panino for me, before showing me to a small attic bedroom for the night. Giovanna was very kind and made sure that I was comfortable there. After eating my panino I was so exhausted that, as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was fast asleep.

I was wakened early in the morning by the sound of shouting in the street below. I jumped out of bed and when I looked out of the attic window, my heart skipped a beat. The Germans had come back again, and were rounding up the remaining villagers into the piazza. I felt so afraid; however, I knew that if I didn't act quickly to escape they would soon discover me up here in an attic bedroom with the only way out through the lower part of the house.

Then I saw him again, the giant blonde soldier. He was in charge and was separating the men from the women and children. Blood rushed to my head and once more, I felt physically sick. I knew what this man was capable of - if I didn't get away from him, I was certain I would be killed.

I heard the outside door being kicked open and a German voice in the house shouting “
Raus, Raus!
” to Pietro and Giovanna, as he ushered them out. I heard them downstairs, searching for anyone who may be hiding in the downstairs rooms.

I thought for a moment. How can I escape before they search here and find me? In desperation,n I opened the attic window on the opposite side of the room and looked out. I saw that the roof tiles there had a gentle slope and could quite easily be climbed onto. I pulled myself up onto the window ledge and lifted myself out onto the roof. I quickly reached behind me and pulled the window closed, then cautiously climbed up to the chimneystacks and perched between them out of sight from the soldiers below. As I huddled there, I heard the attic widow scrape open and the sound of German voices talking to each other. Eventually the window closed again.

From my vantage point, I saw the Germans herd the women and children into the cemetery beside the church. The cemetery was of typical country design, with tall stonewalls on three sides and a padlocked metal entrance gate to the front. One soldier broke the lock off the gate with his rifle butt to allow the women in. The women were all shouting to each other as they searched for their loved ones in the crowd. The children were screaming and trying to hide. A soldier calmly set up a machine gun at the entrance to the cemetery and, once ready, he waited on the order to open fire. When the women and children saw the machine gun, their screams grew louder. Some women tried to climb up the walls to escape but were picked off by rifle fire from a group of soldiers standing close by. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears to try and cut out the loud chatter of the machine gun and the screams of the dying. Then there was silence, and when I opened my eyes and saw the pile of dead bodies in that small space, I felt a wet sensation spread between my legs.

The blonde SS sergeant walked amongst the dead, stopping every so often to move a body, checking if there was anyone alive underneath it. Anyone he found still alive he shot twice in the head. His pistol shots echoed loudly in the still air. Other soldiers then came and threw the dead bodies ever higher on top of each other until they looked like some sort of macabre art form of twisted arms and legs sticking out of tortured flesh.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the piazza, I saw the men being marched off into the woods. Amongst them were some of the boys I played football with. The contrast to the women in the cemetery was quite stark. There was not a sound from them as they walked along, as if they were resigned to their fate. I didn't see what happened to them, but I did hear the chatter of machine guns coming from their direction and eventually the soldiers returning without them.

About another twenty people, men and women, living on the outskirts of the village, were rounded up and escorted under gunpoint to the village church, protesting as they went. Some of them put up a struggle but they were soon subdued with a rifle butt or a shot to the head. The soldiers then took some of the boards from a nearby fencing and nailed them to the solid oak doors of the Church with the aim of stopping anyone from escaping. Some soldiers took dry tinder and placed it around the church then set it alight. It didn't take long for the flames to engulf the timber-framed building and I could clearly hear the sound of screaming people hammering on the doors. Soldiers stood by the entrance to prevent anyone still alive from escaping. Soon the sounds coming from the church were no more. An eerie silence hung over the village, broken only by the crackling noise of burning wood and the smell of death.

The Sergeant then stood back, surveying his handiwork. He looked up at the clear blue sky and watched the smoke from the fire drift lazily upwards, carried along by the slight breeze.

Gripped once again with sheer terror, I clung desperately to the chimneystacks around me, afraid that the soldiers would hear the sound of my heartbeat, or the staccato noise of my breathing. I was so frightened that my bladder gave way once again and a small trickle of urine flowed slowly down the tiles in front of me. I clung tightly to the chimneys as if my life depended on it. My hands were bleeding and lacerated as the rough brickwork tore them.

The
tedeschi
were killing everyone they could find. They were exterminating Italian lives as easily as if they were killing a chicken for supper.

I stayed up there on the roof until I was convinced the soldiers had left before I climbed back into the house through the attic window. I sat on the bed and sobbed. I shouted out aloud, ‘Why God, why have you allowed this to happen? These were all good people who didn't deserve to die!' Of course, God didn't answer, but to the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy, he should have had.

I reasoned that I couldn't stay on this mountain any longer and that I should leave immediately. There wasn't much point in trying to seek out my other relatives and friends because if they weren't already dead, they soon would be. I thought of Bologna. It was only ten miles away, and I could easily walk that in an afternoon. Perhaps I could find shelter there with some charity or even find some work in a restaurant. I would take with me any food and clothing I could from the house and, if I was lucky, even find some money. My mind was beginning to switch off from the horrors I had witnessed over the last few days. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism I was developing, but I knew I had to leave as soon as possible before the Germans returned. I walked slowly downstairs, not sure of what awaited me there, but to my relief the house was empty. I looked around the kitchen then took a bag and loaded it with food from the larder. I opened a drawer in the downstairs bedroom and took some clothing from it. A pair of trousers, a pullover and a shirt that belonged to Pietro. I didn't care if they fitted or not, they were clean. I found some money in a jar on the kitchen table. Giovanna probably used it to pay for the household items she needed on a daily basis. I counted it before putting the notes carefully in my pocket. It was enough to buy me food for a few more days.

I then noticed a shotgun that Pietro used for hunting boars sitting in a corner by the outside door. I picked it up and checked it for cartridges. I already knew how to use a shotgun with some accuracy. My father had taken us hunting in the woods every Sunday before lunch, and he had made sure that all of us were familiar with the weapon. I also found a box of cartridges in a sideboard drawer, and I put those in my bag as wll.

When I was ready, I left the house and headed warily down the street in the direction of Bologna. I kept my eyes firmly fixed ahead, as I didn't want to look to the left or right in case I saw the dead bodies of the villagers lying there, and perhaps recognise some of them. The stench of death was in the air, and the smell of burning flesh that filled my nostrils made me feel sick.

I had only walked a few metres along the road when I saw some military vehicles blocking the road ahead. I threw myself to the ground and crawled to the end of a building for cover. I knew I had to get off the road before the Germans saw me, and the only place to go was up the steep hillside behind the village. I crawled along until I reached the grass verge and crawled my way quite high up the hillside to safety.

I now had time to think about what had just happened and the violent massacre of people close to me I had witnessed for the second time.

My young mind could not take in the total extent of what had happened.

As I lay there, I heard a rustling sound in the long grass behind me. I again felt absolute fear fill me and I sunk lower into the ground, hoping that my pounding heart wouldn't betray my presence. The sound of a moving body crawling towards me grew ever louder. I pointed my shotgun in the direction of the sound and waited. A face appeared through the grass and spoke softly in Italian to me. ‘Don't be afraid, I'm with the Stella Rossa. I saw you coming off the road and hiding up here. What's your name?'

To my relief I recognised the man as one of the partisans who frequently came to the village to visit his girlfriend. He was about twenty years old and dressed in a British Army jacket and an Italian infantry hat with a red ribbon tied round it.

‘My name is Bruno Verdi,' I managed to answer in a shaky voice.

‘Well Bruno, my name is Italo Arcari. Lower your weapon, stay here and don't wander about. The
tedeschi
have a patrol out searching the hillside for stragglers.' As if to emphasise this he pointed to his Sten gun, ‘and if they come near us I'll be ready.'

We lay together on that hillside until we were sure all the German vehicles had left the area, and even then, we continued to wait, and wait. I wondered what for. After some time, the partisan's body stiffened as he saw a German uniform below us crawling up the mountainside in our direction. Italo whispered to me, ‘It's all right; this is their usual tactic after a
rastrallemento
. They drop off one or two soldiers to see if they can flush out anyone who escaped and are still hiding from them. If they do, then the soldiers finish them off. They then leave and are picked up further down the road by their comrades.' I could only see one soldier moving below me, ‘Are there any more?' I whispered.

‘There's probably another one covering his back with an automatic weapon,' he said as he cocked his own Sten gun.

Italo watched the German crawl his way up the hillside in a zigzag pattern for a further ten minutes, then, as if bored with the game, the German stood up and walked back down the way he had just come. Italo breathed a sigh of relief at the narrow escape. ‘He's probably seen enough and thinks there are no more survivors here,' he said, holding a shaking gun.

The German soldier had reached the road, and was joined there by another soldier who had remained hidden all this time in the long grass.

Italo laughed. ‘These Germans are so predictable in what they do. They have no imagination. They always have to follow the book.'

For the first time in days, I smiled.

‘What do we do now?, I asked the partisan.

‘Well, I think we should take advantage of the rest and have something to eat. What do you think, Bruno?'

I admitted that I did feel quite hungry, so I rummaged in my bag and pulled out some bread and cheese.

‘Do you think they will come back?' I asked.

Italo thought for a moment or two. ‘I don't think they will come back to Marzabotto. Two soldiers being dropped off is usually a sign they have finished operations in an area. Although I don't think they will have finished the
rastrallemento
on the mountain itself. They may come back tomorrow for operations on the other side of the mountain. They caught the Stella Rossa by surprise yesterday and almost finished us all off. The remains of the brigade are now scattered all over the place and we are not a credible fighting force anymore.'

‘What will you do now?' I asked.