Chapter 6 Naples (I)

Fragments of Chapter 6 about Naples

My first contact with the great city of Naples came somewhere near its very heart, the contact a few muffled voices in the gloomy dark sometime after midnight. The words were Italian. The voices came from faces in barely discernible bodies huddled beside dark buildings. My jeep came to a halt at a street crossing. There was silence.

Then, "Americano?"

"Si."

The bodies came to the side of the jeep. We spoke no Italian, they little English, but enough was exchanged to learn that the few remaining Germans had left the city early in the morning. In their leaving the Germans had heaped upon their former ally a burden of senseless destruction and heartless hunger.

In Naples I saw a famous city rise from the valley of the shadow of death. I walked into buildings where late the Fascisti strutted. Some of the arrogance of the conqueror either rubbed off on me or came out from within me. In this spectacular city with a traditionally famous harbor, then full of sunken Italian ships, in this vigorous and bawdy city whose roofs of pastel red, blue, and orange are a rainbow in the sun, I learned about life.

One night there was an air raid and an Italian cyclone-torpedo bomb was parachuted down during the night. It landed on our roof but failed to detonate. The next morning we vacated the building while three British officers came to remove the fuse. Minutes passed and nothing happened. The bomb, which I had gone up to see during the morning, was as round as a man and six feet long.

More minutes passed. The fuse was apparently not yielding to skilled hands. We moved about restlessly on the streets. There were the usual jokes about Limeys mixed in with the inefficiency of Italian machinery, to which was added the probable anger of the Nazi who had dropped the dud. Suddenly there was a horrendous blast. The street shook with the shock of the explosion. All that was ever seen again of the three British officers were pieces of dark, dirty flesh that got mixed with the rubbish in the filthy streets of Naples.

Chapter 5: Tunisia, Sicily, Italy

I was "dug in" on a long slope of a hill; at the bottom of it was the shore of the most magnificent sea in the world. In fact, the view I had from my two-foot-deep slit trench was really the twenty-dollar per day Riviera view. As far as I could see from two hundred yards up the slope, there was a vista of exquisite serenity, a body of water varying in degrees of color from blue, to lavender, to turquoise,
with a gentle ripple of whitecaps on the surface of the water and magical blanco clouds in the deep azure sky above. The Mediterranean Sea, sea of history, was for us, too, a sea of some historic
moment. We knew that one day soon we'd either fly it or sail it. We felt reasonably sure that we'd not walk it. The city of Bizerte in Tunisia lay a mile or two around the corner of our slope. It was late August 1943.

For an airborne outfit, ours, the 325th Glider Infantry, spent a great deal of time walking on the land and sailing on the sea. Current preparations suggested a sea crossing with a beach landing. This was the one maneuver we had not practiced. Nights on the forty-five-degree-angled slope beside the transparent blue Mediterranean were pretty romantic, even from a slit trench. Girls were out that season, but radios were in. Possibly under the influence of the relaxed atmosphere of that part of the world, their volume was kept low and soft. As everyone knows who remembers the war in North Africa, it had about it a romantic quality unlike any war in any portion of the European conflict. This was not all due to Rommel and the British Eighth Army. Nor was the romantic aura due to the movie Casablanca and the song "As Time Goes By." They helped. They contributed, as did the German
song "Lili Marlene," which had long since been won over by the British and was now being played over Allied radio. A portion of the romantic nature of this area of military operations was the country
of Tunisia. The veiled women, the ancient cities, the camels and small donkeys, and the semi-desert nature of the landscape compounded an atmosphere of strangeness. The days were blistering
hot, but the night air in late August was exhilarating, and the stars, as always in Tunisia, seemed within our grasp. They sparkled in the cushion-soft sky like glowing sapphires.

Military parades 1944

Bill Stigall on military parades:  Late in July and again in the middle of a sultry August, we walked miles to practice and returned more miles to be reviewed. At one of these events we paraded for the commander in chief of the entire Allied Forces … He told us he needed the inspiration of seeing us parade by him to support him in the demanding decisions he was called upon to make. Fortunately, a friend kicked me in the shins; no one heard my cursing. 

Chapter 14: England Again

At sunset we sighted the English coast. First some cliffs, then a small village, finally a lovely red brick house set in a deep green valley touched with the benign light of a declining sun. Dusk and peace in an English harbor with the silhouette of the custom house bearing an unmistakable resemblance to Old Philadelphia. Only when the ship was secure to the dock did I breathe a tremendous sign of relief knowing at that moment for certain that we'd not turn back to Normandy. I then slept the quiet sleep of a mind freed from anxiety and a body relaxed from tension.

***     ***

We came back to England for rest, furloughs, and replacements. I discovered the astonishing fact that on D-Day two of my new tent mates had been home on furlough. The world was indeed picking up speed. Our pace, which was relaxed in early July, quickened in early August. We worked longer days, occasionally into early evening. In no time at all we were in shape and ready to be presented to the peacocks. So, we had a couple of parades. The war in Europe was rolling at a terrifying pace, with mounting ferocity and murderous violence. While few of us wanted any more of war, parades seemed to me to be the last thing we needed. As it turned out, it wasn't we that needed the parades; it was the generals. Late in July and again in the middle of a sultry August, we walked miles to practice and returned more miles to be reviewed. At one of these events we paraded for the commander in chief of the entire Allied Forces, Gen. Ike Eisenhower. After we marched by him, he got on the "mike" and told us why we were asked to parade. He began by saying that we must sometimes wonder why we are asked to parade. He, too, when a young officer at West Point, used to wonder the same thing. But now he knew. He needed the inspiration of seeing us parade by him to support him in the demanding decisions he was called upon to make. Fortunately, a friend kicked me in the shins; no one heard my cursing. General Eisenhower, in one of the most glorious positions ever held by any man in the history of the world, needed a bunch of jerks like us to give him inspiration. Vanity, vanity, saieth the Preacher. All is vanity. Looking back upon it now, I know the only good thing about that day was that never again would I be called upon to parade. Never again have I even had to look at one.

The shower of frogs

The sameness was occasionally broken by a drive into an Arab village, passing on the way small donkeys, dirty-looking "Arabs" [apologies to the contemporary reader, and I don't know what the quotation marks mean either] and once a magnificent group of wild horses racing one another madly along the dust-filled fenceless roads.

As we were driving back from Kairouan one afternoon, a dark cloud came over the camp and it rained water and hundreds of tadpoles, which squirmed around on the hood and floor of my jeep. We thought it very odd, being pelted by small living forms from the sky, each about half the size of the head of a pencil. By then we were so used to the strange sights of Tunisia that only later, when my honesty was questioned, when it was thought that there was upon me "the spell of Arabia" or that I had a Moses complex, only then did I search for the scientific explanation for this "plague" of frogs.

Water, in being blown up from the ponds, also sucked the infinitely small tadpole. Fierce winds, common in Tunisia, blew both water and tadpoles some distance and eventually dropped the living matter with the rain.

Shower of Frogs - Chapter 4: Kairouan

On June 15,  I drove my jeep into a wobbly C-47 and was flown a thousand miles over the Atlas  Mountains. The flight lasted about five hours. When not asleep, I watched the green-and-brown moun­tains, some with small white patches of snow. We flew over the golden cultivated fields of Algeria. From the small window in the plane I could make out grove upon grove of what I later learned was a part of the main crop of Tunisia-the olive. We landed near a great walled city of white adobe houses with blue shutters.

...

A few days after arrival, I drove into the large walled city with a huge mosque towering high above the wall and over all other buildings. Approaching the city,  we whiffed the strong smell of sul­phur coming from the graveyard near the edge of the city.  Later we understood that this was a holy city and that many bodies, alive and dead, were brought here for burial, some above ground. The bodies were covered with sulphur. The city itself,   with the walls, was, I now realize and did to some extent then, straight out of the Middle Ages. It  is called Kairouan,  a word  derived  from the Bedouin word caravan.  The streets  were unpaved  and  are still almost entirely unpaved. The whiteness of the houses, the white­ness of every single house, was, in the brilliant sun, a stunning sight, indeed a near-blinding sight. Blue had been adopted over the years as the best color to both match the cloudless sky (an aesthetic choice) and ease the eyestrain (a practical choice). A spot of red or yellow here or there came from clothing, rugs, or flowers. There were a few patches of green trees, that were remarkably cooling, both aesthetically and practically.

Shower of Frogs: Chapter 3 conclusion

And, above all, of the tormenting sun.

For, in North Africa, we had lived by the sun. We were its prisoners.

For six solid weeks at Marnia from sunup to sundown, from reveille to taps, we lived in its direct presence. There was an occasional cloud, a spare tree, a jeep's shadow, but the total effect was unrelenting sun. When it dropped behind the mountain, almost as if on signal, a breeze entered the valley.

The mornings were lovely and quiet. Birds hopped and sang in the nearby fields; sheep cried in the moist morning air; stooping reapers moved along the skyline. The morning was purple and gold and lingered in its loveliness until shattered by the rapid notes of the bugler.

At the peak of noon the sun scorched the land. Tall whirling funnels of wind and dust moved erratically along soft, undampened roads. The crucifying sun circumscribed a great arch across the valley. The reapers moved almost imperceptibly abreast the fields. By mid-afternoon the land simmered. It awaited the sun's subsiding.

Come evening the mighty and commanding sun paused to reflect in its own image till finally it disappeared in its self-engendered splendor. The heat receded. The earth gave way. The patient reapers straightened their backs and moved off to thatched huts. Once a white horse did gallop off in the distance. A gentle breeze drifted through the valley. Darkness gathered round our camp. The bugler seemed to linger over his note. The soft night in a deepening stillness glittered with enormous stars. Gentle sleep came with the cooling of the earth.