I am proud and very honoured to publish on my website the travel notes of David Courtney, author of Nine Lives published by Mercier Press and Pilot of Ryan Air, about his battlefield experience in Italy last year.
THANK YOU DAVID for sharing your experience with us!
Danila
The air conditioned bus swept us away from Rome’s Ciampino airport. Like giddy teenagers, the dozen of us, men of middle age at least, drank in the smells of the Italian countryside and laughed and chatted to our newly introduced guide Danila. Magically the ground rose around us as we made our way south east. Turning from hill to mountain, just as she said it would. We demanded her attention, asked her questions and never listened to her answers, as if we were on a school tour, away from the formality of the classroom.
The classrooms of our lives, of our work, of our families. Away from the company of those we love. To see history. To feel it. To touch it. To sense it. Our motley crew has travelled before. Been together to Auschwitz and then to Normandy. We were headed for Monte Cassino.
The abbey atop a mountain, that guarded the main auto-route to Rome. Heavily defended by the Germans in World War 2. Where thousands died, washing in and out, like a human tide, leaving their bodies and blood on the Italian soil and rocks. Their advances repelled, and repelled and repelled. The bodies lying, the wounded crying out for help. The medics dashing here and there when the gunfire stopped. The formalities of war observed when it did, like a boxing match referee ringing a bell, as friend and foe took away the fallen. Often helping each other as they did.
It’s hard to visualise the horrors of war, when the sun shines in 21st century Italy. It’s hard to connect with what happened and why, when each morning and afternoon is interspersed with anti-pasta, and cool local wine. Or fresh pizza and beer. Danila fills in the blanks as we order espresso and cappuccino. We sit with the local descendents of the almost 10,000 civilians that died in the battle of Monte Cassino and in the less well known battles in the Liri valley. We board the bus, drinking in her words.
We group of merry men joke and laugh our way through the three days, yet take in every word. We walk an invisible shrinking path. We walk a funnel that guides us imperceptibly to the truth. The ghosts of the dead, good and bad, friend and foe, equal in the eyes of God, point the way. To the graveyards that stare with unblinking eyes up into the Italian sun. The graves of the Germans, that we dislike silently. Until one of our number, a priest, offers up a prayer, challenging us to love the vanquished, the evil doer, for such would Christ have us do.
And that gets a grim laugh over the lunch time bottle of beer, praying for the German dead. The Nazi’s. We agree that that may be a challenge too much. But the very considering of it, the very challenge of it, leaves its mark on us.
The Polish cemetery, cross-shaped, regal and proud. Where the Polish gave their lives on foreign soil, to reclaim their right once more, after the Blitzkrieg on their country in 1939, to be called brave. To be called heroic. To be a nation again. They are guarded now, by the restored abbey that they died for. As we leave, we pass a procession of people going to visit a grave perhaps. Led by a priest, they sing a low hymn in Polish. We stop and bow our heads, as we would do in Ireland in a village or town, or on a country road. Knowing as we do, that this is a living cemetery.
But the Abbey itself has been so beautifully restored that we cannot feel the war. The dead don’t seem to be there. We admire the view and add to our knowledge. But the gold adorned chapels and strategic location of the abbey seems to cheapen the sacrifice of the war dead.
One last place to visit. A village that stood in the path of the allies. Fortified by the Germans too. Atop a smaller hill, in a line of four hills; San Pietro Infine. Destroyed by allied bombing. The site of a battle before Monte Cassino, where thousands of soldiers died. And during the campaign, in December 1943, the villagers were prisoners in their own homes. Bombed by the allies where they lived. Shot by the Germans if they tried to escape, they managed to dig caves in the hillside. Dug with their bare hands or the rudimentary tools they could muster. Out of the porous rock.
The village stands un-restored. Bombed. Derelict. Beautiful. Stone paths and alleyways. Fountains and vineyards. A church. A grotto. Empty, save for the ghosts of the villagers, some 200 of whom died in that village alone. We visited the caves too, walked through them, where mothers and children hid while the artillery and bombing raids thump, thumped around them.
It’s hard to grasp the war. To appreciate history. To understand suffering. I sat drinking a cold beer that evening. In conversation with our guide Danila, I told her about myself, and my family, and my children. And I told her that my youngest was three years of age. And that her name was Ella.
“Ella, Ella,” she said. Smiling at an Irish child’s name, that sounded Italian to her. And then to me too, as she said it, rolling the sound and kneading it, like dough, until it was Italian.
Earlier that day, we had been shown a war film at the modest museum at San Pietro. Made by John Huston in 1943. The film showed the villagers before the bombing and battle. Smiling and playing on their stone boulevards. Carrying water to their houses from the wells. Living where we had walked that very day, along its lifeless alleyways. One of the films images was of an Italian child, about the same age as Ella, smiling at me in black and white. I told Danila that I had thought of Ella when I saw that smiling child.
The ghosts of San Pietro Infine guided us that day. Away from the graveyards where the bones of the dead lie, to where the spirits of the dead walk and breathe. We prayed for them before we left when we visited the local town and the local chapel. We took our place in the congregation. Black head-scarfed women looking at us as the priest explained why we were there in Italian. They nodded and smiled. Then turned away.
We prayed with them. For their dead. And for ours. For one of our own who had fallen on the way. Our group was larger in 2008. And though he had died in the intervening time, we felt John Madden there with us as we prayed for him in Italian. His spirit mingled with the throng.
And now that time has moved on, and San Pietro is a memory, I try, when I look into my daughter Ella’s eyes, to remember that Italian child. If only for a moment; that is enough. That black and white child, frozen in time, from a movie made in 1942. I pray for her stolen life and cherish my daughter Ella’s life. And my own.
David Courtney June 2010