War in Val d'Orcia

An Italian War Diary 1943-1944

Iris Origo

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781782272885
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

'A remarkably moving document that, like the best of the elemental war stories, eventually becomes a statement about the unplanned nature and folly of war'_ The New York Times

At the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian - kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d'Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground.

At great personal risk, the Origos gave food and shelter to partisans, deserters and refugees. They took in evacuees, and as the front drew closer they faced the knowledge that the lives of thirty-two small children depended on them. Origo writes with sensitivity and generosity, and a story emerges of human acts of heroism and compassion, and the devastation that war can bring.

With a new introduction by writer and social historian Virginia Nicholson, and stunning rediscovered photographs.

Iris Origo (1902-1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. Pushkin Press also publishes her memoir, Images and Shadows, as well as two of her biographies, A Study in Solitude: The Life of Leopardi - Poet, Romantic and Radical and The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli.

1943

Refugee children in 1943, with Iris, Schwester Marie, Benedetta and baby Donata

JANUARY 30TH

The first refugee children have arrived. They were due yesterday evening at seven—after a twelve hours’ journey from Genoa—but it was not until nine p.m. that at last the car drew up, and seven very small, sleepy bundles were lifted out. The eldest is six, the others four and five—all girls except one, a solemn little Sardinian called Dante Porcu. We carry them down into the play-room of the nursery-school (where the stove is burning, and supper waiting) and they stand blinking in the bright light, like small bewildered owls. White, pasty faces—several with boils and sores—and thin little sticks of arms and legs.†

The Genoese district nurse who has brought them tells me that they have been chosen from families whose houses have been totally destroyed, and who, for the last two months, have been living in an underground tunnel beneath the city, without light or sufficient water, and in bitter cold. Their fathers are mostly dock-labourers; two of them have been killed.

The children eat their warm soup, still too bewildered fully to realise where they are—and then, as they gradually thaw and wake up, the first wail goes up—‘Mamma, Mamma, I want my Mamma!’ We hastily produce the toys which we have prepared for just that moment; the little girls clutch their dolls, Dante winds up his motor, and for a few minutes tears are averted. Then we take them upstairs and tuck them up in their warm beds. Homesickness sets in again—and two of them, poor babies, cry themselves to sleep.

† In theory, the evacuation of these children was planned by the Fascist organisations in each province. In practice, we waited for three months for the Genoa Fascio to send us the children for whom we had applied—and then, as none came, I asked the Principessa di Piemonte to request her Red Cross inspectresses in Turin and Genoa to select twelve especially needy cases—whereupon the children arrived in a fortnight.

FEBRUARY 2ND

It is only comparatively seldom that the so-called ‘turning-points’ in a country’s history—so convenient to the historian—are actually observable by those present at the time. But the dropping of high explosives commands attention; and in the days after the first raids on Turin and Genoa, in November, everyone in Italy said: ‘Now it’s come; now it’s our turn.’

The intention, presumably, of the raids was to produce panic: the immediate result was rather resentment. Partly of the kind that the Allies wished to produce, resentment against Fascism: ‘This is where They (the Fascists) have landed us.’ But there was also the effect produced on every other bombed civilian population; a healthy, elementary reaction of resentment against those who were dropping the bombs.

And already in these first days of confused bewilderment, compassion and pain—when one began to meet the first refugees and to hear the (now all-too-familiar) stories of crowds crushed in the doorways of shelters, of homeless children, of anger and fear and pain and mismanagement, it became clear that the country was going to be divided between those whose resentment took one or the other form: either against their own government or against the Allies.

Among the first were, naturally, all those whom one may call the professional anti-Fascists, the Opposition, and to these must be added the ever-increasing numbers of the disillusioned, of all kinds, sincere ex-Fascists, gradually disgusted by graft, mismanagement, and bluff; members of all three Services, suffering from a similar disillusionment; members of the upper classes, whose allegiance to Fascism was really chiefly to the god Success, and whose first anti-Fascist and anti-German wobblings began with the first glimpse of failure, only kept in check by an even greater fear of ‘bolshevism’; and finally a number of simply bewildered, frightened, common citizens, afraid that the next bombed city would be their own. Among these last the Opposition deliberately circulated alarmist rumours and catastrophic prophecies. ‘Tripolitania will fall in a fortnight—Tunisia in three weeks—Then there will only be half an hour’s flight between the Allied bombers and every town in Italy—Sicily will be invaded—no, Corsica, and Sardinia, and from there the Tuscan coast. Every beautiful building in Italy—Rome, Venice, Florence—will be destroyed. It’s the end of Italy, for ever.’ These prognostications naturally led to the question: what can we do to avoid this tragedy? Even now, said the Opposition, it is not too late. Turn out the Fascists, demand the King’s abdication, and form a temporary military dictatorship, to sign a separate peace.

This proposal, however, was far from universally acceptable. ‘Let us show the English that we can take it as well as they have!’ was the cry of many people throughout the country—not necessarily Fascist or pro-German, but roused to anger and national pride. ‘Must we turn traitor and be despised by the whole of Europe?’ No, they maintained, the only decent course was to swallow for the present all political differences, and stick it out until the end. Some even hoped in a renewal of the Italian spirit, a revival of national unity and valour, such as was seen after Caporetto; but they were few. Most of them admitted that defeat was now inevitable, but maintained that the only course, nevertheless, was to go on fighting. To the moral argument was added a profound conviction that the Opposition’s faith in the Allies’ terms was excessive. ‘Contempt is all that we shall reap.’

In November, nevertheless, the King’s abdication and a separate peace were openly spoken of everywhere, even in the Senate. The programme of the Opposition, according to its supporters, was sanctioned (though of course not publicly) by the Vatican, was supported alike by Monarchists, Republicans, Communists and Liberals, and was to be carried out by the Army, led by the Principe di Piemonte. The programme was the following: the King’s abdication, seizure of the Fascist leaders, and assumption of the government by a military dictatorship, headed by the Prince of Piemonte. Then an immediate request to the Allies for an armistice, and, in due course, after a ‘period of transition’, a Liberal coalition government, headed by Bonomi. According to the more optimistic members of the Opposition, the temper of the country is now already ripe for these events, a sufficient majority of the Army is ready to move, and the Prince would be prepared to take the responsibility, provided his father had abdicated of his own free will.

How many responsible people would really now be prepared to follow such a course, and how many would condemn it—whether on grounds of principle or of expediency—I have no idea. Each party, of course, claims that the other is only a despicable minority. Feeling runs high, and my chief dread is of a situation like that in France: inner conflict (combined with the activities of the Gestapo) followed by chaos.

FEBRUARY 10TH

The second batch of children has now arrived: six little girls from Turin. They are older than the Genoa children—eight- to ten-year-olds—and much more self-possessed; but they show more clearly the effects of what they have been through. One of them, Nella, is suffering from a mild form of ‘St. Vitus’ dance’; another, Liberata, has sudden fainting-fits. All are very nervy and easily become hysterical. But all—the ‘big girls’ from Turin and the ‘little ones’ from Genoa—are quite astonishingly well-behaved. We have had, of course, to struggle with their hair (some of them have had their heads shaved), but otherwise their ‘habits’ contrast most favourably with what I have heard of the little evacuees in English villages—and their manners are charming. All of them have had their homes destroyed by air-raids—and most of them have parents working in the Turin factories, and fully realise that they will be bombed again. At post time they hurry up to the fattoria—and if for three days one of them has no letter, they go about with white, pitiful faces. Each child has at once had a medical examination and is now under the district nurse’s daily care—the older ones go to the school next door, the little ones do some nursery-school lessons with their own teacher. I have written long letters to each of their mothers, and we have taken a photograph of them to send home. Perhaps later on, their mothers will be able to come to see them.†

Already the children’s characters are beginning to define themselves. Of the older girls Liberata is the leader: by far the most intelligent and sensitive, and already ‘mothering’ the little ones, she is a born school teacher—and no doubt will become one some day. Of the others the most engaging is fat Anna Gotta—as round and pink as an apple—who insists on tying a minute bow of blue ribbon in her single inch of hair (she, too, has had her head shaved) to show that she is not a boy.

Children such as these, all over Europe, have had to leave their own homes and families, and are arriving—bewildered but hopeful—among strangers. There is something terribly moving in this exodus—something, too, so deeply wrong in a world where such a thing is not only possible but necessary, that it is difficult not to feel personally responsible. For the present we can try to salve our consciences by giving them food, shelter and love. But this is not enough. Nothing can ever really be enough.

† In the course of the first summer, all the mothers in turn managed to come—and after seeing how well and happy their children were, begged me to take yet one other brother or sister—so that the children’s numbers gradually rose to twenty-three. In June 1944, when the front passed on beyond us, all these children became completely cut off from their parents—and for eight months remained without any news of them.

APRIL 1ST

Three months of this year of waiting have already passed. Military events have been less rapid than was expected here in January. Tripolitania has fallen, but the acute phase of the struggle in Tunisia has only now begun. However, it is fully realised that that cannot last more than another few weeks; the eleventh hour has come. What then?

Since January a marked change has come over public opinion. The active resentment and dismay which followed upon the Allies’ landing in North Africa and the bombing of Italian cities has given place to a despairing apathy. The whole country is sunk under its leaden weight. There is now no hope of victory, and the number of those who say, ‘We must hold out with Germany until the end’ is becoming smaller. But as the time left for any other measure becomes shorter, as the menace (indeed, the certainty) of bombing, invasion and total defeat draws nearer, no one comes forward to take a decisive step. It is hardly fear of the police (many of whom, indeed, are heartily anti-Fascist) or even of Germany. The general discontent finds open expression in every class, from the senator to the taxi-driver. Every night the streets of Rome are placarded with posters or strewn with pamphlets saying ‘Fascism must go’. Everyone cries ‘How long, oh Lord, how long?’; everyone says quite openly: ‘It is Fascism that has brought us to this.’ But still it is all talk; no one will take a risk, or a responsibility.

The King himself remarked a few days ago: ‘It is like the time after Caporetto. Only now the events are greater—and the men smaller.’ Every day a fresh rumour, a fresh shadowy plan arises—never to take a definite shape. Part of the Senate, it is rumoured, would support a provisional government formed by members of the King’s Council, the Collari dell’Annunziata, for the purpose of deposing Mussolini, turning out the Fascists, and entering upon negotiations for a separate peace. Last week colour was given to this rumour by the unexpected bestowal of the Collare dell’Annunziata on Grandi. The diplomatic negotiations, it was said, would be entrusted to him, with Cini representing the industriali and the financial interests of the North, while a temporary military dictatorship would be headed by Marshal Caviglia or General Ambrosio (the chief of staf...