The Secret of Santa Vittoria (15 page)

It is a fortunate thing that he made and preserved copies of everything he wrote, military records, entries in his diary and log, letters to his brother who was serving on the eastern front in Russia, and even letters to his fiancée, Christina Mollendorf, which were filed under the heading “Love Interest.”

From the letters we were able to obtain a picture of the captain that might always have puzzled us here if we had not been able to have them translated and read to us. It doesn't seem out of place to print parts of several of the letters the captain wrote that day.

From the notes to his brother Klaus, we have been able to figure out that during an action along the Dnieper Bend several of Klaus's soldiers broke and ran in the face of Russian tanks, although they later returned to the field of battle. Despite this, the young men were shot, as an example to the others; and the officer who had reported them, Klaus von Prum, was badly shaken by the action.

Dear Father:

Mother writes to ask if I am happy. It can only be German mothers who write to ask if their sons are happy at war.

Actually I am happy. Happy to be alive, happy to still have my leg. I won't be climbing any mountains, but each day the leg grows stronger.

I am writing Klaus as you suggest. I too am worried about him.

As you can see I am now in the Financial Affairs Section, the Jewish Infantry as you used to call it. I am afraid that any chance of earning a medal now rests with Klaus. Actually we have little to do with finances. We spend most of our time cataloguing the assets of the area, and I will let you to guess what for.

You ask how it is here in Montefalcone and I answer you. Pleasant but dirty. If these people could be persuaded to keep their streets clean and their plaster from falling down, it might be called attractive and even beautiful. They seem to have an affinity for falling plaster.

My side job is that of Cultural Relations officer and it has been no easy task. It is no simple assignment to persuade these people that we come as friends and not as conquerors.

The money here comes from wine and I can tell you this much. Under sound German management the gross product of the region could be doubled. But they go on in their own old ways. They have a positive affinity for duplication and waste.

If nothing else, the work improves my Italian. I even speak the dialect now, to the amazement of one and all. When next you see me I will be spikking like a proper wop.

Respectfully, your son,

Sepp von Prum

Captain, Infantry

I suppose by now you have heard of the rescue of Mussolini by the SS pilot or some such story. The fact that he wasn't put to death is so typical of the sentimental and disorganized Eytie. How such a clown ever got in control of the government in the first place is beyond a puzzle, but then history shows that these people have an affinity for clowns.

 

Darling Christina, ma petite chou:

You ask about the Italian women.

Do you recall last week when I described the inability of these people to plan for the future because they only live for the present?

Well. About their women. This is one case where they are right.

STOP. I can see that pretty face of yours flushing with anger. Let me put it in this fashion. Some of these women are beautiful. And some of them most decidedly seem to have an affinity for blond, light-skinned, blue-eyed men. But then one loses interest in them because there is always this feeling (I am sorry to be crude) that their underwear, if indeed they have any on at all, is not clean. And so one loses interest. Frankly I think their interest in us is just because we might have on clean underwear ourselves.

Do this for me. Put down this letter at once and go to your mirror and then look into it and know this, that little face in that glass, those clear blue eyes and those full lips and that soft white complexion belong to the kind of woman that appeals to me.

You may cease blushing now.

Lovingly,

Sepp von Prum

Klaus:

What kind of nonsense is this you have written home? You have upset your family. Let us try to isolate one thing. You are not young Werther in love, you are an officer in the Army of the Third Reich.

You ask what you should have done and I tell you. You do what you did. You do your duty.

If your commanding officer says they should be shot for the best of all, they are shot. It is as simple as that. You have lost your concept of duty.

Duty is what? Duty is one's responsibility to an idea larger than the self. This cancer of the self! The putting of one's conscience beyond one's duty is the true sickness of our time.

Look at this place. To coddle the self the people have lost the ability to perform the simplest collective actions. They cannot even keep their streets swept, Klaus.

You say you feel “chained” by the Germanic sense of duty. You have an affinity for the overcomplex argument.

Duty does not bind one, it frees one from personal responsibility.

Duty liberates action. All kinds of acts become possible.

There is only one question: Does my act help the Fatherland or not? There is nothing complex about it. Duty
sticks out.

Once you have done your duty you will eat better and sleep better and feel better, because self-doubt will have been put to death. You have always had an affinity for the morbid, and the time has come for it to cease.

Get on with your soldiering and do your duty and take care of yourself.

Your brother,

Sepp

A memorandum to a superior officer in the Cultural Affairs Section in Munich:

Your idea for the posters was a limited success. The people desecrated them. What they did was childish, of course, but it was also clever, in the manner of bright children everywhere.

You will recall the first poster, the one of the tall blond smiling German soldier holding out his hand and saying “Remember, the German soldier is your friend.”

Someone here has gone about painting the hand red and dripping with blood.

All of them had to be taken down.

The second shows a German officer in dress uniform stopping by the side of a road to go to the aid of an Italian street urchin who has been hurt, although clearly his uniform will be ruined by the Samaritan act.

There are no words on this one, as you recall, because the picture tells the story. Someone has gone about writing on them: “Yes, but why did you hit him in the first place?”

We took those down also.

I think our basic error is that we have been attempting to treat these people as mature responsible beings, when our approach should have been to treat them as they actually are, that is, overage children.

The last paper is a memorandum to himself, under the title “Some Thoughts on the Italian Character.”

In General: Italians act from emotion, not reason, in the manner of children.

Conclusion: Treat them as such.

Specific: Germans have a sense of cultural inferiority toward Latins. They appear quick and clever, whereas we seem dull and stolid.

Answer: Cause is not cultural superiority, but a lack of any values or beliefs. Since the Nordic functions from a firm set of values he is limited in the breadth of his movement, but not in
depth.

Example: The German has an affinity for truth; the nation is a reservoir of truth.

When a German says he will be some place at six he will be there. No Italian will ever be at the appointed place on time, because he does not intend to be there. He will come late, but he
will
have a remarkable lie to tell as to why he failed to arrive on time. All Italians have an affinity for the lie.

Over-all conclusion: It is a mistake, then, to treat children as one would treat adults.

Persuasion and logic are a waste of time. During the occupation the leader must conduct himself as a father—stern but understanding. As the father, one can take advantage of the German virtues, of organization, of planning, of moral and physical strength.

As such, force, the usual method, is not needed except as a potential threat, such as the whip in the woodshed. We should rule by respect, as any father is respected by a child.

Such a policy should release thousands and thousands of men for active duty now tied down in occupation police duties. Police are not needed for errant children, fathers are needed.

Discuss these thoughts with Colonel Scheer.

The captain was disappointed when Colonel Scheer stamped his letter to Klaus as “Approved,” without so much as glancing at it. It was the kind of letter a junior officer might wish his senior officer to see.

“And now, shall we tune in Radio Cairo? Just to see what lies they are telling, of course,” the colonel said.

It was a standing joke, since it was accepted by all of them that the English provided the most reliable source of news. When the radio began to operate, officers from other rooms began to gather in the doorway.

The rumors had been correct. Landings had been made by the English and the Americans in a place called Salerno, south of Rome and Naples. The Italians had declared themselves out of the war and would soon, in a matter of hours, come in again on the side of the Allies.

“Oh, God, what good news,” the colonel said. “No longer do we have to lose men saving the wops.”

When the broadcast was finished the colonel turned off the radio and faced the officers in the room and at the doorway.

“There have been no official orders as yet, but you know what this means. As of this moment, Plan A is in effect. Unless I am seriously wrong, Operation Clutch will commence in a day or two.”

Plan A was a full combat alert, in which the Italians would be treated like the people in any occupied territory, as the enemy and a source of potential danger. Operation Clutch was the formal plan designed to occupy Montefalcone and the rest of the outlying area.

Captain von Prum left the headquarters and went back to the building in which his men were billeted. He went up one flight of stairs and looked into a large cluttered room.

“We don't need formality,” he said. But the soldiers were startled by the presence of an officer in their quarters and they got to their feet in confusion.

“Come to attention,” Sergeant Traub shouted at them, and all of them, even the naked soldier, came to attention and remained that way until von Prum released them.

Along one wall of the room were buckets of glue and brushes and rolls of posters, this one showing a German soldier helping an old Italian woman across a busy street. The captain pointed to them. “You won't need those any longer,” he said. “We are at war with Italy.”

Some of the soldiers smiled, and some waited to see what the proper action was supposed to be. The captain took this chance to examine his detachment. It was the first time he had seen them all together, and it was not a reassuring sight. There were only eight of them, and all had been seriously wounded and were now on limited duty. The senior of them, Sergeant Gottfried Traub, had been hit in the face by shell fragments, and the muscles had been severed, so that the captain found it impossible to know what the sergeant was thinking from his expression. He had reached one conclusion, which was that the sergeant appeared happier when he wasn't smiling at which time his face became distorted.

“We're all going to become soldiers again. No more glue pots,” the captain said. Once again the men didn't know how to take the news.

He took out the map of this section of Italy. It was so typical and correct, von Prum thought, that the only reliable map of the whole area had been sent to him by his father from Mannheim.

“You will note,” he said, “a good German map and so we are safe. At least we will be sure to wind up in the town we have been sent to take.”

His slender finger touched the city of Montefalcone. “We are here.” The soldiers, who were timid about doing it at first, began to gather around the map. “We eventually will be
here.
” He began to move his finger down the line from Montefalcone and out to the Mad River and along the red line on the map which marked the River Road. It was dark by then, and the noise of tanks and half-tracks from the streets and piazzas outside was so loud that he had to shout to make himself heard. They were wasting no time.

“It's on the mountain, as you can see.”

The soldier who had been naked, Corporal Heinsick, had put on clothes and was leaning over the map. His thick, stubby finger touched the city and then crossed the map to the road.

“There's no line to it. There's no road.”

“There's a road. It is a track, really. For oxen and carts. Our equipment will be equal to it. Are there other questions?”

The soldiers were silent because they were not accustomed to asking their officers questions. It bothered some of them and made them nervous. But one thing had been troubling them from the beginning and they looked at Sergeant Traub, and so he finally said it.

“Sir? There seem to be only eight of us, not counting yourself.”

“That is correct.”

Again there was an embarrassed silence and the man kept looking at Traub.

“Captain Pfalz has fifty in his command. They feel they need fifty to take and hold their town, sir.”

“We need only eight.”

They knew that it was the end to the questions, and they made a show of gathering around the map again to exhibit interest. Traub touched the name on the map.

“Sanda Viddoria,” he said.

“Yes. Santa Vittoria,” the captain said.

“Ah, yes. Sanda Viddoria,” the sergeant said.

 

L
ONG BEFORE
Fabio reached Montefalcone it had grown dark. Walking the River Road in the dark is hard, but the darkness had brought the traffic out, hundreds of cars and trucks and half-tracks moving by the little light of hooded parking lights, all heading south and he could see by them. He was forced to the side of the road, but he could see. A few soldiers riding the trucks shouted at him and made gestures at him and one or two actually aimed their rifles at him, but Fabio failed to respond. He was no fun for them.