TROUBLE IN ITALY

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



“It’ll be okay, Dino. You know Italy, and it knows you. It’s in your blood memory,” I remind myself every time I dive under a bush or duck behind a building for cover. And when I’m shaking in my boots and about to crap in my pants I tell Ma in my mind that this place ain’t like she told me. Ma tucked me in and told me stories about Italy every bedtime when I was a kid. And at the end of every story, she’d say, “Italy’s in your blood memory.” She meant it that way because she and Pa were born here, and as far as I know, all my relatives were born here. My brother and I are the only ones born in America.  

            I trained in the boiling sands of North Africa for this mission to invade Italy and crush Mussolini and Hitler’s mobs. Brooklyn gets hotter than hell in summer but this whole Mediterranean area is blistering hot like I’ve never seen. And it’s lousy with Fascists and Nazis. Brooklyn has it has its turf wars. I got caught up in some of them rumbles when I was a stupid kid, but it was nothing like this. The thing is, I don’t know the difference between Fascists and Nazis. Politics ain’t my gig. The Brooklyn Dodgers, Ebbets Field, my girl in Flatbush, those are my things—and Ma and Pa. My brother, Carmine, he ain’t too bad either—a stupid kid, yeah, but he’s got heart. We better get this damn war won before he hits eighteen, because Ma’s heart couldn’t take it if he has to go in, too. It already kills her that I’m in it.

            Me and my buddies, when we trained in North Africa, we figured we’d be working for Patton on this mission. But things have changed. We’re getting kind of used to change, because it happens a lot in this man’s army. Commanders get shifted around and armies get merged. I hear Patton is in the can or solitary confinement somewhere. He got in trouble with the top brass and they shut him down. A lot of the top brass think he’s a schmuck. He doesn’t fall in line with political correctness. But he’s the Allies’ best general. I don’t get it. In my book, he’d have to assassinate the president before I’d relieve him of command. He outsmarted his bosses and everyone else, including the enemy, and mopped up Sicily while those guys still had their thumbs up their arses. Sometimes I worry that nobody really knows what’s up and what’s down with those highbrow guys from their haughty-taughty military schools. It seems to me that common sense is in short supply at Allied headquarters, at least when it comes to Patton, and maybe lots of other stuff I don’t know about. The worst part of it is that while the top brass were dicking around trying to figure out strategy for the Sicilian campaign, slowing down operations without any need for it, the German’s used that window to fly the coop and set up strong fortifications against me and my buddies here in Salerno, Italy.

I’m with an army that’s got the Brit’s in with us, and French, and guys with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. There’s also South African and New Zealand and maybe Polish guys, and even native Italians who signed on as co-belligerents against the Axis enemies. One good thing about this multi-national crew is all the different kinds of faces and languages. Sometimes it’s like being back in New York. How I wish!

We’re under the thumb of a British army group, commanded by what I hear is a smooth-talking British aristocrat. I haven’t met the guy and don’t expect to. I just hope he’s one smart guy and gets us out of here real quick. I don’t have my hopes up too much though, because he’s one of the higher-ups that Patton outsmarted in his push to Palermo, and that ultimately got Patton to Messina before anyone else. The difference between Patton and them is that he doesn’t let his foot off the gas. I don’t see any other way to win this war.

I’m what’s called “a foot soldier, a Private First Class, foot soldier.” Guys like me in the Infantry have the privilege of being the lowest of the low in pay and grade, and also get to do most of the dirty work. Ain’t that just the way of the world, all around? Well, I hear the Negro troops make out even worse than we do; and yeah, there you go again: The Way of the World, All Around!

I might be a low-grade, foot soldier, but I’m not stupid. I smell trouble here. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and that pedigree guarantees a nose that smells trouble. It was dark—middle of the night dark with some moonlight but not a lot of it when we stormed Salerno. The Gerries knew we were coming. They were dug in and ready for us right where we hit the beach. Star-shells streaked up and tracers crisscrossed the sky and lit it up like the Fourth of July. There was no place to hide in all that light. When we hit the shore, it was Hell with a capital H. The sand dunes were thick with Gerry’s .50-caliber machine guns. The .88s up in the hills were cracking and the beach sand where the shells hit all around us shot up in the air. We had to plow through that heavy hailstorm of bullets and sand. In front and back and right and left of me, lots of our guys were blown to bits on land mines, and other guys yelled for their mother when they got hit. There’s talk that some of our guys cut and ran. Only a punk would cut and run! But I didn’t see any of that. I only saw a lot of guys get cut down. But if desertion is a problem, it will only get worse, because the scuttlebutt is that Italy ain’t the highest priority no more, so it doesn’t get the best stuff. It goes to England where bigwigs are building up a gigantic offensive into France and a final victory in this European Theater of World War II.©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction inspired by true events.

    

Image: Allied troops reach Salerno, Italy


Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com and by request at other booksellers.