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.During our two brief stops we were dismayed to learn that there had beena terrifying run of hatred here.The partisans, almost all Communists, hadkilled many people, including unarmed individuals in the streets or insidetheir residences, in order to provoke increasingly savage responses from theNazi-Fascists and, as a result, fierce reactions from all the people.Like abeast without a glimmer of intelligence that responds to every challenge inthe same manner, the German SS had answered with massacres never be-fore seen in Italy.As for the Fascists, swayed by events much larger thanthemselves, they had ended up by torturing and murdering in ways thatwere worthy of their Nazi allies and the Communist rivals against whomthey were fighting.None of the soldiers, from that point on, would utteranother word in their defense.By now, it seemed as though in this region man was left with nothingbut hatred and new murders. Who knows if the civil war will reduce all of northern Italy to this state? I asked myself.And I answered sorrowfully that it wouldn t; it wasn t pos-sible.After all, I argued, except for the bordering Emilia, there weren t onlythe Communist partisans up north.289 Above Florence, which we skirted, the streets of the rear zone were re-duced to icy dust, covered by very intense Allied traffic.Ruins appearedeverywhere, frequently along with sad piles of materiel and ammunition ofthe usual khaki color.But we knew that even the British didn t want to bewasteful, and, contrary to the previous year, they wanted now to lead athrifty war.When it was dark, we halted at the foot of the Apennines, where the frontwas traveling.The soldiers gathered, covered in their new overcoats, to takerations; like many other times, they made the trucks into shields againstthe frigid wind.Each one felt alone, whatever common suffering there waslocked in his pack.The flash of artillery continued to break swiftly through the darkness, asit had for years.290 3THE FOLGORE Combat Group replaced oneof the most renowned British divisions, the Sixth Armored, relieving its po-sitions in the parallel Santerno and Senio Valleys; as anti-aircraft artillery,we positioned our guns, now practically unused, in the rear zone, in Ronta,as protection.For the division, this second operative cycle, which climaxed with the bat-tle that broke through the Gothic Line, was bloodier than the one the year be-fore.But as second formation, we would only learn of this at the end of thewar from the stories of others, and from statistics that would surprise us.Because the anti-aircraft group did not grasp the frightening gravity ofthe civil war in progress, a certain pattern of indolence and petty behaviortypical of the rear zone began to take root among the soldiers.Everyone be-came more selfish, demanding, and intolerant of whatever didn t go his way.As for the front since it was at a fair distance, no one thought of it.I had the opportunity to see the front maybe I was the only one fromthe group when I paid Achille a visit on the line.From a grassy ridge, Icould see that below and in front of us the ruins of the villages of Fon-tanelice and Borgo Tossignano were in our hands, and the terribly devas-tated other side, opposite Tossignano, was in the enemy s hands.We wereon the slope of the last Apennine range toward the Po Valley.A very long stratus of cinereous overhanging rock rose before us parallelto our mountain, as far as the eye could see, as though an immense wavehad sprung from the plain, thrown itself against the Apennines, and be-come petrified the moment it was about to overturn.The invisible Germanline ran along its crest.The tiny puffs of smoke that occasionally rose hereand there from our stray shells or from the enemy s mortars were almostwithout sound and did not disturb the vast stillness.But we could see abarge moving out of range on the pale blue mirror of water, down where291 the Santerno River, interrupting the overhanging rock, showed an edge ofblue flatland with the whitish spot of the city of Imola.This warned us thatthe enemy was still busy blocking us from that flatland, the long roads andgrass of which reached all the way to the thresholds of our homes.The return trip on the jeep along the steep road made me retch, some-thing that hadn t happened in many years, not since I had been a boy.The soldiers, always satiated, only gathered for the anti-aircraft deploy-ment during the hours of rations, or at night to sleep, when those mostdrunk came down with uncertain steps from the town to the tents, sup-ported by some companion, rambling loudly, singing, or even crying be-tween resonant belches.Those who stayed true to themselves were in-creasingly fewer in number; sometimes I gathered with them on the grassnear our guns, uselessly brandished upwards.At a short distance from uscolumns of Indian trains would march along the country road headed forthe line.We would watch the men with their noble and lean figures (theywere Sikhs, very different from Gurkhas) and the mules with slender legsthat lowered their heads rhythmically as they walked, as though they as-serted their goodwill with each step.Aside from Morandi, Lance Corporal Freddi was also present now fromthe old patrol, having succeeded in getting transferred to anti-aircraft ar-tillery (others too had tried, but without success; only after the war did Irealize the rare loyalty of those soldiers.Back then I had so much of youth sthoughtfulness in me that I found it natural).It was in fact Freddi who usu-ally requested our meetings on the grass: Lieutenant, let s not waste ourtime.This is why I came to the Sixth Group: to hear you speak like you didon the Musone, and like when you talked about Dante.You discuss diffi-cult things in a way that regular people can understand. Artilleryman Leonardo, a Puglian fellow of modest education but intel-ligent and eager to learn, and Chief of Artillery Sciaini, who at Cerreto onChristmas Eve had for moral reasons started the big boxing match with theparatroopers, were among the new soldiers who always attended. I don tunderstand, Sciaini would occasionally say, how they can be reduced tothis: seeing that now they no longer are in danger of dying, they only wor-ry about eating, just like pigs
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