THE MEDICAL PERSONNEL in Bari lived in fear of the daily siren drills, because they set the patients on edge. That night, when the patients realized that the sirens hadn’t stopped wailing at the usual time, hysteria spread through every ward in the Policlinico.
‘If they don’t stop that racket soon, I’ll go mad,’ one doctor complained bitterly as he was leaving Bari’s medical school. He was checking on a boy’s broken hip and he needed all possible calm to deal with the patient while he manipulated the joint.
The boy had been run over by a British army jeep. The driver hadn’t stopped to pick him up. Two women who’d witnessed the accident had carried him and left him at the door of the Policlinico to force the army doctors to admit him. The majority of the Policlinico, Bari’s most modern hospital, was under military command and entrusted to the New Zealanders.
‘Don’t worry, they’ll stop soon,’ said Dr Ricciardi to ease the tension.
‘If that bloody siren doesn’t stop in the next five minutes, we’ll have to give all the patients—’ Donata began, but they didn’t hear the end of her complaint. An enormous explosion shook the city to its foundations, followed by multiple aftershocks, which magnified the noise hugely. Soon, a chain of explosions was ricocheting through the city, closer and closer together.
With the patients screaming in terror, Ricciardi thought they were about to lose control of the ward. Donata shot the doctor a frightened look and saw that he was giving orders in an attempt to overcome his own panic. Just then another, even more horrific explosion came: the windows shattered and shards of glass hit those closest to them. The blast ripped out doors and shutters; bottles of medicine broke; the beds moved as if in an earthquake. Doctors on their rounds were sent flying across the room and fell to the ground, only intensifying the general sense of chaos and danger.
Only after a few minutes did they grasp that the chaos was caused by a Luftwaffe attack. More than a hundred planes were flying over the city of Bari and bombing it: it was as if the sky had opened up and rained down at once all the thunder and lightning that had fallen in southern Italy in the last thousand years. At seven forty-five when the bombers would finally leave, the city would be dotted with fires from one end to the other, lighting it up as if it were daytime.
One of the shockwaves had thrown Donata to the floor. When she clambered up to look out of the window, it was to be greeted by the sight of a giant column of fire, somewhere past the old quarter.
‘The port is on fire!’ she screamed, her eyes fixed on the flames.
More bombs fell again right by the hospital, and the doctor threw himself over Donata to shield her from the window. A hail of debris landed on the other side of the ward and hit an Italian officer who was standing in the doorway. Donata gave Ricciardi a grateful look. Then she glanced at the officer and saw that he appeared as scared as they did. He walked into the centre of the ward with two soldiers who wore Red Cross armbands. He took in the room and shouted, ‘We need people to set up a first-aid post in the Borgo Antico straight away. The German bombs are devastating the cathedral and the port; it’s a bloodbath.’
Donata and the doctor were the first ones to volunteer.
As soon as they crossed the train tracks they got their first glimpse of the disaster. And by the time they reached the old quarter, they were truly scared: the streets were no more than piles of rubble and survivors were running desperately from one end to the other. Some of them had taken refuge in the Castello, trusting that the thick walls of the fortress would withstand the attacks. Many others were starting to gather at the improvised posto di pronto soccorso facing the outer dock; some were bringing in the wounded, and the rest were looking for the comfort of company.
The first injured people that Donata and Dr Ricciardi treated came from the Strada Santa Chiara, but they didn’t fully realize the magnitude of the bombing until the survivors of the collapsed buildings on the Via Venezia started coming in. The first ship that the German bombers had hit had been loaded high with munitions: the explosion had caused a shockwave as strong as a hurricane, which had swept through the Borgo Antico and flattened the ancient buildings of one of Bari’s oldest streets.
‘The houses fell like dominoes, one after the other, like they were made of cardboard,’ explained the eyewitnesses when they reached the medical station.
Among the recent arrivals, Donata recognized a neighbour who was being treated with a seven-year-old boy in her arms. Donata passed her every morning at the door to the cathedral when she left for the hospital. Approaching her to reassure her, Donata picked up the little boy in her arms and saw that he was dead.
The explosions on the ships caused more direct damage to the Borgo Antico than the Luftwaffe’s bombs. The buildings crumbled, burying entire families amid piles of rubble that grew as tall as some of the houses had been. Many were also in flames. The air was burning hot and choked with the smoke that streamed off the burning boats. The survivors didn’t know which way to go: there were flames in every direction. Suddenly a voice began to shout, ‘To the sea! We have to take shelter there!’
A large group of panic-stricken people ran towards the port. Parents carried their children, some seriously injured. Faced with certain death beneath collapsing buildings, they were willing to risk passing by the burning ships in the hope of getting to the sea. By the time they reached the breakwater the entire port was aflame. Some of the vessels had sunk and others were adrift and burning. The oil pipeline had been hit by one of the first bombs, and was pouring oil into the sea. Hundreds of sailors were desperately trying to stay afloat by clinging to debris or swimming through the burning water: the frantic screams for help sent shivers down the spines of those watching them from the quayside.
When they reached the dock, those survivors whose clothes were on fire jumped into the water too. Donata and Ricciardi tried to convince the injured to turn back and be treated at the posto di pronto soccorso. British soldiers also tried to block their way, but the crowd was too large. The bombs and the explosions on the ships terrified them, but there was no way they were going back to those collapsing streets.
Just as the crowd was gathering by the sea, the flames reached the John Harvey’s cargo hold. Seconds later, the vessel exploded and the flames rose in a frantic whorl three hundred metres high, lighting up the night. Many of those who had taken refuge by the dock were ripped from the ground, sent flying more than twenty metres and slammed into the walls of the surrounding warehouses. Others were crushed by the cars and trucks that had been sucked into the air by the force of the explosion. Those people thrown into the sea considered themselves lucky and thanked God for saving them.
Windows were blown out eleven kilometres away. The roofs of the houses in Bari were swept away as if they were leaves on a day when there was a strong north wind. Donata and the doctor, who were still far from the water’s edge, were flung along the ground and ended up several metres away, cradled in a buttress of the old city wall.
When Donata grasped that she was one of the very few survivors, she looked at Ricciardi, stretched out beside her, and wondered what would have become of her over the last few months if it hadn’t been for him. He returned her gaze, and made as if to say something, but Donata reached forward and placed two fingers on his lips to silence him.
‘You are the finest man I’ve ever known. I love you more than anyone else, after my husband and children. But we have to accept reality – we’re too old and too much has happened for us to make a start now.’
They ran to the harbourside and helped pull some of the injured from the sea: even those who had no visible wounds were trembling and in a state of shock. A new explosion sent up a wall of water that dragged more people off the quay. Donata managed to grab hold of an anchor lying abandoned on the dock, but she was soaked by the wave. After rescuing the second round of survivors from the thick, oily sea, they wrapped them in blankets to get them warm. Around eleven at night they heard the siren announcing the all-clear. It seemed like a joke in poor taste: the German airplanes were retreating, but the port was still a raging inferno that showed no signs of abating.
Donata and Ricciardi could no longer see the fires. Nor did they hear the screams of those still struggling to keep afloat in that water covered in burning oil. They tried not to think about anything at all as they tended to the wounded. Donata was so exhausted that she hadn’t noticed that she was drenched in the foul-smelling liquid that floated on the surface of the water. All she could detect was an unbearable stench of garlic.
‘These Americans have got a screw loose. Who sends boats filled with garlic to a country like Italy?’ muttered someone near her.
At dawn the port was still ablaze, the injured were still filing into the posto, and Donata and Ricciardi were still treating wounds. They hadn’t even had time to go back to their apartment and change.