The Atascadero Writers Group

Dear Roxie,

In 1973, John and I went to Italy with the girls. I can’t recall where you were at this point, but I know that you were involved in your own life. From the day we married, John would tell me the how one day, he would take me to Tuscany where he spent exciting and sometimes, frightening days during World War II. He did take me, twenty five years later. Somehow, life had just gotten in the way.

It was in 1940 when Italy entered the World War II. John was eighteen years old. He was drafted at twenty. And it was 1943, Italy involved with the struggle of it’s life, that John’s Battalion was told to flee. The message was to choose sides, that of the German or American. They fled on foot. As John told it, it was a frightening experience. For the next two years, he would be hidden from the Germans by an elderly couple. Having no children of their own, he might have been the son they always wished for.

The rest of the story was told to me by John’s “surrogate” father, Eugenio, who literally took me under his wing. The women of the small village decided to argue as to who first knew we were coming, and where were we staying that night. The old man took my arm in his, telling me we must go for a walk, and “leave the women to scrap among themselves.” In truth, we had descended on the tiny village and no one knew that it had been 25 years of dreaming for John and me.

So, on an early evening in July, 1973, we arrived in the central Italian region of Tuscany, in the town of Montemerano. Parking our car at the bottom of a craggy hill, we climbed among the rocks until we found a road that took us into the center of town. Evening was setting, and as it was, and probably still is, the custom of the men was to play cards while the women gathered in small groups to discuss the day’s gossip. A serene picture indeed.

The girls and I followed John who stopped a woman to ask questions. She was small, and animated, while she adamantly kept a group of men entertained with her fiestiness. She stopped long enough to hear and breathe in John’s question; then she made an audible gasp. For one brief moment, time stood still. Two souls met again, as though the same blood ran through their veins. Who could know or even predict that that he had come directly into the path of the woman who had protected him from the Fascists night after night, for three years? Our daughter Maria, who stood directly behind us, marveled at the scene with an exclamation of “Oh, Mom!”

How is it that fate intervenes? Why, in a crowded street, did John gravitate toward Settimia, his “surrogate” mother during the war? Probably this is what makes up the little mysteries of life that one can only wonder about.

After Eugenio and I took our walk, we returned to his home where people had crowded in. It was as though they had come to see a prodigal son’s return. The joy was audible, the moment almost mystical. We wove our way through the crowded room and sat at an open window. There, Eugenio related to me tales that I followed, hanging onto every word.

He spoke to me of the difficult times John and three other fellows endured every evening. The Italian fascists, who were helping the Germans, suspected that the villagers could be hiding soldiers in their homes. The villagers set up a plan. Each evening the boys would be alerted when the fascists made their rounds. it was up to a little nephew to bring the dire news. He would do his job well, Eugenio continued. John and his friends would climb on the rooftop of the school and scurry across to safety, hiding out for the night. The scene was repeated day after day. And now of course, Aurelio, married with children, was part of the happy crowd.

Since there weren’t accommodations in Montemerano, we woke in up a hotel in a neighboring town. Saying our “goodbyes” proved difficult, for we knew we would never pass this way again. I remember the cry from the woman who threw her arms around John’s neck pleading for me to forgive her, because as she said, “Signora, we were children back then.” And the game played the night before, when our youngest child Lidia, with all of her four years, set up a game in the street, causing one woman to exclaim that she had been told what to do by the Germans, and “by golly,” she sure wouldn’t let an American tell her what to do!

Roxie, believe me, this was the stuff of dreams. We found ourselves in a remote village that couldn’t possibly be of this century, but it was. A modern war had ravaged the world in and around it. We found it hard to believe, but it did. And John continued to tell me stories.

Since the time Italy fell, there had been no communication between the northern part of Italy with the southern part. All communication had stopped. For John and his friends, the heartache of not knowing whether their loved ones were alive or not, was almost unbearable. It was the same for those who waited for their sons to return. So now the aim was to get themselves back to Sicily.

Walking most of the way to Rome, they flagged down an American military truck. Climbing in gave them the surprise of their lives. There were three black soldiers, and John and his friends had never seen a black person before. Incredible, but true. During their lifetimes, never had they seen a black person walk the streets of their towns, John said. The experience had to have had an impact for the black American soldiers too. At first they all smiled at one another. Then gingerly, the Americans offered the Italians chocolate, for them an oddity at this time. He reminded me that a country loses all when it loses a war. Even it’s chocolate.

As they traveled south toward Sicily, a destination was planned via hand signals, that this was as far as the Americans could take them. They had become ”friends.” Like John, it wouldn’t surprise me at all, if everyone on that truck at that infamous time, long remembered it, too.

And throughout it all, the families did what they could, and that was to gather every evening in a circle and pray their beads. That was their contribution, for truthfully, it was all they could do. And John’s family did the same. They prayed the rosary at the end of each day for his safe return. In their heart of hearts they believed this one truth, that someone or something, had kept him safe.

He must have walked a thousand miles, or so it seemed, from the beginning of his journey. At early morning’s dawn, as the town barely stirred itself awake, a lone creature came to greet him. John’s dog, Franco, whom he had separated from four years earlier, greeted him with unbelievable joy. Franco ran into his arms as though proving the years of separation had never happened.

So Roxie, such is the true story of my beloved. He took my girls and me on a journey he had promised to the past, so that we could understand the present. I saw him as a young man who might not have been interested in me at the time. And it wouldn’t have been only the years between us, but the absolute truth that there is a path we all must follow. Step by step, almost not having any say in what fate has in store for us.

I love you, Roxie,

Betty