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 CHANCE AT THE MOON: LOVE . BETRAYAL . MURDER - Your Weekend Read or Gift for Mom

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Set in Las Vegas country and Hawaii’s Big Island, unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s new novel, A CHANCE AT THE MOON: LOVE . BETRAYAL . MURDER is available worldwide for purchase in ebook and paperback on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/. #WeekendRead, #GiftforMom, #ASMSG

AN OHIO STATE BUCKEYES FOOTBALL FAN WRITES A LETTER TO HIS SOLDIER SON

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.





Pvt. Joseph S. Williams

68^th C. A. (A A) Reg. Hq. Btry.

ASN 35405121 APO, C/O Postmaster, NY, NY 



                                                                                                                            November 14, 1943



Dear Son:

We received your last and very welcome letter about two weeks after the date on the heading. The Army’s V-mail service is certainly an improvement over the former snail’s pace. Of course, we are always so grateful to learn that you are doing well. Your mother asks me to remind you to keep your feet dry and warm, and to eat your vegetables. She worries so much about your being exposed to the cold.

Your mother, sister, and I are just fine. Our only bad news is that Grandpa Williams is suffering from gout. The big toe on his right foot is swollen to twice its size. He growls like a testy old bear from the pain. I took a carving knife to his shoe and house-slipper, cutting away the portion that would touch his toe. Grandma is her usual patient and accommodating self. Grandpa doesn’t deserve such an angel for a wife. Nor do I deserve to have her as my sainted mother. She still goes to Mass every morning and lights a candle of protection for you.

The newspaper and radio keep us abreast of the status of the Allied Forces both in the Pacific and European Theaters of the war, although we are in the dark as to your exact position, and whether or not you are in transit. Your mother thinks you are still in Italy, but I think you might be on your way to England, if not already there somewhere. There is a lot of talk at church and at the country club about a big buildup of troops and material in England that will go against Germany in their own territory sometime soon. Of course, we have heard that speculation since World War II began. We understand that you are not permitted to divulge such information in your letters. Our prayers are always with you and all the troops.

I’m sure you have yet to receive the letter I sent you in which I reported the good news of Ohio State’s 46-6 win over Pittsburgh last week. It was an away game, so we weren’t able to attend it. But we were right there in our usual seats at Ohio Stadium yesterday when OSU hosted Illinois. The framed photograph of you that normally sits on the mantle here at home was perched on your reserved seat beside me at the stadium. It was pointed toward the field. And of course, your mother and sister occupied the two seats to your left. Our fondest wish is for the day you will occupy your seat at the stadium again. 

Frost has set in here in Central Ohio, and to ward off the cold at the game, we donned our trusty old beaver coats and hats, and wrapped our throats in woolen scarves. Thermoses of hot chocolate warmed our insides. It was a grueling contest on the field. The Buckeyes and the Illini were tied 26 to 26, and the Buckeye’s pass on the last play fell incomplete. The game was over. The players left the field and we, as well as most of the other 36,328 spectators, filed out of the stands. We didn’t find out until I read the story in the newspaper this morning that twelve minutes after the apparent end of the game, the players were sent back onto the field. Nobody realized it, including the coaches, players, and fans that an official had called an off-sides penalty against the Illini, and two seconds were then put back on the clock. In a spectacular second-chance effort, the Buckeyes kicked a field goal straight into the scoring lane. It was Ohio over Illinois 29-26. Hooray! But we didn’t get to see it happen!

Next week we will meet Michigan at Ann Arbor for the final game on our schedule this season. You will recall that this is the third year for Paul Brown as our head coach. I wonder if his contract will be renewed owing to our less than stellar Big Ten record this year of three wins and five losses so far. Let’s stop Michigan from ending our record with six losses!

By the by, my dear son, I will send you the results of that game next week, along with our news, and our love and prayers for your safety. GO BUCKS!

                                                                                               

All my love,

                                                                                                Dad©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction based on actual events.



Source: Andrew Buchanan, 100 Things Buckeyes Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, (Triumph Books, 2014) pp. 246–247.

 

Books by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and paperback on Amazon.

LINDA LEE GREENE RELEASES NEW NOVEL

I am so pleased to announce the release of my new novel,

A CHANCE AT THE MOON – A Novel of Love, Betrayal, Murder, and a Touch of Paranormal.



Actress Olivia Montoyo Simms escapes the shadow of her mother’s gruesome murder and the relentless demands of Hollywood and loses herself in the cards at Las Vegas casinos. But like hounds on the scent, the scandal tracks her. And true to her history, it shows up in the person of a dashing Hawaiian gambler named Koa Kalua’i. Neither of them are strangers at taking risks and too often losing—will they win in their chance at the moon this time?



Available for purchase in eBook and Paperback on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/

ACROSS THE ROOFTOPS OF THE GHETTO OF ROME

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



My eldest son, Sabato, he is like a goat since he took his first steps—climbing whatever has been before him. In the beginning, he scaled the furniture in our little home. As he grew older, he scooted a chair to a window, slinked up and through it, and made his way outside. My wife, she could not control him. Whenever she turned her back, he scurried away to climb something. Most of the time, it was the wall in which the window is located that gives onto a tall tree beyond arm’s reach of it. The limbs of the tree provide him the means of disappearing among the rooftops of our cramped neighborhood. He is one of an ancient breed of climbers among our people, myself included when I was young, spawned by the stifling four walls that enclose us in this Ghetto of Rome, which has been our people’s prison during much of the time between the middle of the sixteenth century and now.

Jews have been counted among the population of Rome since a century and a half before the birth of Jesus, the Christian’s Jewish savior, and the ironies of our history here are ceaseless. First we were in favor, and then out of favor—in and out, in and out, our fortunes have varied over two millennia according to the mood and the politics of the separate ruling powers of the times. It is the same throughout this hemisphere of the world, where there are also Jewish ghettos—many of them—but the Ghetto of Rome holds the dubious distinction of being the oldest. Like its history, its boundaries are irregular, comprising about two thousand Jewish people at its inception in 1555, the whole of them shut behind a gated trapezoidal urban enclosure measuring a cramped, four blocks in size. At its longest border, edged up against the Tiber River, the quarter was then and is to this day perpetually damp and murky, our narrow streets, homes, and businesses infested with vermin inhabitants of waterways and their nearby areas. The river also guarantees that the ghetto is subject to incessant flooding. Diseases wrought by the forced overcrowding and unsanitary circumstances are rampant. Crushing poverty is our lot as well, because gainful employment among the larger society is denied to us. To state that our close and substandard living conditions are inhuman, is merely a restatement of our situation during most of our history.

            The very night of his Bar Mitzvah five years ago, not only did Sabato become a man, but he also transformed into a cat-burglar. I do not suggest that he indulges in breaking and entering. Certainly not! Soon after the authorities shut us inside the ghetto behind locked gates, as they do each evening, donned head to toe in black, Sabato creeps across the rooftops of adjoining habitats of our neighbors, drops to his feet outside the boundary wall, and slinks into the wider city. Darkness comes early at this time of year and the curfew hour begins soon afterwards. The darkness is intensified by the mandatory blackout—all windows and doors are shrouded in black cloth or by other means. Keeping to the shadows, and being careful to avoid the armed patrols that like cockroaches infest every corner, Sabato scours the sinister streets and alleyways for whatever he can find. That first evening upon his return, his black eyes shining triumphantly, he said to me, “Papa, look what I found for you! Now you will have many nights of good light as you study the Torah.” And from behind his back he produced four tall and thick, white candles, only slightly used. “I found them in the dust bin behind the Cathedral,” he informed me. The Cathedral has become one of his regular foraging sites. There he gleans an assortment of treasures, including medals of the saints, candelabras, and other religious articles. We trade them on the black market through a friendly Roman Catholic who acts as our trusted agent, which contributes greatly to the livelihood of our family. One of Sabato’s happiest finds was for his sister, Ada. The day of her Bat Mitzvah looming before her, she was mortified that she lacked a nice pair of shoes for the small ceremony we planned for her. God Himself, with the help of Sabato, provided. As Sabato stole down a pitch black street a few nights before, a pair of barely-used girl’s sandals beckoned to him on a doorstep of a house. He snatched them up and stuffed them in his rucksack. Later that evening, like the prince kneeling before Cinderella and placing the glass slipper on her foot, Sabato lowered to his knees and slipped the sandals on his sister’s feet. They were just the right size!      

Since Nazi Germany seized Rome two days after the Italian surrender to the Allies on 8 September, 1943, discrimination against us has been at a fever pitch yet again. Many of my close friends and associates have escaped the persecution by pulling up stakes and moving south in search of protection among places now occupied by the Allies. I am skeptical of such a drastic measure. After all, several non-Jewish Romans pooled their resources and helped us to meet the Nazi demand that we Jews hand over 50 kilograms (110 lbs.) of gold to them, a sum that we were promised would insure the freedom of 200 family heads marked for deportation to a concentration camp. It shows to me and many of my neighbors that the Nazis are only after loot, and as long as we can fork over commodities, we will be safe. Sabato sees it differently. He begs me to leave, but I cannot find my way to ripping my sickly wife and our other six children, the youngest of whom is still a babe in arms, from the only home they have ever known. I recognize that restless look in Sabato’s eyes—he is ready to go, to climb through the window, to scale the tree, and to escape across the rooftops and over the walls of this ancient ghetto once and for all, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me because I fear that if he leaves, we will lose him forevermore.

Even as I come to the end of this writing in my journal, the German security and police forces have sealed off the ghetto and announced that our final removal will soon be underway. “Papa!” my son exclaims. “Please, Papa come with me. I can get all of us to safety. We will go south and find protection among the Allies.” But it is too late. My wife and baby daughter would never survive such a journey. I feel certain that a concentration camp is our better option.

“I must go, Papa. I must join the co-belligerent forces and fight the Nazis.” His rucksack filled with his scant possessions strapped to his back, Sabato takes my face in his hands and kisses my cheeks. And then he bundles his mother in his arms in a goodbye embrace. One after the other, he kisses his brothers and sisters, and then he turns from us and disappears through the window. I run to it and through misty eyes watch my son scale the tree and step foot onto our rooftop.© 

Note: On October 16, 1943, the German Gestapo raided the Ghetto of Rome. At its outset, 363 men, 689 women, and 207 children, mainly of Jewish persuasion, were rounded up. Among that number, 224 non-Jews were released. It is recorded that two days later, 1,035 Jews were loaded onto Holocaust trains and shipped off to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Only fifteen men and one woman survived the bloodbaths of the deportation and internment in the camp. If the narrator of my story of historical fiction had actually existed, it would have been a miracle if he and his family had been among the survivors. Sabato, on the other hand, because I sent him south to the Allied encampments, very well might have escaped. I like to think that he would have made it to one of the British Isles or the United States soon after the end of the Second World War.



Image: LIFE IN THE GHETTO OF ROME - 1880 Watercolor by Ettore Roesler Franz

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.      

U.S. ARMY NURSES EVACUATE THE WOUNDED

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Summaries of today’s fighting will go out to newsrooms all across the free world. A gaggle of foreign correspondents follow the battles around like phantoms, uniformed, wolfing down the awful C-rations, chugging the sickening, chemical-tainted water from their canteens, running or crawling on their bellies among the sheets of bullets and overhead bombs, all for the sake of finding a story to send back home. They will report only what will pass the censors, things like the amount of ground gained, the heroic act of an anonymous GI, or excerpts from an official report by General So and So. Tomorrow, families will gather around their radio sets, their ears perked for any nuance in the stories that might give them some clue as to the status of their Johnny or Billy. And they will scan their newspaper hoping for the same revelation, to no avail. Their kid’s name won’t pop out among the sentences of yet another story about the current raging battle in Salerno, Italy. Instead, a telegram handed over by a man at the front door will inform unlucky parents of the missing or dead.

            I know full well that the folks back home have to stay on top of what is going on, not only because they are worried sick about their son or daughter, but because otherwise they just might give in and let the Nazis and Japs win. It’s a sure bet that there are very few mothers and fathers who have slept soundly through the night since World War II began—my parents included, of course. My mother still hasn’t forgiven me completely for joining the US Army as a nurse, and she is even less inclined to let me off the hook since I was deployed overseas. My dad doesn’t believe in sending any female into harm’s way for any reason, no matter how pressing. I literally want to throw up at the idea of my name, or God forbid, a photo of me doing my job of evacuating the wounded from a battlefield and having it show up in our local newspaper. I can’t stand the thought of how that would terrify my mother. So when I see one of those journalists, I turn my head away and pray he will focus his attention elsewhere.

            I sailed abroad in late May, only four months ago now, but it has been another lifetime. I was one of a large contingent of medical personnel, nurses and doctors and aides, onboard an enormous ship, which was a luxury cruise liner in its peacetime identity. It was converted to a troopship ever engaged in transporting troops and other personnel to fields of operation across the Atlantic. The ship and others like it on return trips to New York Harbor are directly connected to my job. They carry the walking-wounded and others back home, among them Prisoners of War who are subject to internment in various camps across America.

            Even though we medical personnel were assigned to specified quarters on the ship, still there were occasions when rubbing elbows with the troops came up. The ship was packed stem to stern with them, short, tall, rail-thin, and brawny, sprawled out in hallways, on decks, stretched out on bunks, all of them uniformed and helmeted and attached like glue to their guns and field packs. A chalked number unique to each one marked on their helmets and linked to a manifest in their commanding officer’s possession gave them a strange individuality. I was careful not to look at any of their faces. I figured there was a chance I would see too many of them again under different circumstances. It was likely that I would carry some of them out of a battlefield on a stretcher; that I would stitch-up for some of them bullet-shattered arms and legs, or stuff their guts back through gaping holes in their bellies. Some of them I might not be able to save at all.

            Today, September 17, 1943 was my first assignment on a field of battle in Salerno, Italy, and a weird coincidence happened. A young lieutenant among a group of soldiers lifting a wounded comrade on a stretcher to my outstretched hands where I stood at the open door of the evacuation plane called out my name and touched my hand. “Evelyn!” the lieutenant shouted. “It’s me, Benny.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Benny for sure, my neighborhood friend, one of a group of us who had been playmates since we were kids. How many warm afternoons did we play kick the can, hide and seek, and tag, or build snowmen and igloos during our cold Midwest winters? One year Benny got a telescope for Christmas, and one by one he let us look through it—he gave us our first real view at the stars, the same stars we had oohed and aahed over when on hot summer nights we had stretched out on blankets in our back yards. Sleeping under the stars was a happy childhood adventure. Dear God, please keep Benny safe as he beds down under those same stars tonight, somewhere out there on that battle-churned war-site in this hostile, Godforsaken, foreign land.©



Image: Air evacuation from Italy to North Africa

Recommended Reading:          https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/MedSvcsinMedtrnMnrThrtrs/chapter3.htm

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

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