The Painted Altar

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Plot reminder: Whilst on the run Vincenzo chances upon a group of Italian POWs picking potatoes in a field. It is through them that he learns of the armistice.

~~~~~

Though my ditch-hidden conversation with the two potato pickers had been necessarily brief, it had also been an informative one. Their names were Giuseppe and Rocco, I learnt, both from the province of Treviso. The quickly outlined story they recounted bore great similarities with my own. Conscripted in the summer of 1940, there had  followed a hopelessly brief basic training camp somewhere in Lazio before being sped down to Egypt. After their platoon was captured, they were shipped all the way to South Africa. Then in early '42, they were tossed all the way back up the Atlantic again. Since then, they'd been moved on three times to different camps across the south of England.

Their current camp, around ten kilometres from the potato fields they were harvesting, was number 45. About thirty or forty kilometres in a roughly south-westerly direction, they told me, was the city of Cambridge; a little further than that heading due east I'd hit the coast.

As our conversation neared its end, a brief cascade of potatoes had come tumbling over the edge of the ditch.

"Not much good without something to cook them on, I know," admitted one of the voices above - Giuseppe, I think. "Might prove useful to you, all the same."

"Good luck brother," called the other voice. "Let's hope the Americans get it over and done with quickly, then we can all go home. Holy Mary, we've all had enough of this damn war by now."

Though of course I would never know exactly how things panned out for Giuseppe and Rocco, the likelihood is they would have had to bend their backs to the British soil for at least another three years. It wasn't a simple case that on May 9th 1945, the day after the end of European hostilities, everyone waltzed on home to the warm embrace of their loved ones. The legal and logistical ramifications were complex. According to the Geneva Convention, POW status would only cease with a peace treaty, which was a different thing to a mere armistice. Although many of my compatriots would chose voluntarily to stay in Great Britain, to make a life for themselves in those rainier but more prosperous climes, there were numerous men forced against their will to keep toiling away right up until Italy's eventual formal signing of a peace treaty in the summer of 1947.

By then, Hitler's body had already been buried beneath the Berlin rubble for more than two years. That of his erstwhile pal Benito Mussolini, meanwhile - wherever it was it lay - had done so for two days longer.

The bad shuffle quickly from the stage. Only upon the good do the footlights of war awkwardly linger.

*

By the time of my brief conflab with Giuseppe and Rocco, I'd already put sufficient distance between myself and camp 106a to catch my breath a little. I could now devote my energies to formulating some kind of plan rather than pounding out further nocturnal kilometres. Supplies by this point were running dangerously low - all that remained of the little stash inside Ettore's knapsack was a tin of sardines, two pears and a third of the bar of chocolate. There were the potatoes Giuseppe and Rocco had slipped me too of course, but these would be a last resort only. Raw potatoes, I knew, carried bacteria. The last thing I could afford was to make myself sick.

It was decision time. East, towards the coast? Or else remain inland?

Like many who grow up beside the sea, the languid rhythms of the waves, their calming proximity, was something which on a spiritual level I missed deeply. As a place of work, however, the sea was much less enticing. So no, although it was likely the trawlers which set out each night from the various port towns of East Anglia were undermanned, and that given the chance I would prove myself an able hand, the prospect was not one which tempted me. The war had changed me both for better and for worse. On the one hand, I was more cynical, my soul inevitably hardened. On the other, my experiences had opened my eyes, shifted my perspective. What lay beyond the close proximity of Punto San Giacomo, beyond the walled horizons of my upbringing, was no longer a sinister mystery from which to shrivel. Instead, it was an opportunity. An adventure waiting to be experienced.