My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More)

CHAPTER 23. Voluntary Conscription

The war was coming to an end, even if it was still causing mourning and tragedy. I was beginning to believe that, although there had been some heart-stopping moments when I had escaped only by the skin of my teeth, I had been successful in steering clear of it and avoiding any real trouble.

In Milan, I had the misfortune to be caught in one of the heaviest bombing raids the city had seen. I was lodging with an aunt in Isola, an old quarter behind the Garibaldi district. She had been evacuated to Brianza and had left me the keys of her flat, but that evening I had not made it back from Corso Buenos Aires, where I happened to be. I was getting onto a tram when the alarm sounded and I had to go down into the shelter under the Teatro Puccini. In no time, it seemed as though the end of the world was upon us: plaster flakes and dust rained down on us at every blast. The bombing lasted several hours, with only a few breaks. When the sirens gave the all-clear, we all trooped out and, as the smoke dispelled, we were faced with a horrendous spectacle: buildings in flames, blocks of flats reduced to rubble, piles of debris blocking the streets, emergency vehicles unable to find a way though and fire-brigade sirens screaming on all sides. I saw all around me blank, uncomprehending faces, and I doubt if mine was any different.

There was no way through that infernal labyrinth of twisted metal and wreckage, until finally I stumbled across a boy guiding a Red Cross ambulance, and he showed me how to get out.

The sun was high in the sky when I got back to Isola: same disaster, same acrid, throat-burning smoke caused by the phosphorous bombs.

I made my way to the street where I was lodging: my aunt’s house was at the foot of the street, but at the foot of that street there was nothing. The whole four-storey building had collapsed. As I stood there, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder: it was the grocer from the shop in the building opposite. ‘What are you doing here? We had given you up for dead. Not a soul got out of your building alive…’

‘Forgive me if I chose not to be on that list!’

* * *

In other words, as I said at the beginning of this story, things were going quite well for me — apart from the terror. I was seventeen and a half, and the end of the war could not be too far off. The Allies had reached the so-called Gothic Line in the Apennines. A few months more and they would overrun it. I was not due to be drafted for more than a year, so I was covered.

But instead the Salò government devised a cunning trick to trap all of us lads not due to be called up immediately. Without warning, they issued an edict requiring all those born in the early months of 1926 to present themselves for dispatch to work in Germany. In the small print, they explained that we would be employed mainly in factories and in useful services. In short, we were to make up for the skill shortages resulting from the disastrous bombing raids. My father’s immediate comment was: ‘It’s worse for you all than being sent to the front!’

There was one way out: the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command in Varese was accepting volunteers. Anyone who enlisted in that corps could avoid being sent as a pseudo-deportee to Germany. No sooner said than done: I linked up with a sizeable group of conscripts of the same age as myself, nearly all from the lakelands, and all together we presented ourselves at the artillery barracks. We were mightily pleased with our choice, not least because they assured us that, since there were no active artillery postings available, high command would send us temporarily back home, on provisional leave, pending further orders. But, alas! it was a trap: that very evening we were given a consignment of uniforms, kitbags and equipment. Very early the following morning, they loaded all thirty of us, scared little rabbits that we were, onto cattle trucks bound for Mestre, where we were to receive instruction in the use of heavy artillery. There was a sign printed in large letters on the side of the carriages transporting us — horses 12, men 40: in other words, the advantage lay with the horses. The commanding officers behaved with a certain magnanimity towards their dazed recruits: there were only thirty-five of us to each coach. What extravagance!

It was summer and the heat inside those wooden boxes was suffocating, so we travelled with the door wide open. As the train speeded up, the din and the creaking grew in volume until it left us stunned. How did the horses cope?

When we arrived in Milan, they shunted us into a siding and we got off to go in search of water. We found a fountain near a goods yard and filled our flasks. Returning to our train, we cut across five or six lines and then proceeded alongside a row of coaches, from which we heard people shouting to us: there were gaps between the wooden boards, and through them we made out eyes and mouths begging us for something to drink. ‘Water, water!’ repeated men, women and children. Some of our number tried to force open the doors, but they were all locked and bolted. A boy from Luino exclaimed: ‘But these are deportees!’

There were some cartons lying on the ground. We cut them into strips a couple of centimetres long, then each of us stuck his narrow piece of material in between the gaps and began to pour in water which flowed along the cardboard and down on the other side of the wall, where thirsty mouths opened wide to gulp every last drop.

After a few minutes we heard the cry: ‘Weg! Weg von hier! Es ist verboten!’ The German soldiers guarding the train came running up in a fury, using the butt of their rifles to shove us back.

Fortunately for us, we were saved by an officer who appeared with a detachment of around a dozen railway guards. The determination and resolve they showed silenced the bawling of the Krauts, who discreetly retired. We climbed back on our trucks. The images of despair, the imploring voices, those faces glimpsed between the bars of locked and bolted wagons would never leave our memories.

We arrived in Mestre two days later. American bombers had made a direct hit on the two bridges over the Adige, so we had to make the crossing on a barge. We were still on board, a few metres from the bank, when the alarms sounded and the rumbling of engines was heard overhead. Some, panic-stricken, dived into the water, but on this occasion the bombs were not destined for us. The four-engine planes were heading for Germany.

In the Mestre barracks, we joined another thousand or so recruits from all over Italy, the majority of whom had enlisted for the same reasons as us: to avoid forced transfer to Germany for work in factories which were being carpet-bombed. But even in that area of sea, canals and marshes, it was no laughing matter to have all those bombs raining down.

A few days after our arrival, we were evicted from the barracks and taken to the countryside, where we were billeted in various abandoned houses. We had to sleep stretched out on the beaten-earth floors. We asked an elderly sergeant why we had been moved. ‘We had to make way for a battalion returning from Yugoslavia,’ was the reply. That night, they bombed Mestre and Marghera. We could see flames and white flashes rising over the residential areas, and could hear the roar of the aeroplane engines as they passed over our heads. A matter of minutes later, streaks of light and tongues of fire shot up somewhere behind us. Immediately afterwards, an endless volley of terrifying blasts caused the ground to tremble. ‘They’re flattening Treviso,’ shouted the sergeant. The anti-aircraft guns fired wildly, making it all look like a carnival fireworks display, but at that moment more than ten thousand people, men, women and children, were dying.

Today it would be called collateral damage.

But why this massacre? Were these not supposed to be our liberators? Wave after wave of bombers came over as we stood there in the fields, staring at the skies, petrified.

No sooner had the flashes and blasts ended than from the distance we heard the screech of sirens as fire engines raced out from Padua. Near to where we were standing, three roads met: one from the direction of the lagoon, another running from Mestre to Treviso, and the third snaking up from the ‘Pavania’, that is, the zone around Padua. The fire engines were all heading for Treviso. One vehicle pulled up in front of the house where we were lodged, and an officer got down to tell us to stand by in readiness to be moved to Mestre. They needed manpower to shift the debris and help out with the first-aid services. Minutes later, we were loaded onto lorries and taken to the city.

They had struck the entire city centre. I found myself facing the same scene as in Milan, with the one difference that huge craters had opened up and from them jets of water were shooting into the air like fountains: people screaming, the wounded being carried away in the arms of helpers, the dead laid out under the porches. It was a full hour before we got ourselves organised. No one had told us what to do. Earth-moving machines with mechanical diggers arrived, and we were handed spades and told to pile up the debris pushed aside by the bulldozers. We heard voices from underneath slabs of stone, and hacked furiously at the rubble until a kind of tunnel opened up: little by little, one by one, we pulled about ten people out. Our hands were bleeding: only a few of us could boast the hard, callused skin of building-workers.

Next day, parade in the central barracks, change of uniform. ‘The clothes you are wearing are winter gear, you’ll die in this heat, but we’ve managed to get you more suitable uniforms, summer wear.’ They distributed strangely coloured trousers and jackets, the yellow of desert sand. We put them on, and stared at each other wide-eyed. ‘But these are German uniforms, Wehrmacht uniforms!’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ the officers reassured us. ‘They may be German but the insignia is our army’s. Calm down.’

In the following days, we began training: ‘We’ll do a little practice with these model-88 cannons.’

‘But aren’t they the ones we borrowed from the German anti-aircraft divisions?’

‘We’ll have to adapt and work with their batteries. Our own model-91 guns are not available at the moment.’

A week went by. Another parade. ‘Pack up your kits, gather your things together. You’re going home, or at least to Monza, the HQ of the four battalions. We’ll continue our training exercises there, since that camp is better equipped.’

We got back aboard the goods coaches, together with the veterans from Yugoslavia. One of them commented: ‘I can’t see anything good coming from this transfer. I think they’re going to fuck us good and proper.’

‘In what way?’ we recruits asked.

‘In what way, I couldn’t say, but this business of the Deutsch uniforms … the training with the Kraut model-88, and now this transfer with an escort of German guards … doesn’t smell good.’

‘Where are these Kraut guards?’ we asked incredulously.

‘Just wait. They’ll be along any moment.’

I have no idea how the ‘old hands’ had got wind of it, but the moment we got settled in the goods carriages, along came our guardian angels, armed with machine guns and Gerver rifles. They took up position in the conductor’s cabin, without so much as deigning to glance at us. ‘Don’t get upset,’ advised a sergeant, ‘they’re here to protect us.’

‘From what? From the big, bad wolf?’

As the train drew in to Verona, the sirens, as punctual as bad luck, were going off. The engineers had only just replaced the destroyed bridge with another one supported on pontoons. Our troop train pulled up about a hundred metres from the new bridge, the doors were thrown open and we jumped down from the coaches. ‘Leave your kitbags on the train: they’ll only get in the way,’ shouted the sergeants.

I did not understand why all the old hands ignored that advice and dragged their bags along with them. The order was to stand back from the banks of the Adige and away from the railway line. ‘Spread out in the fields, in the middle of the corn, but stay together,’ yelled the German interpreter, obviously a native of Alto Adige.

‘He’s off his head,’ we all guffawed as one. ‘How can you spread out and stay together?’ Our laughter quickly died away, or more precisely froze in our throats. About half a dozen Hurricanes were nose-diving towards us, dropping bombs as though they were handfuls of rice scattered over newly-weds. At each raid, jets of water and gravel were tossed up into the air.

‘Got it dead-centre!’ was the cry of one of our men as he peeped out from the shoots of wheat, but in fact as the clouds of dust created by the explosion cleared away, the bridge floating on the pontoons came back into view, rocking uncertainly after the buffeting it had taken, but perfectly intact. That bridge seemed magic! After the third unsuccessful attack, the Hurricane squadron gave up and retired to their base behind the Gothic Line. ‘All clear! Back on the train.’

Several of the carriages seemed to have been holed, as one of the American hunter jets had been firing twenty-millimetre rounds at the train. So that was why the veterans from Yugoslavia had taken their kit and belongings with them!

At this point, the sergeants of the various companies began to take the roll-call, but our officer in charge was no longer there. The Germans in the escort started swearing: Hurensohne! Fanhfluchtige! Verrate! It was not long before we discovered the reason for this rage. All the more experienced members of the detachment, including our sergeant, had made off. Disappeared!

We set off again. The carriage we were travelling in was one of those which had been holed, and many of the kitbags had been ripped apart. The Germans ordered us off yet again: the train was about to cross the bridge, but it was too risky for us to stay on board. The troop made the crossing on foot, hopping from one plank to the other. Finally we got back into our trucks, and here we had the joy of a wholly unexpected surprise: as we took our place in the carriage, the German escort slammed the doors shut, locking us in with padlocks. ‘What’s going on? Are we being deported now?’ we yelled in indignation. ‘Bastards!’

The interpreter, with his rich Bolzano accent, shouted back at us: ‘Say your prayers that they don’t come back and bomb us again, because this time no one’s getting off. You’re staying put! You’ve got your son-of-a-bitch friends who took to their heels to thank for that!’ We stayed on our feet in those creaking traps, totally bemused by what was going on, while the train sped along at high speed. A couple of hours without further mishap and we were at the Sesto San Giovanni junction outside Milan: another half-hour and we finally reached Monza.

A completely peaceful week followed, making us more than ever convinced that the veterans’ flight had been a futile and risky act, leaving them liable to arrest and arraignment in front of a court martial on a charge of desertion in the face of the enemy. Meanwhile, every day, other artillery contingents arrived from Albania and Greece, each group escorted by men from the Wehrmacht. From time to time, some soldiers from the SS would turn up, but there was nothing to fear. Apart from anything else, those of us who were enrolled at the university had no problem obtaining permission to go to Milan to take our exams. So it was that every week I went to the Accademia della Brera to continue work on my thesis, and to the Politecnico to do the so-called ‘Six Days’, a practical examination involving a survey of historic buildings. In the barracks, I kept myself busy doing portraits of various non-commissioned officers in the battalion. I admit it: a classic example of beguiling arse-licking, winning me the privilege of wandering from office to office and of obtaining for myself concessions and special leave. In all honesty, my life in those barracks in Monza was almost idyllic. Slowly, the nightmare of the journey on the troop train as deportees was slipping away from my mind: even the Germans had disappeared. The Mestre episode, the carpet-bombing, the job of digging out corpses now seemed to all of us like a distant memory, better forgotten. The final, definitive liberation from that nightmare was the order for a further change of uniform. In truth, I would be tempted to describe it as the ultimate metamorphosis, for this rite also involved the transformation of our physical role in the whole absurd comedy. The order to change clothing and role was imparted to us in the course of a parade in which we were introduced to the new commander-in-chief of the anti-aircraft artillery. No sooner were we lined up on the big parade-ground than a gruff but extremely personable colonel appeared, gave a summary glance at us then almost assaulted us: ‘What is this God-awful costume they’ve dressed you up in? That’s the yellow of dromedary shit, all very well for the desert. Very sorry for the lot of you, but the Afrika Korps has been disbanded! Kaput! So, either you find yourselves a camel each, or else ditch that uniform!’ There was a general guffaw, and even a sprinkling of applause. That wit and outrageous irony from an officer were liberating bombshells.

He was as good as his word. Dispatched back to our quarters, shoved as naked as spawning worms through showers, having a whale of a time in a joyous parade of quivering privates of sizes and shapes to suit all tastes, we were finally issued with new uniforms. They did nothing to enhance our virile, war-like appearance, and indeed quite suddenly we once again took on our natural aspect of pathetic Italian rookies: a sign that we really were back home again!

Urged on by men from my own part of the world, I resumed my habit of putting on performances of my comic stories. I had begun working on a new repertoire based on our less than pleasurable experiences at Mestre, episodes which my fellows and I had lived through personally but which we had almost completely erased. One which went down particularly well was the story of the rescue of the Mestre streetwalkers. These poor, piece-work Vestal non-Virgins had been buried alive when their ‘red house’, the little villa on the outskirts of the city where they operated, had collapsed. Their numbers, granted the vicinity of barracks filled with troops groaning under the pain of long-term abstinence, were considerable: around fifty devotees of the multiple orgasm. On the famous night when it was completely destroyed, the house of phallic relief was literally overflowing with guests anxious to free their loins of the troublesome accumulation of seminal liquid. When the sirens went off, not one of them so much as entertained the prudent idea of evacuating the premises. The Madame, with all due zeal, advised the assembled clients to make themselves comfortable in the well-furnished, underground cellars, but would you believe it, not a single one among them paid heed. As the old scientific adage has it: ‘The erect penis often indicates a complete prick.’ But when the first bombs began to rain down on the fun-loving band, causing explosions of such violence that the entire roof of the building was lifted clean off, the whole bunch — revellers and revelled alike — made a headlong dash for the cellars in the hope of saving their skins from the more than imminent collapse. A further blast caused all three floors to fold inexorably in on themselves like sand castles.

Our company of improvised aid-workers was first on the scene: the poor souls had been buried alive for more than an hour. For us this was the second first-aid operation — we were first, but not really operational!

An enormous earth-moving machine arrived and we set to work at once. After hours of gruelling work, we were literally drained when, all of a sudden, we heard shouting from down below: it seemed to be women’s voices, and the appeals were desperate. ‘Hurry up with those bloody shovels! Get a move on with the bulldozer! We’re suffocating down here.’ Untrained bunglers though we were, the urgency of the impending tragedy spurred us on, but we only succeeded in throwing heaps of rubble over one another. To make matters worse, groups of curious individuals gathered around the collapsed building, each one lavish with advice but unwilling to lend a hand.

I somehow got into a cavity in the middle of the debris outside a jammed door. I shouted to them to pass me down a pickaxe or sledge hammer. I was handed the implement, raised it up, flexed my muscles and brought it down with all the force I could muster. The door fell in cleanly and a half-naked girl appeared out of the dust: when she caught sight of me, she leaped forward, laughing, crying and shouting, then gave me a hug and a big kiss on the mouth. The woman behind her pushed her out of the way, and she too gave me a full, open-mouthed kiss, sticking her tongue down my throat and spinning it around like a roller, leaving me quite out of breath. Thank God my first-aid companions were there to pull me away from the entrance and generously take my place, receiving in their turn the passionate hugs and kisses offered in grateful recompense by the liberated women. Something of a traffic jam was created by the pushes and changes-of-guard among the helpers, each one anxious to claim his portion of the gratitude. One late-comer, desirous of his fair share of kisses, came on the scene just as a naked German soldier was exiting: he gave him a slobbering, double dose of lips-on-the-mouth, with the accompanying movements of the tongue. The violated victim mechanically went for his holster to pull out his gun: luckily for the kisser, the enraged Teuton was completely naked!

My tale was met with gales of raucous laughter which rose and fell with a rhythmically perfect crescendo, reaching its peak with the scene of the naked women emerging to freedom, offering their liberators their gift of tits, mouths and round buttocks. The finale of the German soldier, mouth filled with Italian tongue, was greeted by the audience with extremely warm applause. Among the spectators was a corporal who howled with laughter throughout and exploded with delight at the closing sequence. When I first heard his laugh, I was taken aback. It was such an absurd guffaw that I thought he was having me on, so much so that I turned towards him and threatened: ‘Watch out, Mr Corporal, because if you carry on yelping like a coyote, I’ll come over and stuff my tongue so far down your throat that you’ll drown.’ He replied with an even more riotous burst of laughter, so I concluded that that must be his natural laugh. At the end of the performance he got up and came over to me. From his awkwardness and from the fact that he was not able to look me in the eye, I realised he was blind. ‘I can’t thank you enough for these side-splitting laughs you’ve given us. We blind people devour these fantastic images.’

I was overcome with embarrassment, I had no idea what to say but he rescued me from my awkwardness with another guffaw: ‘For God’s sake, it occurred to me that if I could tell stories the way you do, I could pass myself off as some kind of Homer for these shitty times.’

Later, he himself told me how he had lost his sight. During a bombing raid in Turin, a shower of debris had struck him full in the face. ‘And to think that my nickname was Bellosguardo, ‘Handsomeface’. In a few days I have to undergo another operation which hopefully will restore my sight, at least partially. I’m from Brindisi and have no relatives or friends here in the North. I’ve to go to the hospital and wait my turn, on my own, like an abandoned dog, and blind into the bargain. Who makes me go through with all this? The only friends I have are here in the barracks, so I’ll just wait until they come for me.’

A short time later, I found out that they had given Bellosguardo a job as switchboard operator, and I went to visit him in his office. He recognised me immediately from my voice, and made a great fuss over me. He then asked me to take him to the canteen. I took him by the arm, and on the way over he said to me: ‘I needed to talk to you privately, and over there in the office there’s always at least one person eavesdropping. This morning with Giovanni, the recruit who’s looking after me, I popped out of the barracks … I can come and go as I please. I had an appointment in Milan for a series of preparatory tests for the operation. Once we were inside the city walls, Giovanni alerted me to the fact that there were three or four armoured cars and a much bigger number of trucks carefully concealed among the plane trees and beeches in the park. I might be wrong, but something major is about to take place!’

Bellosguardo was not in the slightest wrong. The Yugoslavia veterans, too, had got wind of the same thing when they took to their heels, for they had sensed that the Germans and the overlords in the Republic of Salò were setting a trap.

The first warning arrived exactly one day later when we discovered that all leave, including leave already requested and granted for those who had exams to do, had been cancelled. No exit from the barracks! That same day, the parade call was sounded: everyone on the parade ground in rows of three, every company to be in readiness for review. ‘Look up there on the turrets,’ muttered one of the sergeants, ‘the Germans are positioning heavy machine guns.’

The regimental band, too, was being lined up when around a hundred SS men, armed as though for battle, came running in. The band struck up the regimental march, and from somewhere at the back German and Italian officers came forward, followed by a company of the Black Brigades. In the middle of them was Mussolini … yes, Mussolini himself, in uniform as in photographs from years before. He was pinched and drawn as he paraded before us, giving an occasional salute with his outstretched arm. Close up, he appeared even more emaciated and tired. He carried out the inspection, then mounted a podium hurriedly prepared with some planks, and addressed us through a microphone. There was no emphasis in his tone: ‘The cities of Germany are being attacked every day and every night by enemy bombers. The civilian losses are huge, but there are also reports of losses among the units which succeed day after day in bringing down hundreds of the attackers’ aircraft. The German anti-aircraft force is foremost among these heroic combatants. You will, all of you, have the great honour of joining with them to inflict a sacred lesson on the enemy, and of displaying the most tangible solidarity with an allied nation and with the German people!’

‘They’ve stuck it up us and no mistake,’ was the semi-audible comment of the commander of the battery, while the SS and the Black Brigades applauded and screamed the usual hosannas exalting death and glory. The faces of several men were lined with tears.

Mussolini and his escort exited at the same speed as they had entered. The Germans remained on the turrets with their 20-millimetre guns aimed inwards. They feared not an attack but a mutiny.

Thanks to my friend Bellosguardo, who lent me a telephone, I was able to get in touch with my father at the Pino station. ‘We leave tomorrow under guard in a troop train. The city we’re destined for? Maybe Dusseldorf or Dresden. If you ask me, they’ll bolt the carriages shut, like the last time.’

My father was silent for a few moments, then he said: ‘Whatever happens, don’t lose heart. Good humour and irony are your salvation, don’t ever forget that. I’m stuck here tomorrow, but Mamma will come and see you.’

Next morning, outside the barracks, there were hundreds of people, the relatives, mothers, fathers, wives and sisters of the soldiers about to depart. All of us were lined up with our bags on the parade ground, one company behind the other. The same, familiar roll-calls were being repeated, the usual insufferable rigmarole. Our detachment had been put at the end of the procession. The Colonel came over in our direction, accompanied by a sergeant who handed me a note. I glanced at it: it was from my mother. She told me she was outside, under the big beech tree. ‘When you come out to get into the truck, look over this way.’

I did not see my mother that day on account of an unforeseen event. She, as she said in her note, had been standing for hours under the big tree which in dialect has the same name as me (in Lombard dialect, a beech tree is called a fo.). She saw companies of boys passing in front of her, desperately searching for their loved ones among the noisy, jostling throng which was held back by the German guards and by a force of around a hundred carabinieri, I later learned that as she stood there against the trunk of the fo, she suddenly heard someone whisper in her ear: ‘He’s not going, your boy’s not going!’

A somewhat elderly woman, totally unknown to her, was at her side, leaning on the same tree. ‘Were you talking to me? About my son?’ she asked.

‘Yes, your son … he’s staying put!’ she repeated, speaking in the dialect of Lomellina. ‘He’s not leaving.’

‘What do you mean, not leaving? Look over there, they’re all leaving, more than a thousand of them.’

‘But the ones at the back are staying here.’ So saying, she made off, supporting herself on her walking stick. She disappeared, swallowed up by the host of mothers running over towards another departing division.

‘Signora Giuseppina Fo.’ She heard her name being called out. ‘Which one of you is the mother of Dario Fo? Make yourself known.’

‘Me, it’s me. I’m here.’ She moved away from the others, still unaware of where the call was coming from.

At that moment, a soldier, or rather two soldiers, came forward, the one holding the other’s arm. One of the two was blind. ‘Signora Giuseppina, I have a message on behalf of your son. His company is not leaving, for the reason that they are new recruits, not fully trained in artillery techniques and the Germans don’t know what to do with them.’

My mother could not speak. She embraced Corporal Bellosguardo. Other mothers who had heard the message requested more precise information.

‘My son’s a new recruit as well.’

‘So is mine.’

‘Then set your minds at peace. They’re staying here,’ insisted the blind corporal. ‘Those who have not received training will be staying at home.’

Dozens of arms stretched out to take Bellosguardo by the hand. ‘Thank you, thank you. God save you. May Jesus Christ bless you, my son!’

Bellosguardo replied: ‘Well, if you see him around, put in a good word for me. See if he’ll work a real miracle tomorrow!’