See Naples and Cry
NEXT MORNING I came out to find Marie filling out forms, and Freddie and Karl sorting through a mess of receipts, making notes on each of them, and handing them to her one by one. Occasionally they would volunteer confusing explanations about the business purpose each one had. Mostly though, they didn’t seem totally sure where the receipts had even come from, far less who they were meant to have been entertaining. “Just helping the boys with their house-keeping,” Marie said, “Seems they’ve gotten a trifle behind while I was away.”
“Take your time,” I answered, “We’re plenty early.”
“Coffee’s on the stove,” she laughed.
I fixed myself a cup and checked some of the other charcoal cartoons on the walls. In one of them two dirty, unshaven, smoking GI’s with rifles at the ready were escorting a larger bunch of equally dirty and unshaven German infantry prisoners. But they were all so beaten-up looking, that barring the rifles you could hardly tell one side from the other. But that didn’t stop an immaculately dressed Colonel Landers from talking into an Armed Forces radio microphone commentating that, ‘Stop. Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, bring in thousands of ragged, battle-weary German prisoners. Stop.’ And in another the same Landers now had his arm round an American infantry private about to board a hospital ship back home, while at the same time addressing a group of newspaper correspondents, ‘He thinks the food over here was wonderful and the officers inspiring,’ Landers beamed, ‘Of course he’s glad to be going home but is sure he’ll miss the excitement of battle. And yes boys,’ the Landers look-alike added with a knowing wink, ‘You may quote him on that.’
Bill Mauldin came up behind me. “I can see now how you got on the wrong side of Landers too.”
“He’s got on the wrong side of a lot of people out here, haven’t you Bill,” Marie chirped in.
“But they let you get away with it?” I asked him.
“I know the things to keep out my cartoons.”
“Things like what?”
“Like never showing an American soldier dying ignobly, in fact better to never remind anyone they ever die at all.”
I checked out another cartoon of his, of two unshaven, smoking G.I’s spread-eagled on the ground at night with tracer bullets flying all around them and one saying to the other, ‘I’m beginning to feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.’ And another with the exact same two unshaven, smoking GI’s, fully armed for an attack, ‘Must be a tough objective,’ one says to the other, ’But General Clark says we’re gonna have the honor of liberating it.”
“I’m thinking of calling them Willie and Joe,” Bill said, “They’re meant to represent the average fighting GI out here.”
“But there isn’t much doubt that lots of other American soldiers are dying all around Willie and Joes is there?”
“Sensing it is fine, showing it happening isn’t. That’s the line I try to tread, making them sure of it, without seeing it. Same as the movies do with sex, so they can get past their censors too.”
“Like Casablanca?”
“Were you under any delusion about whether Ilsa and Rick were lovers in Paris?”
“I guess not, no.”
“Did you actually see them at it?”
I laughed because he was right, wasn’t he. “So what else shouldn’t you show?” I asked him.
“That Americans even commit war crimes.”
“No we don’t.”
“I saw quite a few at Salerno,” Norman of the unknowable surname said, as he walked up behind us and reached for the coffee pot. “Soldiers who’d been ordered to beat German prisoners to death with the butt of their rifles, because their officers hadn’t been told what else to do with them. And not just Americans for the record, I’m ashamed to say British ones did much the same thing too. And they’d fought in Africa, so they knew better”
“And never admit we have such a thing as deserters. If there are a few folk missing at morning roll call say they’re just straggling,” said Mauldin.
“Straggling?” I asked.
“Got lost during the night and are trying to play catch-up.”
“And never ever show an Allied soldier lying on a stretcher grinning like a moron because he knows he’s just copped a minor, war-ending wound,” Norman chimed in again.
“And never ever, ever show our soldiers assaulting a senior member of their own army,” Mauldin continued.
“They sometimes do that too, assault their senior officers?”
“Maybe you’ll feel like doing it too after a couple of months out here. God knows I have.”
“But if that kind of thing really happens, aren’t the American people entitled to know about it?”
“As far as Landers is concerned the only thing they’re entitled to know is at the end of the war. When he announces who it was that won.”
“And even that assumes we have,” added Norman.
“Have to run. Catch you in a few days,” said Mauldin. “Can’t stay comfortable for too long down here, it’s bad for the creativity.”
“So where are you going?”
“Up front with the real soldiers.”
“And I’m off to work,” said Norman.”
“Just for the record Norman, could you tell me what your training was for this oh-so-secret… work?”
“I speak fluent Spanish.”
“But this is Italy?”
“The British War Department is fully aware of that God bless them, but presumes Spanish and Italian is very similar, given both their nouns tend to end in vowels.”
I laughed and he and Mauldin headed for the door. But as they reached it Mauldin turned round and said, “And remember what Whicker told you, on no account touch the picture of Monty and General Clark.” And they went on out.
“Where is Whicker anyway?” I asked.
“Off making newsreels,” Marie said. “He’ll be back in a few days too.”
“So question is, does anyone think the Bureau will buy off on sixty four dollars for half a gross of condoms?” Karl asked Marie.
“I don’t know how you get by with so few,” Marie responded looking down at a large box of packed condoms on the floor beneath the table. “I used two dozen last week alone.”
“And what about five quid a pop for the Italian girl, eight times a month. Think that’s over the top?” Freddie enquired.
“Why don’t I wait outside,” I said feeling suddenly uncomfortable, and I disappeared discretely.
***
Ten minutes later they joined me in the jeep. “Something wrong?” asked Marie.
“Your private lives are none of my business, but...”
“But what?”
“I’m just shocked how many...”
“Condoms we go through?”
“Twenty four in a week?”
“They’re completely waterproof and only need tying up at one end.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m Catholic.”
“So if you place a reel of exposed film back to London in one, it’s safe from any kind of moisture.”
I looked at Freddie. “And your Italian girl? Eight times a month?”
“I appreciate you think me still capable of such impressive physical accomplishments, dear girl, but these days she’s just the cleaning lady.”
“Oops, sorry,” and I couldn’t help but give Marie a big smile back.
***
We arrived in front of Fifth Army Command later that morning to find the rest of the Allied Press Corps already there smoking, discussing and kibitzing. Sapsovitch was too, and the moment I got out the jeep he looked at me like a poor Spaniel who’d been tossed out the house for the night, and wanted more than anything to get back in. I nodded to him and he sheepishly got in the driver’s seat. He shouldn’t have worried though, as deep down I was a little ashamed of my performance the day before, and was kind of glad to see him.
Then a mild outbreak of thinly-disguised hissing greeted Colonel Landers as he came out the building leading a whole raft of nattily dressed U.S. Army Press Relations Officers. “We have a nice surprise for you,” he announced to everyone. “It being the day of our Lord, we are all going to go to church, and immediately afterwards we’ll drive into Naples City centre where you will be given a photo opportunity with the general.”
“The man’s a complete poser,” muttered Freddie. “Not an ounce of gravitas in his whole body,” and he shook his head. “And what kind of photo opportunity is he talking about this time? I thought this was a war we were fighting, not a general election?”
Then my godfather came out the building too, in his finest dress uniform, with another aide carrying some sort of hanging bag behind him. “Attenshut,” Landers said to the assembled Press Corps and they all braced up in a half-hearted civilian kind of way. Freddie smiled over at me as he mimicked a stand to attention much as the Hunchback of Notre Dame might have done for King Louis. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t suppress a giggle at that either.
“Freddie, you’re being disrespectful again,” Marie said as my godfather cut his hand through the air making it clear enough that such formalities were not called for. So I smiled knowingly back at Freddie but who acted as if he knew something I didn’t, but would await a better time to reveal it. Apparently however this was not that better time, so as Karl wandered off to say hello to some other correspondents, my godfather got in his jeep with his driver and waited stonily for Landers to organize the rest of us.
“We have a very nice truck to bring you all along in,” he told the crowd as he gestured to one with a tarpaulin over it. What had lead him to believe that it was a nice truck as opposed to just being any old truck was not immediately clear to me, but perhaps it had been specially brushed and cleaned for the occasion. “You’ll also be pleased to hear that members of my staff will accompany you on the way into Naples too, and be available for any questions,” Landers announced. “So if you would all see your way clear to board now and have your association cards ready for inspection.”
“What association cards?” I asked Freddie.
“If Landers got his way the whole Press Corps would be co-opted into the army so he could order us about. But as he can’t, he’s made us all join something called the Fifth Army Organization, designed to encourage us to observe at least some sort of discipline.”
“And if you don’t join it?”
“You don’t get to come to the choicest photo shoots and you can’t eat at the Fifth Army officer’s mess.”
“Does General Clark know about this?”
“If you ask me he knows about everything Landers does, but prefers to maintain, what is it they call it, plausible deniability?” Freddie muttered, as the correspondents did as they were told, showed their Association cards, and boarded the nice covered truck, but not without more hissing, which seemed to be their instinctive response to any instruction Landers issued.
Meanwhile I was taking some shots of the scene including some of a man in a very different looking uniform than any of the American officers, and with what looked like a perpetual smile on his face. “Who’s he?” I asked Marie as sotto voce as I could manage.
“General Alphonse Juin,” she answered. “He commands the Free French Expeditionary Force that has been assigned here as part of Fifth Army.” Whoever he was, Marie and he seemed to be fast friends, and she waived at him and he saluted her back, but with his left hand.
“Do all French generals salute with their left hand?” I asked.
“Only those who’ve lost their right one,” she answered with a smile.
“What happened to it?”
“The Germans blew it off in 1914.”
“Poor man.”
“He’s still probably the most famous soldier in France. He graduated first from St Cyr Military School ahead of even Charles de Gaulle, received the Légion d’honneur at the Marne in the First World War, and helped cover the British withdrawal at Dunkirk in the Second.”
“I didn’t know the French helped cover the British withdrawal?”
Marie eyed Freddie with a smile. “Because the Brits made damn sure you didn’t.”
“Why would they do that?”
“If Dunkirk was to be characterized as a miracle instead of the utter humiliation it really was, Churchill made damn sure it was going to be a British miracle. So the British censors didn’t let any of us mention the French Army fighting off the Germans while the British disembarked, or the scores of French ships that helped bring those troops home.”
“They certainly didn’t show that in Mrs. Miniver.”
“Probably because no-one told Mr. Miniver,” Freddie laughed.
“And General Juin, what happened to him after the British escaped?”
“He was imprisoned by the Germans,” Freddie said.
“But still managed somehow to find his way here?”
“They released him to command the Vichy French forces in North Africa,” said Marie. “Except after our invasion there he ordered them to resist against the Germans instead.”
“His Expeditionary Corps are experts in mountain warfare, and a very welcome addition to the cause here,” said Freddie. “Though if you ask me they could use a few lessons in personal decorum.”
“What’s that mean?”
But Marie shook her head at Freddie before he could answer “Not now, Freddie, please?” So Freddie just shrugged and left me none the wiser what he’d meant about that either. Anyway, by now I spotted Landers motioning me over in a ‘this is a very secret and important matter I wish to discuss with you and you alone, and right this moment’ kind of way. This I was to learn was how he viewed anything he had to say, that is always important, more often than not secret, and invariably urgent. “Take Lucas, Anstruther-Darlington and that Sorel woman to the church with you,” he said. “That way my men can work over the rest of the Press Corps without them getting in the way.”
“Work over?”
“That is supposing Lucas even attends church.”
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“He may be Jewish.” Then Landers motioned over at Juin and in a voice Juin could hardly avoid hearing. “And don’t waste celluloid on him. The Frenchies are just part of the ancillary fire brigades round here. It’s Americans the folks back home should be seeing, just Americans. No French, Poles, British, Polaks or anyone else. Understand?”
“Got it.”
Landers then rushed off, got in my godfather’s jeep and it drove away. Then another covered truck with an M.P. insignia that I hadn’t even noticed before followed them off, and then the supposedly especially nice Press Relations truck moved off behind it. When Landers was out of sight I walked over to Juin and raised my camera lens towards him. “Avec votre permission, mon Général?
“Nice to see some Americans are willing to recognize your smaller allies,” he answered in perfect English.
“Colonel Landers doesn’t speak for all of us on such things.”
“Then you might suggest to him to stop acting like he does.”
I took the shot and said, “Merci, monsieur.”
“Mon plaisir, mademoiselle lieutenant.”
And I walked back over to the jeep to find Marie already seated in the back, but Karl and Freddie off to the side having a last word with another correspondent about something, a correspondent who’d presumably not joined the Fifth Army Association, and thus was not invited to this photo opportunity.
“Tell me about Karl.”
“Not getting a crush on him, I hope?” she said.
“Why would I do that?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
“But I’d prefer not to be the next.”
“Before the War he was a classical pianist,” Marie said in what struck me as a rather wistful tone. “One of the finest up-and coming musicians in his whole country, they say. And in his country you have to be very fine at that to be ranked amongst their finest.”
“How did he land up as a war correspondent?”
“The most I’ve ever got out of him is that when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he was out the country and was never able to get back in. He tried to join the exiled Polish Army in London but they said he was a national treasure and it was too risky. So his pal General Anders who runs the Polish brigade out here got him a job with UPI.”
“Does he have family back in Poland?”
“He tried to get them out, but apparently it was hopeless. He gets a message through the Underground from them every few months. Anders passes them along to him.” She looked at Karl and Freddie now walking back towards us. “Except he hasn’t heard anything from them lately, that’s maybe why he’s been acting so moody.”
Karl jumped in the back too with Freddie. “Church it is then,” Freddie said.
“Haven’t been to one of them since my younger sister was baptized,” said Karl.
So much for Landers ability to discern people’s religions either, I remember thinking as we drove off.
***
So there we were winding along the muddy roads into Naples, my godfather’s jeep up front with Landers as ever by his side, an enclosed military truck behind them with a sign on its side saying ‘M.P’s’ that had appeared from somewhere and whose role in the day’s proceedings was as yet unclear, another truck full of the Press Corps behind them being indoctrinated by Landers staff, and us bringing up the rear. Though by now some of the male members of the Press Corps had had enough of being indoctrinated, and were instead hanging out the back of their truck and making some rather suggestive signs in our direction. “What’s their problem?” I asked.
“Just miffed they don’t get their own private tour guide too,” laughed Freddie.
“Tell them it’s because they haven’t annoyed Landers quite as much as you have.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” answered Freddie “Or they’ll for sure start to.”
We reached Naples Cathedral and went inside. There were quite a few thousand soldiers in there already, American and British mostly. The service was in English and rather obviously designed more to cater for our musical tastes than the locals’. So we sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ of course and ‘Stand up, Stand up for Jesus’ a hymn which seemed to particularly catch Landers fancy as I saw him stop singing and start taking notes about something. Heaven knows about what though. Or more accurately only heaven knew about what at that particular time, because soon we all did know, and none of us were too pleased about it.
Then like all armies in war, we duly thanked God that he was on our side not the enemies’ and on balance what a good job we thought he was doing. On our way back out I explained to the three of them that there was a phial of dried blood housed under the Cathedral that was brought out twice a year in May and September when it usually miraculously liquefied. “Whose blood?” asked Marie.
“Saint Januarius. He was Bishop of Naples in the Fourth century, and was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. Italian-Americans celebrate his birthday every year at the Feast of San Gennaro.”
“And if this blood of his fails to liquefy?” asked Freddie.
“Then disaster will befall Naples soon after.”
“Happen to know if it liquefied last time of asking?” he enquired.
It was a good question, but I could only shrug in response to it.
We had to wait a little before my godfather came out, and by this time he’d changed back into his regular field dress, helmet, and parachute boots, with a green scarf round his neck, and as soon as he was back in his jeep we all boarded our various means of transport and headed off behind him, the M.P. truck too.
“So does anyone know what this photo opportunity’s all about?” Marie asked Karl.
“Word is we’re going to see history changed with the stroke of a pen,” Freddie responded.
“Or more accurately with the click of your shutter,” said Karl looking at me.
“What do you mean my shutter?”
“We’re going to re-liberate Naples,” Karl laughed.
“Re-liberate it?” I asked.
“Head back to the road into the city from the south, and enter it again.”
“Why?” I asked.
“When your General Clark had his back turned one of the British battalions assigned to Fifth Army, the King’s Dragoon Guards, did the unthinkable and were the first to enter it. The General isn’t ever going to let that happen again, let the British arrive anywhere important before he does. So Landers wants the fact they did kept hidden from your folk back home. And the best way to keep something hidden is to re-write it,” said Karl.
“General Clark would never be a party to anything like that.”
“If you say so.”
Soon the convoy went through a roundabout on the southern end of the city, did a u-turn back in a northerly direction then stopped at a signpost heading off in two or three different directions. We all got out and I watched as Landers positioned my godfather in front of a sign that said ‘Napoli’. Then he motioned me over with my camera and said, “Make sure the sign’s completely readable in the background.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“And remember the shot has to communicate panache.”
“Panache?”
“Make him look like Napoleon astride the peak of the Alps on his elephant.”
“I believe that was Hannibal, colonel. Didn’t Napoleon cross in his carriage?” smirked Freddie who’d crept up behind us.
“Never get hung up on the facts, Mr. Darlington. They’re just a crutch for the unimaginative mind.”
“We’ll all be sure and remember that in future, Colonel Landers,” said Marie who had crept up behind Freddie.
“And remember, only shots of the General taken from the left are publishable, never the right.” And I looked at Marie and she gave me a rather apologetic look back.
And soon I was taking the official shots of my godfather looking out to the right in front of the sign with his field cap on, while a satisfied Landers held his helmet out of the view of the camera. “Always remember,” he whispered to me. “Public relations is about creating truth, and whoever controls the image dictates that truth.” And instead of helping compose the first draft of history I realized Freddie and Karl were right, in my first job in Italy I was helping distort it.
Then I saw two signs that said ‘Naples City Centre’ and ‘Naples Docks.’ “The docks would provide some other terrific possibilities for a shot too, General. We could-.
“No. The city centre is what we have in mind,” interrupted Landers.
“But-”
“I said no,” he repeated. “Naples City Center, understand?” So I shrugged and got back in the jeep and we headed for the city center.
But as Sapsovitch accelerated off I couldn’t help noticing that the mysterious M.P. truck parked in front of us, and whose function in proceedings had been hitherto unknown, had now elected to reveal it. It had remained motionless, MP’s had came out the back of it, and had begun digging up that very same street sign that said ‘Napoli.’
***
Once in the city centre we all took more photos, me included, of my godfather walking through the cheering crowds. But as I did I couldn’t help noticing Landers’ Press Relations officers were now handing out bunches of flowers, and prodding the locals into showing enthusiasm, even though an awful lot of them didn’t seem to feel like it. “I presume you don’t want them in the frame,” I said to Landers pointing at them. He grunted at me like I was an idiot for even asking something so stupid, and I took the photos with them out of shot. “Get them developed as quickly as you can this evening,” he said and headed off.
“What is it about Naples docks that Landers doesn’t want the folks back home knowing?” I asked no-one in particular when I got back to the jeep.
“Probably that there no longer are any,” Karl answered.
“The docks,” I said to Sapsovitch, “Now.”
“But I was told on no account to-”
I pushed my foot over his and rammed it down on to the accelerator, and the jeep lurched off. “Now, I said.”
“Okay, okay,” he pleaded and I pulled my foot back off his.
As he drove off Karl leaned forward between Sapsovitch and I, and said to him, “So tell us, Corporal, do you pull hazard pay on this detail, or are you just doing it for love?”
And sure enough when we got there I could see Naples Docks did no longer exist, not in any meaningful sense anyway. The harbor was choked with half-sunken vessels, the port machinery was wrecked save for a few cranes still sticking up in the air, oxy acetylene torches were sparkling everywhere as engineers built metal companionways joining all the sunken ships to serve as some sort of makeshift quay, and for a thousand yards inland every building in the city was in rubble. “What’s happened here?” I asked.
“We bombed it for weeks before we invaded,” Karl said. “And what we couldn’t destroy, the Germans did before they headed north.”
I looked inland to all the destruction as far as they eye could see, “And we bombed the city too?”
“Not on purpose, maybe. But our so-called precision aiming didn’t turn out to be quite as precise as intended,” said Freddie.
We drove back through the ruined part of the city, through rubble, food lines, mothers selling their daughters’ services on the streets, and Allied soldiers only too keen to oblige by buying them. “My mother was born near here in Cassino Town,” I said. “And when she first brought me to Naples I thought it was the prettiest city in the world.” Even Sapsovitch had the good grace to cringe when he heard that. “Now look at it.”
“Let’s go somewhere and eat, shall we?” said Marie. “And not the Fifth Army Officers’ Mess either.”
“The Excelsior is still serviceable,” suggested Freddie, so we headed off in its direction. But as we did the jeep lurched precipitously as if we’d run over a huge hole in the road. “Just a missing manhole cover,” said Karl. “Everything is stolen in Naples, including the manhole covers. Though Landers insists we report it as sabotage.”
“Why does he care?”
“It’s bad for the morale of the many Italian-Americans in the Army here that their Neapolitan relatives have such low regard for the rights of public property.”
“Even our telephone lines get cut to steal the copper,” said Freddie.
I saw a sign on a wall saying ‘Beware of V.D.’ “And who brought that here?” I asked. “Not the Italians. It used to be they got a year in prison for spreading it.”
“And it wasn’t the Germans either. By all accounts it was virtually unknown when they controlled the city too,” said Freddie.
“So that was us as well?”
“Same as we were responsible for introducing the black market,” said Karl.“In fact they say over half the income of Naples is now generated through the theft and resale of Allied supplies. Every single item of it is openly on sale in Forcella Square, including photographic film if you ever run short.”
“But where are they getting all that kind of stuff from?”
“Norman says the equivalent of one Allied cargo ship out of three unloaded here lands up stolen,” Freddie said, “It’s amazing what a few hard-working Italian-American boys can do under local management, eh?”
***
We arrived at the Excelsior to find it packed with a lot of press and very well dressed military officers. As we sat down Freddie whispered, “Under no circumstances be tempted by the Veal Milanese, Okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s horse,” laughed Karl.
“And the fish of the day’s dogfish,” continued Freddie, “Regardless what they have the gall to label it.”
“So what can we order?”
“Stick to the pasta. But Lord knows what they’re using for flour these days.”
So we ordered pasta, but just as it arrived we could suddenly hear very loud sirens down on the street. “Nero must be gracing us with his presence today,” said Karl.
“Nero?” I looked out the window and saw a black limousine with at least half a dozen military motorbike escorts come to a stop, and an American General in immaculate uniform with a swagger stick, get out and walk in.
“He’s the military head of the PBS.” said Freddie.
“And what’s that?”
“The multitude of non-combatant staff types we’ve sent in to help support Fifth Army. The hero of Naples he likes to be styled. But sometimes fingers slip on the typewriter, after all ‘h’ and ‘n’ aren’t that far apart are they, and dearie me if ‘hero’ doesn’t suddenly become...
“Nero?”
“Even our own combat troops wouldn’t stop to give him a lift.”
“Why not?”
“Because while they’re up on the front dying he and his multitude of officers are snug, fat, safe and happy down here, and one way or another most of them earning far more than they ever did in civilian life.”
“PBS gets the best of everything, you see. The best billets, the best food...” Karl looked over at some Italian girls standing to the side in flimsy floral dresses who had joined Nero at his table. “And the best... companionship.”
“How can you be sure they’re…?”
“Working women?”
“Yes.”
“The skirts,” Karl whispered looking at my fatigue pants.
“And look who else he’s dining with,” said Freddie.
I checked out the dark-haired man with the air of a pimp sitting down beside him. “Who is it?”
“Il capo di capi, the head of the local Camorra,” answered Karl. “His name’s Genovese. He was formerly Lucky Luciano’s number one back in your good old U.S. of A. But he now appears to run the whole black market here under Allied protection.”
“You’re not saying that senior PBS officers are getting…?
“They’re probably discussing a fair commission for a few Allied supply trucks going unaccountably missing right now,” said Karl.
Just at that moment two men came to the table to pay their respects to Freddie. I’d been noticing all day how respected Freddie seemed to be, amongst the Press Corps anyway, but even so these two were pretty special. “Patricia may I introduce John Huston the noted film director and Robert Capa a colleague of Marie’s at Life.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” I said.
“And we you,” said Huston.
“I saw two of your films in officer training school, Mr. Huston, the one about the Aleutians and the one about Pearl Harbor.”
“They’re not my films,” Huston snapped.
“Then whose are they?”
“They’re your U.S. Army’s. Personally I’d have preferred if my name hadn’t even appeared on either of them.”
“You would?”
“Report from the Aleutians was so heavily edited by the military censors I could hardly recognize the final cut myself.”
“And December 1941?”
“Completely faked from beginning to end.”
“Faked?”
“There weren’t any newsreel cameras at all at Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese attacked, and I for sure certainly wasn’t.”
“So where did you get all the shots from?”
“They were taken later in a back lot in Santa Monica.”
“Even the one where that padre blesses the troops and they all head off as the Japanese attack?”
“It’s what we call a realistic simulation.”
“So are you here to realistically simulate this part of the war too?” Marie asked him.
“I was rushed out to cover our supposed entry into Rome. But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.”
“And you Mr. Capa? What did you come out here to cover?” I asked.
“I thought I was coming to cover a war, but all I seem to see is attempted self-delusion.”
“What kind of self-delusion?
“I don’t know why we’re fighting over who liberated Naples, when in truth none of us liberated it at all.”
“We didn’t?”
“The Neapolitans liberated themselves, they rose up before we even arrived, and forced the Germans out. We just appeared to help mop up their bodies.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And a lot of the people who did rise up were just children. I visited a schoolhouse a few days ago full of their coffins, small ones, covered with flowers, but not so well covered that they hid their poor little feet sticking out the ends. Think about it, the feet of children old enough to fight the Germans and die doing it, but a little too old to fit into children’s coffins.”
“Then why didn’t they put them in adult ones?” I asked.
“They’d already been all used to bury their fathers.”
***
We walked back out onto the street, Marie, Karl, Freddie and I. But just as we did there was a massive explosion off in the distance. Then we saw a huge plume of dust and smoke climbing up a mile or so away. “That’s down near Naples’ post office,” said Karl. “Come on.” And we all jumped in the jeep and drove off.
When we got there sure enough the Post Office building was in flames and the front was ripped open. I looked down at the scores of civilian bodies already lying in rows in the street amongst the Allied Medical Corps attending the injured. “The Germans must have mined it. With some sort of delay fuse,” Freddie said shaking his head.
I sat down on the sidewalk in misery. “I guess my mother’s countrymen don’t have a single friend left in the world these days, do they.”
Marie patted me on the shoulder, “Don’t worry. I suspect they’ve still got one. You.”
I looked up at Freddie and there was a tear in even his eye too. “You alright?” I found myself asking him.
“Time was I used to be considered quite the military authority, you know, the student of all the great commanders and all things strategic that thousands read every week to understand the subtleties of the world they lived in. Now look at me, reduced to a cognoscenti of destruction, versed only in differentiating between the sound of the shelled, the bombed, the machine-gunned and the merely booby-trapped. You bet I’m not alright.”
***
Later that afternoon I headed back to Allied Air Intelligence to develop my photos, the official ones I’d taken for Landers, and the unofficial ones I’d taken for myself. But this time I took Marie’s advice, made some contact prints, cut them up, kept the interesting ones and put them in the fold of my field cap. I wasn’t sure then where I would keep them permanently, but I knew I would work out something. On the way back out I noticed the shiny new telephoto lenses the British Intelligence Officer had now shelved away. “Thanks again for the use of the place.” I said.
“Always willing to do anything for Fifth Army Command.”
“Even one day give me one of those lenses?”
“Get the nod from them and you can have one anytime. Though there not going to be very useful with the weather forecast we’ve got.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s going to close in tonight and Lord only knows when it will ease up again.”
And I headed out and went to deliver Landers his shots.
***
“May I ask a question, sir?” I said to him.
“Sure,’ he replied.
“Are you familiar with the expression ’museum of the Western world’?”
“Should I be?”
“It’s an expression many archaeologists and cultural historians use about Italy.”
“So?”
“So exactly how much of that museum are we prepared to see in ruins so we can brag about liberating it?”
“Liberating Italy will give heart to every oppressed nation throughout Europe.”
“None of the Neapolitans I saw today looked like we’d given them much heart.”
“There is a point to this?”
I gave him the developed photos from the day’s shoot. He looked at them and said. “Excellent these will fit the bill perfectly.” Best I have the negatives too in case we need more copies.” So I handed him them as well.
“And why did you have the Naples city sign dug up too?”
“A Christmas present for the general’s wife.”
“Aunt Maurine?’
“Mrs. Clark is how we prefer referring to her round here.”
“Doesn’t that kind of thing make us look far more like vandals than liberators?”
“The Italians declared war on is, remember?”
“Not the kids, or their starving mothers, or their daughters who can only support themselves by selling their favors to Allied soldiers.”
“Is there a point to this too?”
“Just wondering, that’s all. May I go now?” And we exchanged a salute and I left.
***
When I got back to the cottage I found Freddie out on the verandah. “They won’t be bombing the harbor tonight. Far too much cloud cover,” he said.
“Does Marie have a family?”
“She had a husband.”
“Had?”
“Somewhere along the line he became a non-factor in her life and she became the same in his. He was a flyer with the Free French squadron in the Royal Air Force, but the poor man lost his face a few weeks ago in a training accident. She was over there to find some way to help him recover. But he topped himself before she arrived.”
“Topped himself?”
“Took a pistol to his brains, and left her a note saying he didn’t want to be a burden to her.”
“God, that’s awful.”
“But then keeping a family together never is very easy in this job,” he sighed, “As most of us find out to our cost.”
“You haven’t kept yours together either?
“Not since the wife upped and ran off with a one-legged clerk from the Ministry of Pensions.”
“Why’d she go do that?”
“Ever read War and Peace?”
“Yes?”
“Remember Andrei Bolkonsky telling Pierre Bezukhov to do everything in his life that’s worth doing, and only then to get married.”
“So?”
“I fear I may have got it the wrong way round.”
“And that’s why she ran off?”
“She said he wasn’t near as much fun as me of course, but at least he had no choice but to stay close to home.”
I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth or just having me on, so I said, “And hadn’t you, stayed close to home?”
“In our business none of us do. Not Karl, not me, not Marie, not Bob Capa, and not any other member of the Press Corps you’re liable to meet out here.”
“Why not?”
“We come in all shapes and sizes, personalities and humors, us correspondents do, but one thing we invariably have in common, is we all feel more kinship with each other than any of us seems to with our husbands or wives back home.”
“But don’t you all have to go back home to them sometime, when the war you’re covering is over?”
“Not if we find another war to replace it.” Freddie said.
“But why would you even want to?”
“We’re like moths you see, silly stupid moths, drawn nearer and nearer to the flame of human violence. So we can record it, and tell the world about it, and who knows one day even understand it. But while we’re trying to, too many of us get too near it, and its flame engulfs us too.”
“It’s been a long, bad day,” I said. “So on that fittingly optimistic note I think I’ll hit the sack.”
He kissed me gently on the cheek. “Sleep well,” he said.
I went back into my room, brought out my scrapbook of my godfather, looked through it and wondered for the first time how I could square some of the things I was seeing out here with the things about him I had presumed to be true – that he was modest, loyal, and the kind of patriotic commander any country’s military would be proud to have. I looked at that photo of him in the kayak coming from the submarine, the one when he was on the secret mission to make sure the French Forces in North Africa didn’t resist our invasion there. But I’d left my door slightly ajar, and there was a knock on it, and Marie was standing watching me. “Come on in.”
“He’s special to you, isn’t he? General Clark, I mean.”
“And if he is?”
“I saw your face today and how much it hurt you to see him carry on the way he did.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“I don’t know what you thought you’re job was going to be like. But you have to understand that the moment peace ends and war begins, we all stop being correspondents, and in a way we become more like cheerleaders than reporters. Those of us who’re new to the job tend to resist than for a while, I know I sure did. But even we pretty quickly get it too. But I have a feeling you’re going to have far more trouble doing that than any of us.”
“It’s just not what I was told I would be. I was told I was here to create a photographic record of the campaign, not lead any cheers for it. I was told I would take photos like this.” I showed her the open scrapbook and the photograph of my godfather coming on shore in the kayak.
“Would you like me to tell you the truth about that one too?”
“What do you know about it?”
“It was the one that got Landers mad at me.”
“You took it?”
“That was the seventh attempt at getting it right. He and I were already on shore waiting for the General to land.”
“You couldn’t have been, it was a secret mission.”
“Then who do you think did take it?” I guess she had a point, didn’t she. After all it couldn’t have taken itself. “Because of the current it was very difficult to get the shot from the General’s left, and Landers insisted we kept on doing it over and over till I got it the way he wanted. But I never could, and he got madder and madder, and we had to give up and settle for using that one.”
“And that’s why you landed up in Bomb Cottage?”
“And why General Clark decided to never trust the civilian press with an important photo again.”
“So that’s why he hired me?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. But I just don’t want you to be disappointed about anything else you see out here.”
“That’s what my sister Margaret said to me too. That it’s just people we send over to fight our wars for us not saints, people with the same weaknesses as they had in civilian life, but now with a lot more opportunity to succumb to them.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. But as she got up to leave we both heard the sound of something hitting the window. Marie opened the black-out drape to check what it was.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Look up in the sky.” she said as I joined her. “It’s snow, that’s what it is. Snow in paradise. That’s all our army needs.”
And I looked up and she was right, it was snow. And unbeknownst to either of us, what was to become the worst winter in recorded Italian history had just begun.