Multi-award-winning author Tina Ruiz stops by my blog today

Multi-award-winning author Tina Ruiz writes under the name of Tina Griffith for her romance novels, and under Tina Nykulak Ruiz, her real name, to honor her children and grandchildren, as well as her deceased and current husbands. All of her novels are sold worldwide, and can be found on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Chapters, The Owl’s Nest, Barnes and Noble, and many other book venues with less popular names. 

 

When she isn’t writing, she is cooking, baking, or taking writing and language courses, as well as spending as much time as she can with her family.

Tina shares with us a bit of her culture and an intriguing backstory of her writing career. She tells us, “Over the years, I’ve made small changes to my mother’s recipe for streusel (coffee cake), but it remains the same, for the most part. While my mom places sliced plums on top of the batter, I often substitute plums with cherries, apples, or peaches. In the end, nothing beats my mother’s cooking. The recipe is as follows:

Blend the following topping ingredients with a fork, leaving the mixture crumbly, and set it aside:

½ cup of brown sugar

½ cup of grated granola or rolled oats (optional)

¼ cup of sifted all-purpose flour

¼ cup of soft, room temperature butter

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Cake ingredients:

1 ½ cups of sifted all-purpose flour

2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 egg, well-beaten

¾ cups white sugar

1/3 cup of slightly frozen butter (shred the butter before adding it)

½ cup of white milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix all the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients together, and then add the wet to the dry, stirring slowly. When blended, place the batter into a well-greased 8 or 9 inch square cake pan and cover it with the topping mixture. Or, fancy it up a bit by placing fresh sliced fruit or fruit pie filling on top of the batter, and then finish it by covering it with the topping mixture.  

Bake at 375 for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean of soft batter. Let cool for a few minutes and serve slightly warm.”

Tina continues, “I was born in Germany and migrated to Canada in the early 1960's. I was then a German youngster entering primary school having to learn the required English and French as quickly as possible. By Grade 3, English and reading became two of my passions. By Grade 7, I was writing elaborate stories about my life in my new country, as well as the people, the culture, the food, and my new friends. In Grade 10, my English teacher was so thrilled by my homework assignment, a poem, that he asked his editor friend to put it into the local newspaper. He agreed, and that was the first time I was published. From then on, I was hooked on writing.

“When my babies came, I wrote stories for them, and by way of a friend, they came to the attention of a man in Ontario who worked for the Canada Board of Education. He not only placed more than a dozen of my stories into readers for the schools across Canada, he also put me in touch with a Writing Course for Children, so that I could learn how to better my craft.

“Sadly, my husband of 25 years passed away in March of 2003, a devastating occurrence in my life that left me terribly grief stricken. My shattered heart still had all of my love for my husband sitting in its pit with no place to put it. I turned to journaling, recording my thoughts and feelings, as a means of healing. Three years later, I shared some of the contents with a friend. She liked my writings so much that she sent it to a publisher.

“After completing several writing courses and reading critiques that almost broke my heart, I now have 12 novels and 30 children’s books under my belt. Each novel was written with undertones of romance, but they also include other elements such as witches, murder, mystery, intrigue, suspense, and of course, powerful raw emotion. Why don’t I stick to one genre? I want to expand my boundaries and go beyond my comfort zone. 

“I remarried in August of 2011, and my new husband asked if I could write one book without killing anyone. While that made me laugh, I took it as a challenge and came up with “The Elusive Mr. Velucci.” That particular story was inspired by a musical video called “Caruso,” which a friend of mine sent me. The Lara Fabian rendition broke my heart and made me want to find out more about Enrico Caruso, the famous opera singer. Once I learned all I could about his life and how he died, I took that sadness and put it into the pages of my new book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZWbzEmWY0  

“Lucio Dalla wrote the actual song, but many people have sung it since then. It’s so powerful and sad, that even when I read the story, which I wrote, tears flowed down my cheeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqtSuL3H2xs

“While I loved writing this heartbreaking, very romantic love story, my roots returned to drama and death in 2019, with Ophelia’s Curse. 

“It is 2020 now, and I have just finished writing my 30^th children’s book. And before you ask, yes, it has the same Halloween theme as last year’s book. I’ve also finished writing 208 pages on a new novel, and this one has a Christmas theme. That season is not my favorite time of year, because I’ve had a lot of people die between December 23-26, but it is my husband’s. I’ve decided to honor him by writing an incredible love story about a woman who loses her love for Christmas, but gets it back five years later, after she meets a man who has the ability to heal her broken heart.”

https://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Mr-Velucci-Tina-Griffith/dp/1546237070/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1591714533&sr=8-2 

1941: THE WORLD WAR II YEAR OF INFAMY

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Like nothing had done to that point, Nazi Germany’s occupation of Paris on June 18, 1940 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) nomination to an unprecedented third term as President of the United States the following month, alerted the American people to the threats to their nation posed by Europe’s Second World War. While during his first two terms as president, FDR had used his pulpit to educate the public about those perils, sentiment consistently weighed heavily toward non-intervention in the war. The summer of 1940 saw a shifting in the attitude, one toward building up the nation’s defenses, which resulted in an eventual outpouring of material aid from America to the Allied countries, shoring up America’s military forces, and instituting the nation’s first peacetime draft in its history.

Having gone into effect in September, the Selective Service Act of 1940 placed all men between the ages of 21 and 35 eligible for one year of military service. Marlin Landon “Bob” Gaffin, having turned 21 on January 20, 1941, and the president’s swearing into office for his third term on the same day, the lives of both men thereafter are to be defined primarily by their involvement in World War II.

            Following his nomination for his third term, FDR explained his motivation for defying the country’s traditional policy of two-term presidencies. He stated that he had suffered many sleepless nights over his own right to refuse the call to duty when the young men and women of his country were facing the call to serve. He said, “Like most men of my age, I had made plans for myself, plans for a private life of my own choice and for my own satisfaction…These plans, like so many other plans, had been made in a world which now seems as distant as another planet. Today all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger. In the face of that public danger all those who can be of service to the Republic have no choice but to offer themselves for service in those capacities for which they may be fitted. Those, my friends, are the reasons why I had to admit to myself, and now to state to you, that my conscience will not let me turn my back upon a call to service.”^[1] 

            The summer of 1941 also saw the opportunity of a new kind of personal life for Bob embodied in the alluring Dorothy Boldman of Cedar Fork, Ohio, a particular private life, like the president’s, that by year’s end will be held delicately in the balance while America’s foreign affairs unfold. Meanwhile, Bob ventures no more than thirty miles southwest of the farm of his parents in search of employment that he is confident will set the pattern for the home-life for which he hopes with Dorothy. In an illustration of Bob’s plucky nature, Bob writes to his mother from Blanchester, Ohio where he has found a job: …We sure had a time coming up here. We done all right till we got on the other side of Fayetteville. We had tire trouble and didn’t get here until 9:30. I went to work Monday morning…When I went to work the boss asked me if I could drive a truck and I said sure I could. He asked me if I could handle the tractors and I said I could, so I went to work. Ha – Ha. Well a fellow has to tell a few [lies] once in a while. But I operated them like an old hand and kind of fooled them. Ha. They just seemed to come natural to me or something…

While the tone and content of the letters exchanged among Bob and his correspondents during these months are amazingly devoid of any allusion to, or speculation about, the war, especially in view of the fact of the institution of the draft, writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, in her journal, which later is published in book-form, portrays a picture of civic-minded and politically-savvy individuals whose thoughts and daily lives are deeply influenced by the government’s stance on the war. At that juncture, she states in her journal the greatest issue of speculation was whether or not Washington DC would go one step further and finally grant Great Britain’s request that American ships convoy, or in effect, act as full-metal and armed shields to British supply ships crisscrossing the Atlantic. She writes of the high tension in Washington, a state of affairs she speculates cannot go on. At the same time, she sympathizes with Roosevelt’s dilemma regarding establishing a convoy system, a predicament based on the fact that doing so will require transferring ships from the Pacific Fleet to the Atlantic. Such a move would render America’s presence in the Pacific so thin that the president fears it will encourage the Japanese to ever greater expansion into the Pacific. But by mid-August, FDR seems to waver in his position, and in a secret meeting off the coast of Newfoundland with Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, the British leader comes away from the meeting convinced that FDR has agreed to America’s convoying of British ships as far as Iceland.

            But still the president is disinclined to step up his nation’s presence in the European war to such a degree. With Germany’s breaking of its non-aggression treaty with Russia and its placement of troops on the Russian border, FDR is often of the opinion that he should just sit back and let Russia handle Germany – or better still, let the two repressive dictator-nations wipe each other out. In his characteristic manner, the president adopts a stance of “wait and see.” 



Bob Gaffin spends his workdays in Blanchester and heads home for the weekends where he cuddles with Dorothy on the front porch of her parent’s Peebles, Ohio country home nestled peacefully beneath a pitch black sky alight with stars. In New York City, top-drawer matrons such as Anne Morrow Lindbergh in mink coats, Made-in-Paris chapeaus, and Estee Lauder’s “V” for “Victory” lipstick read Vogue’s latest issue sporting models in military garb in front of “Bundles for Britain,” while fuzzy-cheeked American military recruits pack the subway trains to take in the sights. All the while, spanking new Made-in-America airplanes buzz a sky streaked with searchlights.  

            Bob’s desire to marry Dorothy in the near future is dashed on November 18^th when a letter arrives, one informing him that he has been drafted into the Army. A letter of a few days later tells him to report to the Reception Center at Fort Thomas, Kentucky.



Ft. Thomas, Ky. Dec, 4, 1941…Dear Mother: Will write you this evening to let you know I am O K and hope everyone are well. Well, I’m in the army now (as the slogan goes) and its not so bad so far. Of course we haven’t had any actual training yet. I sure hated to leave civilian life, but we can’t help it…Your loving son, Bob



As tensions mount dangerously in the Atlantic theater of the war, the Japanese continue to aggress against their neighbors in the Pacific, and like the Nazis, have set against the land and resource-rich territories beyond the borders of their own land. Their resolve strengthened by the Tripartite Pact signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan, a pledge in support of one another if attacked by any outside enemy, the three aggressors strike, conquer, and plunder their ways across their particular hemispheres, to this point, almost none the worse for wear, and nearly with impunity.

            Roosevelt retaliates by placing an embargo against Japan: no more exportation to Japan of aviation fuel and highest grade steel and scrap iron. Japan responds by seizing oil-rich Indochina. The Roosevelt administration hits back by freezing all of Japan’s assets in the United States and cutting off all exports of oil to the country. Intended to halt the advance of the Japanese, the embargo ricochets and Japan counters with a threat to move in on the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and other East Asian regions rich in natural resources. Several back and forth negotiations between the two countries failing, Japan and the United States are approaching a collision of epic proportions.

              Lulled to complacency by the promises of their president to keep their boys out of foreign conflicts, the American people conduct their daily business and personal lives as usual, unaware that warfare on a level never before seen was lying in wait for them.

In his address to Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”^[2] In the Fireside Chat on the radio where he talked to the nation about the Declaration of War with Japan, in part he said:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS:

The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality. 

Powerful and resourceful gangsters have banded together to make war upon the whole human race. Their challenge has now been flung at the United States of America. The Japanese have treacherously violated a long-standing peace with us. Many American soldiers and sailors have been killed by enemy action. American ships have been sunk; American airplanes have been destroyed.

The Congress and the people of the United States have accepted that challenge.

Together with other free peoples, we are now fighting to maintain our right to live among our world neighbors in freedom, in common decency, without fear of assault.^[3]

A letter from his mother to Bob illustrates the shock of the nation at the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor that hurls the United States into the war: Monday Morning, Dec. 8, 1941…Dear Son. I will try to write some this morning. I was so nervous yesterday I just couldn’t write and not much better this morning…Bobby we heard down at the church last night that war had been declared. It sure does worry me. I just can’t help it. They tell me if I don’t be careful I’ll go crazy. But I don’t know. They surely can’t take you though until they get you trained. Of course I know that I am just one Mother in thousands. We will just have to trust in God. Of course you know that we are praying for you, and that will help you along…



Even as the greatest challenge of both of their lives has been placed before them with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and while Bob with his characteristic curiosity and composure is in the throes of noting the vastness of the differences between the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), in which he had served as a teenager, and that of the military, FDR is experiencing an odd form of relief. Japan’s strike against the American Fleet in Hawaii, while creating an enormous crisis for the president, at the same time, it lifts from him the solemn mantle of a choice between war and peace for his country, and as noted by his wife, he is serener than he has been in a long time.©



The above is a work of creative non-fiction by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene. Her books are available worldwide on Amazon.



Image: “I WANT YOU” poster.



Recommended Reading: WAR WITHIN AND WITHOUT, DIARIES AND LETTERS 1939 – 1944, Anne Morrow Lindbergh; THE ROOSEVELT PRESENCE, The Life and Legacy of FDR, Patrick J. Maney.

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[1] http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3318

[2] http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/digitalarchive/speeches/spe_1941_1208_roose…

[3] http://franklincollege.edu/pwp/bgaskins/EDE226/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt.html

THE GHOST OF JOHN F. KENNEDY COMFORTS A GERMAN EX-PAT

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Emil’s voice cuts through the layers of my slumber like a buzz saw. It isn’t so much grating as it is insistent—overpowering! “Admiral Dönitz has called off the U-boat operations, Katrina. And the Führer isn’t fighting him on it. I will no longer be assigned to long days and nights away from you out to sea. We can be married now.” It is the same dream—too many nights the same dream! It punches me in the stomach! I jerk awake, gasping for air. “The middle of the night again,” I moan. “Emil, please let me be! Please, please go away!” But, it is useless. Nothing has changed in all these twenty years. I know from experience that I won’t be able to get back to sleep. Frustrated, I kick the quilt to the foot of the mattress and rise to my feet. “Coffee!” my weary brain insists. I paddle to the kitchen.

            It has been a long weekend in Washington DC, perhaps the longest in its history—in the history of my adopted country as a whole, actually. This capital city of the United States is closed. Across the country, businesses and schools are closed; nearly everything is closed, except for high-alert security operations and transportation systems. The grief-stricken people of the nation are parked in front of their television sets to watch the unfolding events surrounding the assassination of President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It happened shortly after noon central time on Friday, November 22, 1963—only the day before yesterday! It seems like forever. A jolt to my consciousness in an unwelcome voice reminds me that the president is now Lyndon Baines Johnson. I don’t like the idea one tiny bit.

I am one of a large community of ex-pat Germans in DC. Following the death of both of my parents, and as I had no other ties to Germany, I immigrated to the USA. That was fourteen years ago. I was fortunate to land a position right away with a German Language Institute and Cultural Center here. Mr. Kennedy, at the time Senator Kennedy, engaged the institute in helping him with his campaign for president, specifically in appearing at gatherings of ex-pat Germans. I served as the adjunct to him in that endeavor. I was taken aback when first he engaged me in conversation about the Second World War. It is usually a topic that is avoided in interchanges between Germans and Americans. I understood immediately that he wanted all barriers between himself and me erased, a desire on his part I was to see over time extended to all people everywhere.

The date of our first meeting, a lunch meeting, was Friday, January 15, 1960, only two weeks after he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I remember it so well because it coincided with a fateful date earlier in my life. It was on that exact date in 1944 that my then fiancé, Emil came up missing. He was a crew member of the German U-boat 377 whose last radio report occurred on January 15, 1944. The submarine had departed Brest, France on December 15, 1943. U-boat 377, with Emil onboard, sailed into the mid-Atlantic, its return anticipated in early February. When it failed to arrive, it was reported, ‘lost to an unknown cause.’ Before the submarine set out on its mission, Emil had informed me while on a short leave over the Christmas holiday of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s discontinuation of Germany’s U-boat program in the Western Atlantic because of a lack of success and heavy losses. Apparently, however, Germany was not so willing to give up its U-boat program. It actually continued well into the final weeks of the war.

In my nervousness, and by way of an apology, I suppose, I blurted out this history to the senator. His handsome face broke into a reassuring smile, and he said, “My service in the war was also spent on the water, although on the Pacific fighting the Japanese.”  

“The famous PT 109 incident,” I replied.

“Yes. That happened in August of 1943.”

“I knew next to nothing of Hitler and his Nazis, or of the war,” I replied shamefacedly.

“You weren’t a member of a Hitler Youth group?”

“My father was a farmer. We lived in an extremely remote region of Southwest Germany. We lived our lives much as our ancestors had done for generations, isolated from the country’s political turmoil. We were aware of the war, but were able to keep apart from it almost entirely. And then I met Emil.”

“And he was in it body and soul?!”

“He was a Nazi, a fanatical Nazi. For a long time, I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.”

“And by the time you did recognize it, it was too late—you were in love with him, I take it.”

I broke eye contact with the senator then and looked at my folded hands in my lap. “Emil took it upon himself to indoctrinate me. It was a point of honor with him. He saw the war from the perspective of a sailor and he spared me no details about his ‘kills,’ as he called them—hundreds, thousands of American merchant ships and Allied submarines blown to bit. I didn’t keep a tally because the horror of the slaughter of all those young men on both sides was sickening to me. After a while, I couldn’t stand the sight of Emil. I vowed that if I survived the war, I would leave Germany.”

“Have you ever gone back?”

“Someday, when both Germany and I have mended a bit more.
“And Emil?”

“He haunts me still. Not a day goes by that I don’t carry the burden of my convoluted feelings for him. The weight is heavier because he lost his life.”

“I lost my big brother, Joe in the war. By rights, it should be he who is running for president. I suppose in some ways I’m doing it for him, although at times he was a royal pain in the neck to me.” The senator chuckled and then was silent for a couple of minutes, lost in his memories of his brother. “We must never forget that we are still in a state of war. We are in the Cold War, and have been since the end of World War II. In a way, it is just as insidious, maybe more so, because our enemies are so much more difficult to see. I think of it as our long twilight struggle. When I am president I intend to lead the way into the light.”

It was all I could do to keep tears from pooling in my eyes. Finally he said, “We both have our war scars. What do you say we leave it at that? Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight.” He raised his glass and reached it out to me. I clinked my glass against his, and he added, “And now for the business of getting me elected president. What do you have planned for me?”

I have lost this morning to my memories. I think about going to Mass, but my watch tells me it is already too late in the morning to do so. I click on the TV. The president’s motorcade scrolls across the screen as it has done for the umpteenth time during the weekend, since that awful Friday, November 22^nd morning. That gorgeous head of the president, so vulnerable in the open-top limousine, slumps forward. His wife in her Chanel suit and pillbox hat draws him to her. The president is shot, and we learned soon thereafter, that he is dead!

The live television cameras switch to the latest events in the continuing coverage of the president’s assassination. Cameras are in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters this Sunday morning. Before our eyes, among a crowd of reporters and other onlookers, in handcuffs, young Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s alleged assassin, is surrounded by police guards. A big man in a fedora and dark suit steps forward from the crowd, raises a handgun, and shoots Oswald. Pandemonium breaks out and then the shooter is wrestled to the floor. Unconscious, Oswald is hustled to an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same medical facility in which the president was pronounced dead two days ago.

Wave after wave of shock, grief, outrage, doom sweep over me! Hadn’t I left this kind of thing behind in Germany so long ago? What terrifying impacts will the loss of this president in whom the American people placed such high hopes have on the country? I am heartbroken for his wife and their little children. Was there a photograph of Jackie, Caroline, and little John-John in his wallet when he fell? I think about his mother and father and his many brothers and sisters, and his extended family, resilient and unstoppable people almost to a one, but this will give them serious pause, undoubtedly.

I perch in rigid disbelief on the edge of my sofa. “…Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight,” JFK said to me at our first meeting, one short sentence that took me in the fold and defined so simply my role as an American, and as a German, when I return to my homeland, someday.©

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

Image: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Books by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com.

A TEENAGER IN ITALY’S BOMBED-OUT CITY OF NAPLES

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



With the fall of Salerno to the Allies, my father told us that Naples was next. While all around us bombs had exploded and life had been chaotic, my father had gone to great pains to shield us from the intrigues of the outside world. He had forbidden talk about it in our home, and ordered us to pay no attention to what we saw with our own eyes. Therefore, my view of the current state of affairs was shaped by what my close-lipped father told me to think. But I am almost sixteen now and finished with merely playing at thinking.

There was no hiding from us the fact that my father had made inquiries about smuggling me and my older sister, Maria across the border and into neutral Switzerland. But the Germans had closed the border, and the only way across it was to bribe an official or border guard into looking the other way. My father didn’t have such contacts or resources. Our only recourse was for my parents, Maria, and me to pack a few possessions and escape into the mountains, the lower reaches of which sat at our backs at a distance of 190 km (118 miles). At a pace comfortable for my mother, the journey would take us several days. We knew many other people whom had done it, and although we hadn’t received word from any of them, we felt sure we would find someone we knew, hopefully someone who would help us to find shelter and food among the mountain’s, caves, dense forests, and grassy plains. The mountain range was thick with plants and animals, which, unhappily, included wolves and bears.

We set out on foot. It would be a difficult journey for my mother. She hadn’t been well since contracting pneumonia the winter before. She pulled through it, but her stamina was not the same. The stress of the war was wearing on her, as well. My father carried his rifle across his back, attached to the long, leather strap that crossed his chest and shoulders. My little dog, Tino had the best of it. He was curled up in a cloth sling tied around my neck, which suspended below my breasts. Maria complained with nearly every step of the way. Her shoes were too tight. Her back would break any minute. What if we were attacked by a pack of wolves or eaten by a bear? I loved my sister, but she wasn’t very strong in character. Often were the times that my love for her was tested, and never more so than during our escape from Naples. She was the kind of person only a mother could love, in my estimation. To my eternal surprise, two years later she was married to a lovely man who adored her. But that day in late September, 1943 when we set off for the mountains, I quickened my pace and left my mother to handle Maria.

I caught up with my father at the head of our little procession and set my pace to his. I had known war since I was thirteen. It had become a way of life for me, and now I wanted to understand everything that was happening to us and why. “Babbo, why do the airplanes drop so many bombs on us? The first time it happened I remember it so well because it was two nights after I turned twelve. The loud booms of the bombs sounded throughout the city. I shot awake in my bed and screamed for you.”

“It is complicated for one as young as you to understand, Luciana.” He turned his head to me and the set of his face told me that he recognized the earnestness in my eyes.

“Babbo, I am no longer a child. I have always obeyed your wishes that I ignore what is going on as much as possible. My friends implored me to join in the student uprisings, but I did not do so out of respect for you. I cannot close my eyes to it any longer.”

“Yes, I see that you are no longer so young and that the time has come for you to become informed. I have been dreading it.” He took my hand and brought it to his lips and kissed it. “Do you remember Il Duce?”

“Mussolini, our leader!”

“No more! He was relieved from power a few short weeks ago and we have a new leader now by the name of Pietro Badoglio. He was appointed by our king, Victor Emmanuel. Have you heard of Adolf Hitler?”

“Yes, Babbo. He is the leader of Germany.”

“You are correct, Luciana, and he is a very bad man. He is the leader of the Nazis, who are cruel and dangerous people. Hitler and Mussolini formed an alliance, one in which they agreed to work together to conquer all the rest of the world. For many years now, they have invaded other countries and killed their people and stole their property, and many other terrible things. All of that violence turned into the Second World War.”

“I know what Nazis are. I see them all over Naples. They are mean, just like the bullies at school, only worse. When you say ‘World War’ does that mean that every country in the world is fighting?”

“Yes, I am afraid so, with few exceptions.”

“And the countries that Mussolini and Hitler invaded are dropping bombs on us?!”

“Yes, Great Britain to be specific, and its friends who have come to its aid—mainly the United States. The Germans have a very powerful army. Their fighters are brave and strong and determined. The German people have been brainwashed by Hitler into believing they have the God-given right to own all of the world, and to take it by force if necessary. Hitler and his assistants are very smart, on top of being evil.”

“If Mussolini no longer has power over us, why are we still getting bombed?” My father looked over his shoulder, and said, “Mamma needs to rest. We will sit under this nice tree for a while.” We walked the few paces back to my mother and sister and helped Mamma to the tree. She lowered to a blanket that Babbo spread on the ground. We gathered around Mamma on the blanket. I pulled Tino out of his sling and he ran to the tree, hiked his leg, and urinated on it. He ran back to me and plopped down next to my leg. Babbo loosened the kerchief around his neck and moistened it with water from his canteen. He handed the kerchief to Mamma and she swiped her sweaty face and neck with it. He then passed his canteen to each of us and finally took a sip of water when the canteen came back to him. He pulled a little tin cup from his pack and poured it half full for Tino.

“Naples is a very important part of this whole story,” my father continued. “But I need to back up a little to allow you to envision the entire picture. You will recall from your geography lessons at school that the toe and instep and heel of Italy lie in the Mediterranean Sea, and that North Africa borders it, as well?” I nodded my head in acknowledgement.

“Not only has Hitler conquered nearly all of Europe, but he and Mussolini marched into those North African countries and took them over, as well. One of the several reasons they wanted North Africa is because of its enormous crude oil reserves. Airplanes and tanks and other machines of war cannot continue to run without masses of oil, which is refined into petrol. Russia is another country that has a lot of oil reserves. Germany is fighting Russia right now to get control of that oil, and for other reasons. In addition, unlike many of Italy’s coastal cities, Naples has an enormous harbor, one that can receive the biggest ships.”

“Our Bay of Naples!”

“Yes, and for that reason, our city was one of Hitler’s central distribution points of material and machines and troops and other necessities of war. His ships anchored in our harbor, unloaded, and then all of it was distributed among the nations he and Mussolini occupied throughout the Mediterranean area. That is one of the reasons Great Britain has been bombing Naples since you were twelve. They were, and still are, trying to stop Hitler’s flow of war material and troops through Naples. Of course, Germany and Italy have been thrown out of North Africa and Sicily by the Allies now. Even though our new government has signed a peace treaty with the Allies, and is fighting the Nazis alongside them, the Germans refuse to give up and are still here in Naples and all of Italy north of us.”

“Even in Rome?”

“Oh yes. The Nazis are fighting the Allies to hold onto what they can of Italy. In one way, Italy’s war with the Allies is over, but in another way it continues. It seems certain that Italy will descend into civil war.”

“What is civil war, Babbo?”

 “It is when the citizens of a country fight each other.”  

“How are we going to get the Nazis out of Italy, Babbo?”

“We have the most powerful fighters in the world helping us now, but we have to do our part, too.”

“How, Babbo?”

“Private Italian citizens have to fight in a variety of ways. We have to stand firm against the Nazis, and even take up arms against them if we have to.”

“You are talking about joining the resistance, right, Babbo?”

“How do you know about the resistance, Luciana?”

“Some of my friends say that Guido Martinelli and his sister, Sophia are fighting the Germans with many people who are members of the resistance. I didn’t realize for sure what that meant until now.”

Luciana and her little family got to their feet and continued their march into the mountains. As they walked, Luciana hatched a plan. She would find Guido Martinelli as soon as they returned to their beloved city.©

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



Image: Bombing of Piazza del Martiri, Naples, Italy



Recommended Reading: In her novel, BRIDGE OF SIGHS AND DREAMS, acclaimed author Pamela Allegretto weaves a fascinating tale of life in Italy during the Fascist and Nazi occupations. Central to her story is the Italian Resistance.



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

My Talking Heart - Chapter Seven: THE FACES IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Marlin Landon "Bob" Gaffin circa 1941

When I think back on the houses that have contained my life, including farmhouses, a log cabin, single-family homes, duplexes, condos, and apartments, located in diverse areas across Southern Ohio, Central Ohio, Queens and Long Island, New York, and the Atlantic Coast of Florida, one of the things all of them had in common was framed photographs of family members hanging on walls and ranging the tops of furniture—copious photographs that were, and are, storyboards of the lives of my ancestors and of me.

                My attachment to family photographs began when I was a toddler. The Second World War was raging, and Bob, my mother’s oldest brother, was in the very throat of it, serving as a half-track driver and sharpshooter in Patton’s Army in Europe. Bussy, my mother’s seventeen-year-old brother, had died seven months before I was born. My grandmother’s worries about Bob, and her grief over the loss of Bussy and of her own mother just weeks after Bussy’s passing were a serious threat to her emotional well-being. On the advice of our old country doctor, my parents agreed to let me stay with my grandparents, in the hope that my presence would be the balm my grandmother needed to regain her health.

The following is a scene evocative of the root of my love of family photographs. It is a dialogue between my grandmother and me when I was about two years of age. It is a fictionalized account of much less structured discussions we often shared about the family photographs that are the subject of the piece. I wrote it for GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS (http://goo.gl/imUwKO), my novel that is a blend of fact and fiction, a book populated primarily by my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents and the people of their circles, as well as one main fictional character. Mommaw and Poppaw in the passage are my maternal grandparents; Uncle Dickie is their teenage son.

Excerpt of GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS

“…As, like Mommaw and Poppaw, the sun gave up working for the day in our corner of the world, and retired behind the lazy hills reclining all across the broad horizon, it was then that the gloom of death-revisited settled in upon the household once more. Our nightly ritual never varied. Riding Mommaw’s hip, she carried me to the room where I slept. While the bedtime stories of other children were of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” mine were of Uncle Bussy and Uncle Bob. 

Bussy Gaffin 11 years old circa 1936

On the wall, within eyeshot of my bed, was a photograph of Uncle Bussy, a grainy black and white enlargement of his face and upper torso picked out of a family photograph taken when he was about eleven. Riding my grandmother’s hip, always she carried me to the photograph where it hung on the wall. He had been a good-looking, fair-haired, pale-skinned boy, and like my mother, his nose and cheeks were dusted with freckles, his station in life clearly evident in his bib overalls. It was like one of those portraits where the eyes follow you all around the room, and although some children might have been frightened by it, it called to me, instead. 

“Mommy says dat Uncle Bussy called me ‘Tadpole’ ‘cause I was in Mommy’s tummy when he knew me,” I reminded my grandmother, my pudgy index finger tracing the cheek of the young boy in the photograph. The man he would never become was unmistakable in the outline of the jaw, although not quite angular, was on the verge of being, like a flower halfway between budding and full bloom.

“My land, yes, Honey. He tried so hard ta hold on so he could see you. Poor Little Bussy,” my grandmother replied, her voice breaking, her great intake of breath tamping down the nagging voice of her great loss. 

“I wish Uncle Bussy could know me, Mommaw. He wooks so sad in da pichure. I could pway wiff him and make him feel bettuh.”

“He was just so sick, Honey.”

“Is Uncle Bussy in Heaven, Mommaw, wike Mommy says?”

“He surely is, Honey.”

“Can people come back home fwom Heaven, evew, Mommaw?”

“He surely would want to, if he could, ‘specially ta see you.”

“And, dis is Uncle Bobby,” I pointed to a photograph on another wall in my bedroom, a photograph of a young man in a military uniform, sporting a handsomeness so blond and well put together as to be the envy of any movie idol. Mommaw carried me over to the photograph, my brow wrinkling seriously. “Uncle Bobby is fighting dat bad man in…I can’t ‘member dat pwace, Mommaw.”

“Uncle Bobby is fightin’ a bad man named Hitler in a place called Germany. Hitler is the leader o’ them German people, an’ we ‘er fightin’ them ‘cause they do bad things,” Mommaw explained patiently, speaking to me as if I were an adult, as she always did.

“Uncle Dickie spanked Wex dis morning. Wex got in da henhouse. He ate some eggs after dat fox weave.”

“I know, Honey. Uncle Dickie had ta learn the dog that it’s bad ta eat them eggs. That’s kind o’ like what Uncle Bobby is doin’ over there in Germany, but not exactly.”

“Is Gewmany weawy, weawy fawr away, Mommaw, wike Heaven?”

“Germany is away over on the other side of the world, but not as far as Heaven.”

“Why did Uncle Bussy go to Heaven, Mommaw?”

“Because he sneaked out ta play when he was down with the measles.”

“You wet me go out to pway, and I don’t go to Heaven.”

“Uncle Bussy got real sick outside. When people git real sick sometimes they go ta Heaven.”

“You made bad wike Wex, Mommaw. You forgot to tell Uncle Bussy no when he went outside, wight?”

“No, not exactly, but I shoulda stayed right there in the room with him.”

“Did Uncle Dickie spank you for being bad wike he did Wex?”

“God spanked me, Honey.”

“Did it weawy weawy hurt when God spanked you, Mommaw?”

“Yes, Honey.  It really really hurt, an’ it still hurts mighty powerful.”

“But when I go out to pway, I won’t get sick ‘cause Uncle Dickie says I’m weawy weawy stwong. Uncle Dickie says dat Uncle Bobby is vewy big and stwong. And he wuns weal fast wike Old Smoky.”

“He runs pert near as fast as that old horse.”

“He can wun home to us, den, if dat bad man twies to hurt him.”

“The Good Lord awillin’, he will, Honey.”

 The nightly “visit” to the photographs of Uncle Bussy and Uncle Bob completed, Mommaw carried me to the living room, where the old rocking chair sat in wait. And Mommaw’s rocking and crying commenced anew. After I had fallen to sleep, she carried me to my bed in the downstairs room nearest to the bedroom she shared with Poppaw….”

Award-winning author and artist, blogger, and interior designer Linda Lee Greene is on social media at the following:

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