My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More)

CHAPTER 10. African War and World War

In 1935, the African war broke out. Universal delight: Italy was invading Abyssinia!

‘We are going there to colonise, not to pillage,’ they taught us, ‘we’re there to build bridges, dams and roads, to bring civilisation to those savages. As a bonus, Italy will become an empire.’ I could not understand why my father was cursing and swearing and muttering to himself about ‘bare-faced robbery’. ‘Even the beggars want their place in the sun. To knock at Europe’s door and get them to open it for us, we have to go shooting people in Africa. A fine way to win the respect of the plutocrat bosses of this world!’

At school they told us: ‘We will revenge the massacres of Macallé and Adua. The Abyssinian slaves of the Negus will be liberated!’

Pa’ Fo exploded, striving to keep his voice down: ‘Sure thing, and to liberate them more quickly, they’ll gas them!’ My mother nodded, adding: ‘You can bet on it.’ I stared at my parents in disbelief, thinking to myself: ‘What a dreadful family of anti-Italian defeatists!’ How could an honest and courageous man like my father express these contemptuous sentiments towards the Duce and the fatherland? And that’s before he got onto the subject of the king: ‘That criminal dwarf!’ were his insulting words.

I was in awe of my father but one day I almost assaulted him as I churned out the grand words which we had learned by rote at school: the Risorgimento … the First World War to free Trento and Trieste … the heroic sacrifice of our glorious soldiers … the sense of patriotism … ‘And you of all people! On your deputy station-master jacket, you show off all those medals, and you’ve got silver ribbons on your arm to show you were wounded … so why did you volunteer to fight with the Arditi?’

I expected Pa’ Fo to give me a cuff on the jaw, but he didn’t. He smiled, and checked me gently. ‘Calm down. First of all, I did not volunteer. I was called up. I was nineteen, I was born in 1898, and I was enlisted in the infantry. After one month, I was already at the front. Can you imagine that? You were a complete innocent, and they shunted you into that hell. What could you have learned about weapons, combat or military strategy? Apart from rifles and Drapen (hand bombs, whose real name is Strapne), machine guns, mortars … nothing at all! You were given a mouthful of grappa to knock back at top speed before every attack, then they threw you forward to get yourself killed, and you were a sitting duck: skewer them or they skewer you. After the first six days on the Carso border, half of our battalion was already done for, slaughtered. On the seventh day we were relieved. I was literally a wreck. Two men from my village had been blown apart when a howitzer got them dead-centre, only five paces from where I was dug in. All that was left of those poor bastards who arrived at the same time as me were some bits of flesh and blood scattered all over the place. Everywhere there was the acrid stench of gunpowder and the sickly smell of blood and guts. And the screams of the wounded and the dying, groans and moans that would rip the skin off your body.

‘Three “fresh” companies arrived to relieve us, and the survivors among us, numbed and dazed, went down to the town below, where they had set up services and lodgings behind the lines, and from there the wounded were moved to hospital. I received treatment too. I had some shrapnel in my shoulder, and they took it out just like that … with me standing upright, without anaesthetic … there was enough “sleeping portion” only for the most serious cases. They put three stitches in me and sent me on my way. It was there that I met Gigi Briasco, my cousin from Leggiuno. He had been in the army for three years, which made him a veteran. They were treating him for a “bang on the head”, as the men said, in other words a bad fracture of the skull. I was going to embrace him but he held me back: “Steady, Felice! My stomach’s like patchwork embroidery … I got a full blast of Drapen roses!”

‘I waited till they patched up his head and we went down together to where they were dishing out the grub. There was a queue as far as you could see.

“Come on, let’s go to the officers’ mess.”

“You’ve been promoted?”

“Of course I have. I’m a sergeant. But it’s not the rank that gets me in. It’s this nonsense.” He had on his shoulder a gold-embroidered circle with a dagger and a bomb bursting into flames.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the emblem of the Arditi.”

“Did you join up with that lot?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, third company, Arditi battalion. It’s the only way to save your hide.”

“You must be kidding. What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself an easy number.”

“No way. I’m still risking my skin. It’s my job to go over the top at night-time, in the open, snip through the barbed wire, defuse the mines the Krauts have been planting left, right and centre … in other words, clear the ground our lads will have to cross the next day when they launch the attack. But once we’ve done our work, we crawl back into the trenches and get sent back to a base away from the front … those of us that have made it back, obviously.”

“Exactly, and how many would that be? How many manage not to get shot by snipers, blown up by booby traps or caught by machine gun fire when flares leave them exposed?”

“This is true,” my cousin admitted, “but tell me something, Felice. Am I right in saying that less than half of your company is still alive after six days here? Now take my lot. There are one hundred and twenty of us in all, of whom around fifteen copped it in the last three months, and we’ve taken part in about twenty operations. Do your own sums and you’ll see the advantages: there’s no doubt that what we’re doing in the Arditi will give you pains in the balls like nothing you’ve ever felt … every time you get back from an operation, you’ve got an ache in your arse that stops you doing a shit for three days … things sticking out of you … bits of wire that ripped your skin … but it still all adds up in our favour. We’re going to make it home with our hide intact, some more intact than others, but for you lot, the poor bloody infantry, it’s worse than being on a shooting range in a fairground … three balls a penny! So far, it’s gone OK for you, Felice, but it’s not exactly easy to pull out the winning ball in the raffle every time. It’s like being in a casino … look at it any way you like, the banker always wins in the end. The croupiers are the generals, the owners of the casinos are the king and the manufacturers of the transports, cannons and bombs. They’re the ones who spin the wheel and they’re playing with our lives. Get smart, raise the stakes if you want to bugger death.”

‘So that was it. My cousin Briasco had convinced me. The very next day, I went off to join up with the Arditi. Panic attacks, crawling about like a lizard, holes all over my body, but I made it. Unfortunately the right number in the raffle didn’t come up for cousin Briasco, and he was left there. My mother’s sister received a solemn encomium and a silver medal, but they never brought his body back.’

I was deeply moved by my father’s story, and stayed silent for a while, then said: ‘But tell me, Papà, why do you still wear all these decorations on your jacket?’

‘They’re trinkets, but they’re like lightning conductors. It’s thanks to them that I haven’t been reported or suspended, and even that I escaped arrest a couple of times. In my line of work, I come across any number of high and mighty Fascists who are fanatical about this goddam regime, and who drone drearily on about the “glory of the faith and the ideal”. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and every time I end up sniggering at them. So what do I get from them? “Mind your tongue, or I’ll report you.” “Come on you bunch of wankers,” I tell them, “want to report these as well?” and I puff my chest full out and shove my collection of honours, including the Arditi badge and the solemn encomium, in their face! Once I dropped my trousers in front of a blustering Fascist lady to show her my injured leg and silver knee-cap, and even gave her the Fascist war cry — Eia, Eia, Alalà! Who do you think’s going to take the chance of dragging a haul of trophies like that before a court?’

At which point, I started laughing out loud.

From that day on, every time someone came to our school to recite a eulogy to the regime or to deliver a panegyric on the sacred martyrs of the fatherland, I could not help seeing my father on the platform, his trousers around his ankles, jumping from one foot to the other, showing off his wounds and his silvery knee. He does not wear underpants … his privates are adorned with a garland of merrily ringing medals.

It often happened in class that the teacher or someone else would interrupt the talk and yell at me in a highly outraged tone: ‘You, boy … what do you mean by that idiot grin?’

‘No, sir,’ I would reply, lying through my teeth, ‘it is not a grin. I was just trying to hold back the emotion!’