War in My Town (6 page)

By Christmas time, I had filled the box with the tasty treats. This fact was not lost on Alcide.

“Hey, Bruna,” he would say. “Come on, let’s count your chocolate bars to see how many you have now.” I was always delighted with the attention, since Alcide rarely gave me the time of day unless it was for a joke of some kind. I would run up to my room and carefully carry down the box. Since it was the Christmas season, we would sit by our modest little tree, adorned with oranges, nuts, bits of ribbon, and small homemade gifts, the fire burning cheerfully in our kitchen hearth, and start counting.

“Here, you count this pile and I will count these,” he would say very seriously.

“All right. One, two, three, four…sixteen in total.” My eyes gleamed. “You should have seventeen, because I counted thirty-three last time.”

Alcide would press his lips together and shake his head pensively. “No, Bruna, I only have fifteen. You must have miscounted. Try again.” Though I counted again, my chocolate calculations never did balance. I couldn’t understand this. I was sure my counts were accurate.

“Hey! You aren’t taking them are you, Alcide?” I would ask with narrowed eyes. “While you’re counting?”

“Me? No, I’m trying to help you!” he assured me. “But, I’ll tell you a secret. I hear that mice love chocolate. I bet it’s mice that are eating your chocolate.” This would upset me immensely since I worked so hard to save the sweet treats, yet somehow they were slowly disappearing.

One day, Mamma overheard the exchange between my brother and me. My chocolate had dwindled down to five or six bars. I burst out crying. Mamma knew right away who the culprit was.

“Alcide, you horrid creature.” She plucked up one of her tea towels and smacked him on the back of the head with it.

“Hey! What was that for?” He held the back of his head, feigning great injury.

“This is your mouse, Bruna. A very tall mouse named Alcide.” I wailed for what seemed like forever when I discovered who was taking my chocolate bars. Needless to say, I never allowed Alcide near my chocolate box again.

As the cold mountain winter gave way to spring, Eglio was still relatively untouched by the war raging in other parts of Europe. Our lives went on as usual, except for the missing men who had been sent off to fight for the cause. When Alcide turned eighteen, his conscription letter came too. Mamma was very concerned about Alcide. Some of the men were being sent far away and it was more difficult for them to get home for visits.

He did his military training and then word came that he would be stationed with the Italian forces on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea near the Greek mainland. Il Duce’s army had invaded Greece since the declaration of war. I feared for Alcide more than I had for Cesar. Aside from the fact that he was so much younger than Cesar, he just seemed more vulnerable. I could sense that my mother felt the same way.

The day came when he had to ship off. “Oh, my heavens,” Mamma fretted, as we said our good-byes. “Why do you have to be so far away? Why all the way to Rhodes?” She wiped at her eyes as she let go of him.

“Just stay as far away from the enemy as you can,” I said simply, as I stood beside Zelinda, Alcide’s sweetheart.

“Well said, Bruna,” she smiled down at me, then looked up at my towering brother. “You had better do as she says. And come back safe.” They hugged each other before he turned to step in the truck that would take him back to his base.

“I will,” was all he could manage to get out. His eyes were misting up. Alcide tried to be brave, but I could tell he was anxious. He tried to smile at us, a timid smile, as we parted. As the truck drove off, my brother’s image blurred through my rising tears.

Chapter 8

Slowly things began to change. Some people were no longer as keen about the war as they had been at first. There were still the staunch fascists in our town who supported Il Duce without question. Husbands and sons, fathers and brothers left our village, leaving only the very young or old men, along with the women and children. This affected the village and its farmlands. Much of Eglio still relied on farming, and the farming still had to be done. The soil needed tilling and the crops needed to be planted and harvested, especially with food becoming more scarce all the time.

Our family was grateful that our grandparents had a plot of land on which they cultivated wheat, a variety of vegetables, and fruit trees, but not all of the families in Eglio were so fortunate. Mamma had always worked in the fields, sometimes helping my grandparents on their land, or working for wealthy landowners. In this way she was able to save as much food for the winter as possible. Now her work in the fields became a necessity.

Once as I was walking to school in the autumn, Palmira, a landowner who lived in the upper part of the village, was heading to work in her family fields to harvest for the winter. Two of her sons had been drafted and she felt the heavy hand of war directly. She, her husband and their young daughter were left to reap their harvest of grain on their own.

“I need my sons back. I don’t care what people say. Mussolini doesn’t know what he’s doing.” She gave her negative opinion of Il Duce quite openly, which could be very foolish. I continued to walk to school in my black tunic and white collar uniform, hearing Palmira as she strode swiftly in the direction to her fields, muttering her curses.

“Palmira, you’d better keep that talk to yourself,” snapped one of the villagers, still loyal to Il Duce.

“I will do no such thing!” she answered, defiant as ever. As time passed, many had come to feel the same way she did, but were hesitant to speak up for fear of reprisals from the Blackshirts.

As I walked, I noticed Edo Guazzelli striding down the steps from the center of town. Edo’s family had lived in the village for generations. He was the second of five siblings; the eldest, Mario, had been drafted shortly before Alcide. Mario had helped to look after the family, as did many other first-born sons in the village. Now it was Edo who helped take care of the family, more every day since his mother was a sickly woman and his father had become ill. “Hello, Edo,” I said in a guarded voice. I was still thinking about the exchange between Palmira and the villager.

“Hi, Bruna,” he said, barely looking at me. “Off to school?”

“Yes. It’s my last year.” I was twelve years old and the fifth grade was the last year of school for many of us in the mountains. “Have you heard from Mario?” I had to pick up my pace to keep up with him as he moved toward the main road.

“No, not lately.” Edo shook his head. “Father is worried. Mario has been sent far away to Russia, you know.”

“Yes, I heard.” His brother was such a good soul. “I’m sure he’s all right.” What else could I say?

“I hope so.”

“Where are you off to?” I asked. He stopped for an instant to answer.

“To the forest, to cut some wood. I’m taking it to Castelnuovo to sell.” Castelnuovo was a fairly large town to the north of us, downhill all the way. “I may be able to buy some oil for the family on the black market. There’s no oil to be found around here.”

I had heard of this “black market.” Since everything was being rationed, scarce goods were being traded or bought illegally for a high price. My eyes widened with concern at this prospect.

“You must be careful, Edo. I hear that you can be punished if you’re caught dealing in the black market.”

Edo smiled. “The money from selling the wood is not only for that. I would like to study one day. I want to be a tool and die maker after the war.”

“Good luck with that. You know, Cesar cut and sold wood in Castelnuovo, too,” I told him. “That was before he worked at the factories in Fornaci di Barga. He told me that he would chop wood, walk all the way down to Castelnuovo to sell the wood. Then he would buy bread with the money and eat it on the way home.”

Edo smiled and nodded. Then he waved at me and said, “Enjoy your last year at school.” I nodded back shyly as he continued to walk to the main dirt road toward the woods and I continued on my way to the schoolhouse.

At seven in the morning sharp, the doors opened and our two teachers led an assortment of children from both Eglio and Sassi into the small building. Our day started with our pledge to Mussolini and our “fatherland.” In addition to arithmetic and grammar, we were instructed in patriotism and the need for courageous action and had to study Il Duce’s “Doctrine of Fascism.” It was a philosophy that glorified war and rejected peace. We also had to study Mussolini’s “Decalogue” which was modeled after the Ten Commandments.

It consisted of ten rules that stated the role and proper conduct of citizens. Citizens must obey, serve, and protect the government; citizens must protect Il Duce; citizens must serve as soldiers; and above all, citizens must never question or contradict Mussolini, because he “is always right.”

Our school was strict and traditional. We were expected to be clean and tidy. Our hands were inspected every morning. If our fingernails were dirty, our hands would be smacked with a pointer. We had to recite our arithmetic perfectly or be punished by standing in the corner facing the wall. While boys were encouraged to join youth groups where they learned their duty to their country as soldiers and warriors, girls were taught that they needed to be good mothers and to have many children. After school, the girls would converge at the seamstress’ house in the neighboring village of Sassi for sewing lessons. There we would practice sewing our hems, embroider our linens, and exchange some village gossip. We tried to escape the grim reality of the outside world that was creeping up on us all.

PART THREE

Il Duce Overthrown
1942 – 1943

The war continued to escalate in Europe and North Africa. Mussolini’s armies were badly supplied and poorly led. They often needed help from the Nazi forces. Defeats of the Axis troops stretched across the Mediterranean to the African continent.

In Italy, the people grew angry with Il Duce. The
partigiani,
or partisans, were part of the Italian Resistance and they battled underground against the fascist government of Mussolini alongside the Allies. The partisans and the fascist Blackshirts clashed constantly, often with innocent civilians caught in the middle. Rations, low morale and frequent defeats led to widespread dissatisfaction with Il Duce within the country.

Food rationing became widespread in Europe. In Italy, there was not enough food or supplies for the population, and people grew weary of the war. The Resistance mounted as Mussolini’s fascist policies gave more money and resources to war efforts and less to the people.

In October 1942, British troops defeated the Germans and Italians in North Africa, sending the Axis forces into confused retreat. The Allied victory in North Africa was important, since it permitted the later invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland in the summer of 1943.

In September 1943, the Fascist Grand Council, the main body of Mussolini’s government, along with King Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, removed Benito Mussolini from power. Il Duce was imprisoned and Italian Marshall Pietro Badoglio formed a new government. In turn, the Badoglio government surrendered Italy unconditionally to the Allies.

Weary of war, most Italians were glad, but some remained loyal to Mussolini. For a short time, while all of Italy was under the new government, the villagers in Eglio were happy. Their soldiers, brothers and sons and husbands, were returning home from war. But how long would this last?

Chapter 9

JULY 1943

War came to our village slowly at first. Initially, we lulled ourselves into believing that it would be over before long. At first, the fighting had seemed far away, but as time went on, food and the most basic of necessities became more difficult to find. Shoes and clothing could not be purchased, not because of a lack of money, but because by the time the mountain towns had their pick there was nothing left. Simple everyday things like tools, lamps, and oil were hard to come by. The war effort’s ravenous appetite for resources took everything away from the people.

The villagers had survived three years of war, food rations, and funerals. All the men in the village had been sent off to serve throughout Europe, Northern Africa and Russia. Letters often brought bad news about another death. When some men did come home, it was because they had been wounded or maimed. They were the lucky ones, since they came back alive.

At the beginning of the war, women and men had willingly given their gold wedding rings to aid in the war effort. For many women there was no need to keep the ring now — their men were dead. There were rumors of the horrible conditions on the Russian front, where many Eglio men had been sent. Cold and desolate prisoner of war camps awaited those who survived the brutality of the frozen Russian front.

Meanwhile, I, like everyone else, was hungry. Very hungry. There hadn’t been a delivery of food supplies to Eglio for weeks. Mamma still had money and tickets in our ration books, but there was nothing left to purchase. Food and sundries were not getting to the village. Through the early winter, we relied on the food from our grandparents’ plot of wheat and corn. Some dried plums and potatoes were harvested and saved. When that ran out, we had to settle for roots and scarce wild greens.