Chapter Twenty-Six

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Plot reminder: After witnessing the murder of his friend Ettore Lo Bianco, Vincenzo has run off into the night...

~~~~~

My immediate concern wasn't one of direction, any vague notion of destination. All that mattered was distance. Putting enough of it between myself and the camp as to render the possibility of any prompt, post-dawn capture an unlikely one.

Run. It seemed the only course of action open to me. What the hell else was I supposed to do? Squirm my way back through the wire, awaken Captain Terlizzi? It would be my word against theirs. Me, a greasy untrustworthy wop - what chance did I stand? And even if I were lucky in estimating the spot where they'd tossed Ettore's body into the soil and we were able to unearth him, the authorities would just claim it had been some internal thing. Everyone knew what we Italians were like, right? Some ad hoc camp mafia group had arisen, the murder a warning to any other protesters who refused to hand over their pizzo. Or if not that, a communist frozen by some pro-Mussolini hound dog.

Then there was Irene to consider. If I'd returned to the camp, awkward questions would have been asked. Why had Ettore and I swapped tags? What was I doing at the perimeter wire at past midnight? Not only was being accomplice to an escape attempt a punishable offence, I just couldn't risk them finding out my ulterior motives for being there. Couldn't risk Irene's name being shaken out in all of this. Whatever punishment I would have received I had little doubt would be inferior to hers. Docked pay most likely. An immediate re-assignment to some even more far-flung and austere place. Much, much worse would be the non-official penalty of long-lingering public shame. The whispers, the stares. People who'd never been in love, never shared such passion with a another human being as Irene had with I. People whose only pleasure in life was some feigned moral superiority. Those soulless, dull-witted types who populate this world like grains of sand a beach. By running from her, as fast and straight as I could, I sought only to shield her.

Though it's difficult to say with any level of precision, I'd estimate that between short sustained sprints and frantic gasping staggers I put thirty kilometres behind me before first light. It wasn't so much the official search patrols which frightened me, more the unofficial ones. Ettore's murderer and his accomplices would of course be surprised to discover that there wasn't just one but two names missing from the morning roll call. I recalled that brief flicker of light after the murderous deed - Ettore's face momentarily illuminated beneath another man's. They'd been checking the ID tags around his neck, I could only imagine. Verifying they'd killed who they thought they'd killed. It followed, therefore, that they'd be even keener than the authorities to hunt down the man they thought was Ettore Lo Bianco, silence him in the same despicable, cold-blooded way they had the man they thought was Vincenzo D'Ambra.

Thirty kilometres. By my calculations, as a radius with camp 106a as centre point, this meant a surface area of almost three thousand square kilometres they would need to comb to find me. As the dawn rose grey and doleful, I collapsed into an irrigation ditch by the side of a field, buried myself in the first fallen leaves of autumn.

Thus the pattern was set. I moved under the cover of darkness, during daylight hours kept myself as hidden as I could.

Other than distance, my other primary concern during those first twenty-fours hours was to ditch my prisoner uniform. This for the record comprised of brown felt trousers and tunic with identifying beige patch on the back, my incongruity heightened by the uniform's shredded and blood-matted state following my headlong launch through the wire. I might as well have carried a neon sign on my back flashing the words 'Escaped POW'.

It was my fortune that my second night on the road was a dry, breezy and moonlit one. Coming across a village not long after blackout, I snuck myself over a back garden gate and pillaged the trousers, shirt and woollen jumper which featured amongst the garments on the clothesline. There was a bicycle leaning against the back wall of the house too, which certainly would have facilitated movement, saved my weary legs yet another twenty or thirty kilometre slog. I left it though; along with the clothes, it would have been too much. All they were subjected to - the nightly drone of the Luftwaffe, rations even more meagre than we prisoners of war received - I felt an immense solidarity with the local population. The only things I'd ever stolen before being the peaches or grapes which overhung the country roads of my native Puglia, the theft of that man's clothes is a guilt I've carried in my heart throughout the decades.

The trousers were loose around my undernourished waist, forcing me to fashion a belt from a torn strip of my POW uniform. The shirt and jumper were similarly large, their cut too intended for the more bountiful diet of peacetime. I imagined I must have looked like a child who'd ransacked his father's wardrobe in play. Not ideal, no, but better than nothing.

Thus attired, I continued on my way. As previously mentioned, it mattered little which direction I took. The important thing was, whichever colour of the compass I opted for, it was one which should be maintained. That I didn't turn some clumsy headless circle, in short, find myself right slap bang in the middle of the danger zone once more. That my route happened to be a southbound one was purely coincidental - this the direction of the first country lanes I'd ducked down that frantic murderous night, the ones which seemed the longest and straightest, the most remote, the least likely to carry along them the curious blinding beam of approaching headlights. From then on, whenever visible, I made a conscious effort to keep the north star directly behind me.

It was the fifth day, Thursday, that dozing in the shade of a lone oak at the edge of a potato field I was pulled back into consciousness by the sound of distant voices. Jerked alert, I crept for cover around the wide, root-rippled base of the trunk, peeked out from behind.

I could see a dozen or so figures making their way onto the other end of the field. From one the silhouette of a side-strapped rifle was discernable, clearly a guard. Another figure, a civilian, was leading a horse - one of that heavy local breed known as shire. As the figures approached, I could now see that the other men were wearing the same manner of felt uniform I'd buried amongst some woods four days and around hundred kilometres earlier. Prisoners, yes, and what was more, they were Italian prisoners. Oh, there was no mistaking it. Exuberant, hand gesturing Italians, individual words ringing discernably across the early autumn afternoon. Blasphemies, playful jibes, other words which one should never repeat in front of one's mother. They seemed in particularly fine spirits, even despite the long hours of toil ahead.

I watched as the farmer hooked up a small plough to the shire, guided the animal then along a ruler-straight line. Behind, the men bent their backs to the loosened soil, deposited armfuls of potatoes into the tall cylindrical containers lined up behind them. As the shire then trudged its furrow back the other way, and with the bored-looking guard turned in the same direction as he puffed on a cigarette, I grabbed knapsack and scooted myself into the ditch at the side of the field, out of sight. Within a few minutes, I could hear a two-way chatter draw closer, the men's accents some northern inflection I wasn't familiar with. Veneto perhaps, or Friuli.

"Miei fratelli!" I hissed, just as soon as I judged they were within earshot. My brothers.

They were too wrapped up in their conversation however, a somewhat heated debate on whether Juventus or Bologna were the best football team in Italy.

I tried again, slightly louder: "Miei fratelli!"

This time, the sporting discussion suddenly ceased.

"Who is it that jokes with us?" enquired a voice.

"This is no joke," I assured. "I'm here in the ditch." The words felt strange in my mouth, like a clutter of stones; they were the first I'd spoken to another human being since bidding Ettore farewell at the wire. "But please, don't come over. Just keep picking potatoes. Act like everything's normal."

There was a moment of silence. Then a second voice.

"What the cabbage are you doing in the ditch brother?"

"I'm on the run," I informed them. "Five days ago, I escaped."

I wasn't sure what I expected their response to be exactly, but certainly not an amused splutter.

"Escape! Holy Mother friend, your timing's not much, is it?"

Thus it was I discovered that twenty-four hours earlier in Cassibile, Sicily, General Castellano had signed an armistice surrendering Italian forces to the Allies. That we were no longer enemy soldiers but rather co-belligerents. And that as such, according to the men's senior officer, we could now expect our conditions to drastically improve. Monetary payment rather than tokens. No more Nissen Huts and perimeter wire but billetings in farmhouses. The same kind of tough but noble existence, in short, as that of the Land Girls we toiled alongside.

Not quite the pure, untethered freedom Ettore Lo Bianco had so desperately craved, no. Something in the middle, a mutually beneficial compromise. One, I could only wonder, which he might have accepted.

Which might just have saved his life.

~~~~~

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