Kitabı oxu: «The Rage Of The Reviled»
Copyright © 2021 Guido Pagliarino - All rights belong to the author
Distributor Tektime S.r.l.s. - Via Armando Fioretti, 17 - 05030 - Montefranco TR (Italy)
Guido Pagliarino
The Rage of the Reviled
A Story inspired by History
Translation by Barbara Maher
Guido Pagliarino
The Rage of the Reviled
A Story inspired by History
Tektime Distribution
Copyright © 2021 Guido Pagliarino - All rights belong to the author
Translation from Italian to English by Barbara Maher
Title of the original work in Italian: "L’Ira dei Vilipesi".
Editions of the original novel in Italian:
Paper book, copyright © 2017 (until the contractual deadline of 12 March 2022) Genesi Editrice, via Nuoro 3, 10137 Turin, http://www.genesi.org/scheda-libro/guido-pagliarino/lira-dei-vilipesi-9788874146314-471023.html
Electronic book (e-book), copyright © 2018 Guido Pagliarino, Tektime distribution - The rights of translation from Italian to other languages and publication of translations in paper, graphic-electronic, audiobook and any other form and the rights of radio-cine-television broadcasting and in any other form are the exclusive property of the author © Guido Pagliarino
The cover images of the e-book and the paper book both in Italian and in the translations of the work were created electronically by the author © Guido Pagliarino
The characters, the events, the names of people, organisations and companies and their offices that appear in the novel, apart from the figures and events that history remembers, are imaginary; any references to past and present reality are random and completely unintentional.
Index
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
NOVELS AND TALES WITH CHARACTERS OF VITTORIO D'AIAZZO AND RANIERI VELLI (ACCORDING TO THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF EVENTS)
Chapter 1
He had been detained by the officers of a Public Security patrol wagon in the late evening of September 26, 1943, suspected of killing a certain Rosa Demaggi, an attractive peroxide blonde in her thirties, a wealthy prostitute and a retail blackmarketer: the man, strong Neapolitan accent, square face, robust build but not fat, looked to be about forty. He was five feet eight tall, an above average stature in those times of widespread malnutrition, going bald at the forehead and temples and the top of his head, and across the nape of his neck had a semicircle of brown hair kept very short and shaved high. He was wearing overalls and a flannel shirt, both deep blue in color, and light greenish-gray wool gloves.
It was well-known at the Vice Squad in Naples that Rosa Demaggi turned tricks for wealthy men in her home, in Piazzetta del Nilo. Until July 25, she had also conceded her favors to fascist leaders and, after the armistice, when the city fell under the German heel, she had granted herself to officers of the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo. From previous investigations carried out jointly, it was common knowledge in the Vice Squad and Commercial Offenses departments, the latter created after the start of the conflict to combat the black market, that since the summer of 1940 Demaggi had asked to be compensated, preferably, with groceries, cigarettes and liquor, so she could do low-level trafficking on the black market; and it was known that, very quickly, she had expanded the business with purchases from wholesalers linked to the camorra.
As a result, the patrol teams had been ordered to also keep an eye on her dwelling along with others; but discreetly, because of Demaggi's sexual contacts with occupying officers and considering that, after July 25, when the OVRA had been dissolved1 and the secret archive had been opened, it had been discovered that the woman had been a bribed confidant and had reported political information which escaped customers berween the sheets, the heriarchy included. It was therefore assumed that, after the armistice and the German occupation, she had started selling information to the Gestapo officers she went to bed with.
Shortly before the suspect was detained, about 8.30 pm with only half an hour to curfew, as the police wagon was passing through Piazzetta del Nilo, the corporal in command had seen that individual in shabby clothes enter the house where the woman lived, in the only apartment on the ground floor. He didn’t ring and went in through the door which had been left ajar. Since he had his back to the vehicle, the man had not noticed the arrival of the patrol.
After entering, he had not closed the door completely behind himself, but had left it pulled to. The officer had assumed that he, like Demaggi, was involved in the clandestine market and had left it open for other colluders who were on the way. The door left unlocked made it unlikely that he was a sex customer, not counting his roustabout’s clothing and the prostitute’s notoriously high rates. The corporal had ordered the driver to pull over outside the house. The officers had got out, except for the driver, and had let themselves into the apartment.
The suspect had been surprised in the entrance, just beyond the door, standing next to Rosa Demaggi. She was moaning weakly semi-unconscious, and was lying on the ground with a bloody hematoma on the nape of the neck, obviously the consequence of having fallen against a console, to the left entering, which had a blood stain on it. Rosa Demaggi had died a few seconds after the officers had entered. Considering him guilty of assaulting the woman, the man in overalls had been handcuffed. The patrol chief had said to him: "You came in here with the intention of killing her and it took you just a few seconds to hit her on the head: she was in the entrance waiting for you, she trusted you because she had left the doot open. But you, unexpectedly, without giving her time to escape, slammed her head hard against the furniture to kill her. You were counting on getting away immediately afterwards, in fact you hadn’t closed the door when you came in, so as not to waste time reopening it as you went out: you would have pulled it behind you as soon as you were outside and toodle-loo, who knows who and when the body would be found. You hadn't imagined that we would arrive: you wanted to make it look like an accident, but it went wrong."
The officer had assumed that the individual had killed with premeditation for reasons related to the black market, perhaps becauase of his own direct interest, perhaps on behalf of third parties. That it was voluntary murder was supported by the fact that the man was wearing wool gloves even though it was already warm: so as not to leave prints, it had been spontaneous to think. At the time the suspect, in full mental reshuffle because of the unexpected intervention of the police officer, had not known what to say.
Since up close you could see that not only was he wearing workman’s clothes, but that they were worn and rather dirty, the corporal was convinced that he could not be one of the woman’s sex clients, and besides, the man had no money on him as he had ascertained by frisking him. He did not even have an identity card, but he did have a driving license which showed he was born in Naples forty-two years earlier, lived in Vicolo Santa Luciella and was called Gennaro Esposito, name and surname, however, that were very common in Campania and especially in Naples, which could have been false, as too could the driving licence. It was in fact well-known in Police Headquarters that the delinquency, and in particular the camorra, availed themselves of printers who were very skilled in forgeries. The patrol leader had not given much weight to the document.
He had called the operations room of the Station with the truck’s radio and reported the incident. The Violent Crimes Section had telephoned the switchboard of the morgue to alert them, asking them to send the anatomopathologist on duty to the victim’s home, for the initial investigations. Dr. Giovampaolo Palombella was on duty, a sixty-year-old with long thick gray hair which was always disheveled, tall, wiry and a little stooped, perhaps due to bending over the corpses to be dissected for more than thirty years.
At the same time a warrant officer had been sent to the victim's home. It was Bruno Branduardi, a short, obese and quiet man close to retirement and he was to carry out an inspection, listen to the patrol officers and the doctor, write everything down in his notebook and report to the superior on duty upon his return,
The non-commissioned officer had arrived in Piazzetta del Nilo on his slow motorbike, The Little Italian2 which, small as it was, looked as if it could barely support the heavy weight of that enormous man. First of all he had first listened to what the officers had to say, then the coroner who had arrived a little after him, in a van for the transport of the corpses, with two orderlies. The anatomopathologist had ruled out suicide, he had considered an accident possible, since at first glance the blow did not seem to him to have been very violent. He had not ruled out murder, however, reserving the right to be more precise after the autopsy. The warrant officer had taken note of it, adding a comment in his notebook that in his opinion it was not misfortune but murder and that the arrested man, in his view, was the murderer.
In reality, he had simply aligned himself with what the corporal had assumed and reported to him. The corpse had been removed and loaded onto the van to be taken to the morgue for the autopsy. Branduardi, on his part, after having quickly inspected the apartment and found that there was no one there, had ordered the officers to affix the seals on the front door, to take the arrested man to the Police Headquarters and put him in the holding cell, while waiting to be handed over to a commissioner for interrogation. At that time the law did not call for the intervention of a magistrate neither at the scene of the crime, nor during the police officer’s investigative interview with the suspect, which took place without the presence of his lawyer. The investigating judge took over if the investigating commissioner, using the autopsy report and having questioned the suspect, had considered it to be murder and had sent a report to the Public Prosecutor's Office. In the event of misfortune, the dossier, endorsed by the Deputy Commissioner, was simply archived without judicial follow-up.
Branduardi had followed the truck, but lost ground because the motorbike’s engine was now old and worn out. When he arrived, with the detained man already in the holding cell, the warrant officer had gone up to his office in the Violent Crimes Section on the second floor which he shared with a sergeant and a typist. He had calmly prepared himself a war coffee, a surrogate, with his own Neapolitan coffee maker that he kept in the closet along with an electric incandescent stove. He had sipped it boiling hot after sweetening it with saccharin, not because he was diabetic but because since the start of the war, sugar was unobtainable for ordinary mortals. He had then smoked a Serenissima Zara cigarette with equally heavenly calm, savoring it almost to the end of the butt that, for the last two puffs, he had held by skewering it with a pin. In those times of famine and filterless cigarettes, a lot of smokers used to do that. And finally, at a leisurely pace, he had taken the sheet of paper with the report no more than fifty feet away on the same floor, to one of the deputy commanders of the Violent Crimes Section, a certain chief commissioner Riccardo Calvo who was on duty that night until twenty-four hundred hours. At zero hours and a few seconds Branduardi had gone home to sleep and, shortly after, Calvo did the same after leaving the warrant officer’s report on the desk of his incoming peer, Dr. Giuliano Boni.
The man in overalls had remain locked in the holding cell.
Finally, following the orders of chief commissioner Boni, the Rosa Demaggi case had been foisted onto an almost beardless Deputy Commissioner who had come on duty at midnight, Dr. Vittorio D'Aiazzo. He had been in Public Safety for just under a year and had been assigned to the difficut Violent Crimes Section from the very first day.
It was about 3 o'clock in the morning of September 27, 1943 and the insurrection that history remembers as The Four Days of Naples was about to begin: the cauldron of the oppressed city was bubbling and the temperature had now risen to such a degree that it would be impossible for the occupying German to prevent its fiery eruption.
Chapter 2
What the Partenope people were feeling had been unclear to the contemptuous Nazi invader and the fear that they had intentionally spread in the city had resulted in hearts at boiling point and in the mood for rebellion. Facimmo 'a uèrra a chilli strunzi zellosi3 was now the feeling of many Neapolitans, under the impression that, San Genna' ajutànno4 ! they would free themselves and, at last, peace would become real, very real and no longer the stillborn illusion of a couple of months before:
On July 25, Italy had rejoiced at the fall of the regime during the night, seemingly definitive with Mussolini defenestrated by the Grand Council of Fascism and the king having him arrested, and with the new Badoglio government which was no longer fascist, even though not democratically elected; but above all it had been the mistaken idea that the conflict had ended that made the nation rejoice. In any case, there were soon laments throughout the entire nation which, in Naples, had presented picturesque overtones in the alleyways and the bassi5 , such as: Chillo capucchióne d'o nuvièllo Càpo 'e Guviérno, 'o maresciallo d'Italia Badoglio Pietro, 'o gran generalone! ha fatto di' a 'a ràdio, tòmo, tòmo: "The war continues": strunz' e mmèrda!6 Then there had been those who had pointed out: Nossignori, strunzi noi ati a penzà che 'nu maresciallone vulisse 'a pace! Ma va ' ffa 'n 'c...7
With the armistice of Cassibile signed between Italy and the Anglo-Americans on September 3 and which should have remained secret until the Italian armed forces had been reorganized to hold back the vindictive former ally, but had been made known on September 8 by vainglorious victorious generals, a worse evil than before had landed on Italy, through the Brenner Pass8 Many new, combative and vindictive Germanic divisions had joined the German units already present in Italy. "Why on earth," wondered the most prepared Italians, "hadn’t our rulers and military leaders been able to prepare an emergency plan in time? When surrender to the enemy had been likely for a long time? With the forces of the relentless former ally already here?"
After September 8, the only thing the king and his ministers had done was flee to the south, to Brindisi, taking advantage of the fact that the 1st English Airborne Division was about to take that city which, unlike the others, was almost free of German troops, and counting on the fact that the Anglo-Americans, having conquered Sicily, were invading the rest of the southern regions of the Peninsula9 . Breathless, the Sovereign, his Secretaries of State and General Mario Roatta, failed defender of Rome which had been abandoned to the disorderly and useless initiative of the department commanders, had left the capital to set up throne, government and high commands in Brindisi, under the protection of the former enemies, leaving the Italian troops on various foreign fronts and in Italy without orders, at the mercy of the mighty German army.
On September 8, Italy announced the armistice officially, made personally by Badoglio on the radio at 1900 hours and 37 minutes. Thanks to the reinforcements which had arrived rapidly, Germany had remained undisputed master from the Alps to the city of Naples, while the province of Salerno had become a combat zone for the Anglo-American landing on September 9.
The anger of the Neapolitans, already hot because of the war they had already been through, had become scorcing. They had had to endure too much in the three years and more after the regime’s traitorous and improvident entry into the conflict on June 10, 1940, behind Nazi Germany. Naples had been systematically bombed by the British and then also by the Americans, with as many as one hundred and five raids until the armistice, all of which had hit the mark turning buildings to rubble and leaving large numbers of people dead, injured and mutilated, and hordes of homeless families. Not a single district had been spared, also because the political and military leaders had been unable to prepare adequate anti-air defenses, which had been entrusted almost entirely, in an improvised way, to the warships at anchor in the port.
And then, the hunger! That grim and voiceless hunger that takes your legs from under you; and since the illusion of peace of July 25 has faded, more bombs hail down on the city, bringing absolute famine and diseases with more deaths from the lack of medicines. From September 9, Naples had suffered material damage from the Germans, including serious damage to the port, and had been subjected to roundups and executions not only of Italian soldiers on the loose but also civilians.
Even the fascists, albeit in a subordinate position, had taken possession of the city a couple of weeks after September 8, risen again from the political tombs to become the newly born Stato Nazionale Repubblicano10 – soon to become the Italian Social Republic – formed on the 23rd of that month by Hitler himself, headed by an unwilling but resigned Mussolini who on the 12th had been freed by German paratroopers from house arrest in his refuge-hotel of Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso, where the King had relegated him.
The traditional Teutonic harshness of wartime had become, if possible, even more barbaric, incited by isolated attacks from citizens with the support of sailors from the moored ships of the Regia Marina11 . It was a very early, sporadic and spontaneous resistance, not yet connected to the adversaries of Nazi fascism. The rebellion had started in Via Santa Brigida where, on the morning of the 9th, about thirty residents had attacked a Wehrmacht squad after one of those soldiers had shot at an unarmed twelve-year-old shop boy with his ordinance rifle, a Mauser Kar 98k, as if he was at the shooting range in an amusement park, while the boy was at the door of the shop getting some sun.
The person who had kick-started that group of humiliated Neapolitans was the young Deputy Commissioner that we have already met in passing, Dr. Vittorio D'Aiazzo, who was passing nearby on foot when the German soldier had aimed and fired at the boy. Very indignant, the young Public Security officer had shot from around a corner without taking aim into the Teutonic bunch with his ordinance Beretta M34, emptying the magazine and killing two soldiers. He had then vanished down a side alley, not so much for fear of the enemy but afraid of trouble, or worse, from his superiors.
As he disappeared, those of the thirty exacerbated civilians present who had knives in their pockets, which was almost all of them, had pulled them out. The crowd, which had now become white hot with anger at the sight of the enemy corpses and the image d'o sbenturàto guaglio' 12 who had been hit in the femoral artery and was dying fast, had thrown itself on the rest of the German squadron, screaming like savages. The soldier who had fired was the first to be slaughtered, emasculated by three outraged men, and a soldier had been punched on the nose by an assailant without a blade. Then someone behind him had attacked him with a large knife wounding him horizontally on the buttocks. Almost all the assailants had suffered bruising and lacerations to the arms and face, and one, worse, had lost his nose.
No German had managed to fire a single shot at the feral horde and, with the sergeant in the lead, the squad had fled quickly abandoning its arrogance on the cobblestones. The rifles and hand grenades of the slain and the rifles left on the ground by the most seriously wounded had been collected and hidden in the houses. Very soon they would serve to free the city. The three corpses had been taken to the slums and were dissected there. The shreds of flesh had been wrapped in rags and buried in various places in the area. It would be whispered later, true or false? that some nice piece of buttock though had ended up in undernourished bellies roasted. The street had been washed very energetically by the women of the fearless rebels, and never again would it be so clean.
At the same time in another area of Naples, completely independently, a group of improvised militants had attacked a handful of German sabateurs trying to occupy the headquarters of the telephone company, and had scared them off. The German platoon had avenged itself further on, capturing and shooting two carabinieri on patrol duty. Not long after, an entire German company of stormtroopers had arrived in front of the telephone building and had quickly overcome the insurgents who were guarding it.
Yet, contrary to the intentions of the Nazis, the anger of the humiliated Neapolitans had grown even stronger and the following day, at the foot of the hill of Pizzofalcone between Piazza del Plebiscito and the gardens below, there had been a real battle, ignited by some sailors with their '91 muskets and hand grenades, and stoked by numerous civilians armed with MP80 machine guns and model 24 grenades, stolen from the occupiers the previous day, and improvised Molotov cocktails. The rebels had prevented the passage of an entire column of German trucks and jeeps. Six people had died, three Italian sailors who had fought in the front line and as many German soldiers, with many wounded on both sides.
Heavy measures and serious reprisals by the Germans followed, ordered by the new commander of the city Colonel Walter Scholl who, on the 12th, had officially assumed absolute power. One of his proclamations had dictated that weapons were to be turned in, except for public security forces, a 9.00 pm curfew and a state of siege for the entire city, while not only had the soldiers and civilians taken prisoner been shot, but also several citizens deliberately rounded up.
After the 12th the Germans had gone completely wild, looting, destroying and burning. The university was the first to be set on fire, after shooting a defenseless Italian sailor in front of it, forcing the citizens present not only to assist at the execution, but to applaud it. Up until September 25, even though the city had no longer acted openly against the occupiers after the first few days, the German patrols had apprehended anyone not a policeman, who had been caught in the street in Italian uniform or, if in civilian dress, simply seemed suspicious.
Naples had kept quiet but was sizzling and preparing for the insurgence. In particular, soldiers who had deserted had been picked up one by one by members of the anti-nazifascist parties and hidden and trained in guerrilla warfare, many inside the underground rooms of the Sannazaro high school, the main headquarters of the newborn Neapolitan resistance.
On September 25, the same day on which Italy had been subjected to two very serious bombings on Bologna and Florence by the Americans, an ordinance had been issued in Naples which stipulated that all citizens of working age were obliged to perform tasks of hard labor for the Germans. It was the fuse for the insurgency that would take place a few days later, in perfect antithesis to the intimidating intentions of the Germans. The posters of the decree had already been affixed to the walls in the early morning of Sunday 26, the day before the one that would see the first flashes of the rebellion.
If the substantial order of recruitment had come from Colonel Scholl, the formal one had been signed for Italy by the prefect Domenico Soprano who in August, appointed by the Badoglio Government, had taken the place of the dismissed fascist prefect Vaccari. Soprano was a man of order, anti-communist and anti-socialist and opponent of conceivable violent actions by the population, even if he was not fascist but liberal: certainly not a demoliberal Gobetti-style, but an old-fashioned aristocrat. More because of his hatred towards the popular masses than because he was in awe of the Germans, he had signed the decree of conscription to work: playing for time had been his immediate goal to maintain calm.
A few days before that September 26, after there had been contacts between US Army intelligence and the leaders of the Neapolitan anti-fascist parties, precisely in view of a hoped-for uprising in Naples, the prefect Soprano had been approached by representatives of the newborn National Liberation Front – later the National Liberation Committee – which had recently been founded with headquarters in Rome. It was composed of the Action Party, the Liberal Party, the Christian Democratic Centre, Labor Democracy, the Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity and the Communist Party. They had put pressure on him to cooperate with the nascent opposition through the police forces he directed, offering him all possible support. The prefect, however, had preferred the path of prudence because, as always, he opposed social communism and feared any revolutionary movement; thus he had limited himself to converse politically, in secret, with the moderate liberal leaders Enrico De Nicola and Benedetto Croce: without exposing himself.
Both Domenico Soprano and Walter Scholl had miscalculated. Since only one hundred and fifty people had presented themselves to the Germans before the date indicated in the notice, during the afternoon of Sunday September 26 and the early hours of the evening the Germans had started brutally combing Naples and had rounded up 8000 helpless citizens, including elderly men and thirteen-year-old boys. The Germans had fanned the flame of the rebellion igniting the souls of family members and relatives of those rounded up, who were eager to release them. In the early morning of Monday, September 27, there had been the first clashes, started not only by Italian soldiers who had remained in hiding until then in the basement of the Sannazaro high school and in private homes, but also by a number of civilians, although the real popular uprising in Naples would explode the following day, as droves of armed Neapolitans of all social classes spread through the streets and squares, from ultra-commoners to intellectuals, as well as twelve-year-old boys and young women.
Chapter 3
The young Deputy Commissioner, executioner of Germans and in charge of investigating the man in overalls, was a twenty-four-year-old Neapolitan by birth and maternal descent. He had thick, naturally curly black hair, kept short in military fashion according to the regulations of those years. He was not tall, five feet four, but well proportioned and robust. He had graduated in law at the Federico II of Naples with honors and recommended for pubblication and, if he was brilliant in mind, in spirit he was clean, forged in the family and in college on the basis of classic ethical principles, in essence the precepts of the ten Judeo-Christian commandments.
But because of his young age, however, which had made him suffer a few disillusions for the moment, Vittorio D'Aiazzo was a little immodest. He lived with his father, Amilcare D'Aiazzo lieutenant colonel of the Regi Carabinieri, and with his mother, Mrs Luigia-Antonia a graduated primary school teacher but housewife, in the apartment they owned. It was not located in a prestigious area as the family would have liked, not in Via Caracciolo or on the Riviera di Chiaia, for example, but in the popular Sanità district, in Via San Gregorio Armeno where there were lodgings within the reach of the not generous salaries, at that time, and the meagre savings of a high-ranking officer of the Carabinieri. Vittorio lived alone in the accommodation at the time, apart from a part-time cleaning lady, because his mother had been evacuated to the countryside at the beginning of the war. His father, had crossed the lines at night a couple of weeks earlier, even though he was sixty-one, fifteen years older than his wife, and he had done this because, in reality, he did not want to answer to the occupying Germans and to join his sovereign.
Until then he had served in the 7th Provincial Carabinieri Group of Naples, as head of the Provincial Investigative Coordination Section. The D'Aiazzo couple had two sons. While they were proud of Vittorio, they did not think highly of the other, Emanuele, who had been a lazy person since he was a child. After several failures, he had received the elementary school diploma at fourteen and with the lowest of grades. He had then abandoned his not hard-earned studies at the beginning of the first year of complementary school for introduction to the work-force. His father had resigned himself to enrolling him because, unlike high school13 , it did not require an entrance examination. At sixteen years old, he had run away from home, and could not be traced. He sent news of himself only years later, once he came of age14 , with a single postcard addressed to the mother, sent from Switzerland in May 1940, with a few words of greeting. Since Emanule had not presented himself for the call-up visit, he had been considered a draft dodger and sentenced in absentia to prison by the Military Court of Naples; and when war broke out, he had been considered a deserter.
That son had damaged the image of Lieutenant Colonel D'Aiazzo and he feared that, because of him, he would nor rise through the ranks, despite his many personal merits. Vittorio what’s more, because of his brother, had not been able to follow in his father's footsteps and enter the Carabinieri, as he and his parents would have liked. In those days, in fact, not only those who were personally dishonest, but also those who had ancestors or relatives not absolutely unblemished, could not apply for the Benemerita15 . Disappointed but not completely resigned, Vittorio had graduated and had participated in the public contest for Deputy Commissioner in the Public Security Guards Corps, an entity that required only the personal integrity of the aspirant and not his relatives as well. He had passed the test brilliantly and, at the end of the vocational graduate school which followed, he was the first in the standings with every hope, therefore, of being granted the chosen destination, his Naples, and had been assigned precisely to his home city.
After reading warrant officer Branduardi’s brief report, Deputy Commissioner D'Aiazzo had headed to the holding cells on the ground floor to take a look at the self-styled Gennaro Esposito. He had then gone down into the damp underground archive and had checked if anyone with those personal details had a police record and if his photos, from the front and in profile, corresponded to the physiognomy of the prisoner. He had found several criminal records with the same name and surname, but all of them concerned people who did not look like the alleged murderer. Back in his office, he had the arrested man brought to him.
He had interrogated him with the help of his assistant brigadier Marino Bordin who, sitting at his table, had typed his superior’s questions and the answers from the man being questioned on the office typewriter, an obsolete black Olivetti M1, 1911 model.
Bordin was a sturdy blond Venetian, five feet nine tall. He was forty-five years old, had served in Public Security for a quarter of a century, and had a wife and two children that he had evacuated to a farmhouse in the Neapolitan countryside, sacrificing two thirds of his salary to the farmer hosting them and resigning himself to eat and sleep in the barracks with what was left.
For hours the suspect, without giving in, had said and repeated, in a correct idiom that made one think he had at least attended primary school classes, very strict at that time, that he was an unemployed cook, that he lived as was written on his license, in Vicolo Santa Luciella and that he was on his way home when he had seen the door of the dead woman's house ajar and had heard moans coming from inside. Out of mere altruism he had gone in, asking for permission, had seen the woman on the ground in the entry still moaning. Having noticed a telephone on a wall, he had decided to call an ambulance; but at that very moment the Public Security patrol had entered and had handcuffed him.
The Deputy Commissioner had kept at it and shortly after 7 am he had finally obtained a new detail, that the man visited the prostitute regularly and that he had gone into her house, because he was expected, to have some quick sex so he could leave early and get to his own house before the curfew. When asked, he had specified that he had made the appointment by phone from a bar, as he had done many other times. When asked to recite Demaggi’s telephone number, he had said that he no longer remembered it and, when D'Aiazzo showed his skeptiscism, he had justified the amnesia because he was in a state of mental turmoil due to the situation. Otherwise he had not changed his version reiterating that, once he went in the door left ajar especially for him following the phone call, he had seen the woman on the ground and had immediately decided to call for help from the telephone in the apartment, but then the patrol had arrived and had detained him.
Just like the the patrol officers, the Deputy Commissioner could not believe that the man was a client of the pricey hooker, taking into account his cheap shabby clothing and no money in his pockets. Considering that the door had ostensibly been left open for him, he had conjectured that he was an accomplice in the black market. He had therefore accused him of killng her because of some argument: "Confess and I’ll let you go to sleep!"
"It isn’t true, it was definitely an accident that took place before I went inside," the other had denied.
"If you weren't an accomplice at loggerheads, then you were sent to kill her by a competitor," the officer had pressed.
"Commissioner I’m telling you again that it is not true!" the man had become angry, abandoning the docile attitude he had kept until then.
Without being asked, Brigadier Bordin had snapped: "Busòn!16 Be respectful to the commissioner or I'll kick you where you like to get it!"
The Deputy Commissioner did not allow bad manners and had reprimanded him: "Marino, keep the kicks and the insults to yourself." He had resumed: "Gennaro, provided that Gennaro Esposito is really your name, and you can be sure that we’ll check at the Registry Office tomorrow ... no, this morning, seeing the time, listen up: I too, like you, would like to finish this, so I'll make you a proposal," – the man had visibly raised his attention threshold, half-opening his mouth as his pupils dilated a little – "if you confess guilty to homicide, which means that you killed going beyond the intention you had ..."
"... I know."
"Then listen: you could tell me for example that you had no money and that the victim didn’t want to concede herself on credit, so in an irrepressible impulse of anger you pushed her, without wanting to kill her but, unfortunately, she fell and was fatally injured; well, you know what I mean: in this way you don’t end up in front of the firing squad17 , you just get a little jail time. Instead, if I write in my report for the investigating judge that I suspect you’re the hitman for some camorra blackmarketer who wanted to eliminate her, or a direct competitor of the woman on the black market who wanted to take her out once and for all, you are already good and shot."
Even though he was more tired than the Deputy Commissioner, the man had not confessed: "Not only will I repeat yet again that I am not a murderer and, as far as I know, the woman died from an accident which took place before I entered her apartment, but now I’m also telling you that I am a sergeant major gunner and that I crossed the lines and arrived in Naples yesterday evening."
"Hmm... tell me more."
"I am also a cook, I was serving as kitchen manager in the officers' club of the 3rd battalion, 1st Coastal Artillery Regiment, stationed five miles north of Paestum, in the province of Salerno."
"I know where Paestum is... okay, assuming that you’ve told me the truth now, it’s in your own interest that we check your military identity, so tell me about the school for cadet non-commissioned officers you come from and which course." In reality, that verification would probably have been impossible in the chaos following the armistice and D'Aiazzo knew it, but he had counted on the fact that if the other lied to him, he would give himself away.
The man had not turned a hair: "My career started with an apprenticeship: at twenty-eight, after I lost my job of assistant cook in a trattoria ..."
"... what did you do?"
"...nothing wrong! The restaurant had closed because, as the owners said, the final consequences of the crisis of '29 had arrived."
"Okay, go on."
"I had looked for work elsewhere but found nothing: no one was hiring, if anything they were firing. Then, so as not to weigh on my mother who had been widowed and worked hard doing the cleaning in shops and sewing and embroidering at home for strangers, I enlisted as a volunteer in the end, hoping to work my way up and become a non-commissioned office. I had been discharged from the service six years earlier, with honor, with the rank of corporal, which was recognized at the reaffirmation. And since I had already been in kitchens during the draft, after a refresher course on certain regulations, they had sent me in front of the pots again, apart from the periodic shooting exercises with the artillery, rifle and pistol. That’s how it was right through my military career, first as a corporal, then as a sergeant and, finally, as a non-commissioned officer18 : sergeant major manager of the kitchen of the officers' club.
After the armistice and the landing of our former enemies19 on our coasts, I was left in the lurch with my fellow soldiers in the hope of not running into Anglo-Americans or Germans. I hid, eating fruit and vegetables I took from vegetable gardens and, the few times someone put me up in a farmhouse, bread, milk and eggs as well. But farmers, or at least the ones I met, are not generous people, and they all asked me for compensation, first in money, and little by little I gave them what I had left of the last salary, then when the money ran out I had to leave my watch: it was steel, but a good brand; and to the last purucchio20 I gave my medal of San Genna' on a little chain, both in 18 carat gold, a gift from my parents for my First Communion, in exchange for the old shirt and the work overalls I’m still wearing. I got myself into plain clothes and threw away the military dog-tag and the military documents too, because they are not only another color for us career people but they say that we are in fact military and our rank as well..."
"... I know"
"Yes, it’s like that for you too. I threw away my identity card and military license and only kept my civilian license. Then, no longer in uniform, I headed to my Naples and managed to cross the front line and last night I arrived in the city. I moved cautiously even though I was in civilian clothes and had a document with me, and I got to Piazzetta del Nilo, which is not far from the little house where mamma and I live in Vicolo Santa Luciella; and, because of my good heart, after what I had already been through, I still had the impulse to help that woman who was groaning and ... here I am, just when I was very close to home."
"How come your domicile in the area of Paestum is not indicated on your driving permit?"
"I had a room in the barracks, with another sergeant major who was a bachelor as well, I didn’t have any place outside: I never considered the barracks my home and I never thought of having the address in Naples removed. I just had it changed on the identity card and the military driving permit because it was mandatory, apart from the fact that on the civil license I would often have to have the Department of Motor Vehicles change my address, since they moved me every few years. Whereas the military card and license were done again directly in the new department; and then, after all, I came back to Naples to see mamma every time I went on leave."
"You should know that we’ll go to Vicolo Santa Maria to check if your mother really lives there and if other people know you."
"... and I thank you, Commissioner, because that is exactly where mamma lives and you will have confirmation about me from her and the neighbours as well. But please, I beg you with all my heart: don’t frighten mamma. Tell her, please, that I have asked you to say hello to her since I couldn’t come in person because of service reasons."
"If we find your mother, we won't scare her and we’ll talk to her as you wish." At this point, however, the Deputy Commissioner had started on him again: "Earlier you tried to make me believe that you had an appointment with Demaggi and then you admitted that it was not true. So tell me: if that was the first time you saw her, how did you know that the woman was a prostitute?"
Unperturbed he replied: "I heard your patrol chief talking about it with his colleagues when they were with the deceased."
"I'll check. Now tell me one more thing" – D'Aiazzo had left the question for last, to fire it when the man was very tired – "Why were you wearing wool gloves at this time of year? So as not to leave prints, right?"
"... no, Mr. Commissioner," the other wasn’t worried, "the reason is simple, I’ve been wearing them for some time now, I also had them when I was in service, with the captain’s permission. I suffer from pain in my fingers and also in my left palm."
"Hm..."
"... yes I do, because of the humidity in the kitchens over many years, what with steam from pots and water where we washed the cauldrons, as the lieutenant doctor explained to me, and he was the one who told me to wear gloves."
The man was exhausted and the two policemen were physical wrecks; the Deputy Commissioner had ordered Brigadier Bordin to escort the alleged sergeant major Gennaro Esposito to the holding cell.
Vittorio D'Aiazzo had not been able to form a concrete idea with just the information he had collected: to his mind it could possibly be both an accident and a murder must, the latter not necessarily perpetrated by the man arrested; however, if he were guilty, the motive could be competition between black marketers if the self-styled Esposito’s identity and in particular his position in the Army were not confirmed, otherwise a different motive would come into play.
Moreover, if the anatomopathologist established that it was an assassination, and even though he had not confessed, he would be transferred to the Prison of Poggioreale as a suspect. As well as that, the Deputy Commissioner would have to write a report containing both the medical examiner’s conclusions and the details that D'Aiazzo himself had collected during the interrogation, and send it to the Office of the Public Prosecutor. Based on his report, the investigating judge would decide whether to open proceedings against the suspect or release him for lack of evidence.
It was almost eight in the morning and the young officer was about to finish his shift; but just the same, before going home he still intended to order the warrant officer to go to Vicolo Santa Luciella to check if the suspect’s mother really lived there and, in this case, if she recognized her son in the photo on the license and confirmed that he really was a sergeant major in the artillery. But the Deputy Commissioner did not plan to wait for the man to return and he would hear the report the following day. At any rate, it would be two or three days at least before the anatomopathologist’s report arrived in his office, during which time the detained man would remain in the holding cell.
After having taken the suspect back to the cell, Bordin had gone back to D'Aiazzo. As he entered the office he had said to him: "Mr. Commissioner, in my opinion that Esposito, or so he claims, was sent by the camorra to kill Demaggi for two possible reasons: either because of competition on the black market, or because that filthy whore no longer wanted to pay the kickback ..."
"... Marino, the woman is dead and you don’t insult the deceased," the young superior had reprimanded him, "and in any case I’m not convinced that the suspect is a murderer."
"Forgive me if I take the liberty, but I think... well, that you are always too good: if we gave him a few blows in the stomach with sandbags ..."
"... that don’t leave a mark?"
"Just to be prudent; and be sure that that delinquent sayts he is guilty and a camorrista to boot, and who knows what else. But like this..."
"... instead like this I didn’t risk making an innocent person confess, apart from the fact that if I saw you hitting someone with a sack ... do you understand me, Marino?"
"Yeah...."
"If anything, it will be the investigating judge who makes him admit that he is guilty, provided the doctor doesn’t tell us that it was an accident, and then I can archive the case and free that man."
"Yes, maybe, but speaking in general terms you, Mr Commissioner, are perhaps the only one here who doesn’t give people being interrogated a few slaps. The late Dr. Perati I served with before you made everyone confess."
With the fervor of age, and not without that pinch of presumption that he always had, the Deputy Commissioner had instinctively let slip in the Neapolitan dialect that he used at home: "Tu si' 'nu fésso.21 "
"What?!" The non-commissioned officer had turned red with rage.
His superior had partially corrected himself: "All right, Marino, I take back the idiot, but you are wrong to speak disrespectfully to me just because I am half your age. Be careful, because if it happens again I will punish you."
Bordin had thought it wise to apologize, albeit through gritted teeth: "Forgive me, Mr. Commissioner, I was just saying, I didn’t want to criticize you."
If, over time, Vittorio D'Aiazzo would fully acquire humility thanks to the metaphorical slaps of life, at the time he still wanted to have the last word: "Alright, but from now on think about what you say, before saying what you think."
The man had thought it wise to stand stiffly to attention: "Signorsì."
"At ease, and don’t be mortified," his superior had softened the tone, with compassion finally prevailing. He had continued: "You said that Perati made everyone confess: of course, I know that very well, they’d told me that when I arrived here; but do you remember who killed him?"
"Yes sir, the mother of a habitual thief..."
"... thief that Perati had accused of stabbing a baker in the hand, to rob him, and that he had indeed made him confess, but how? Tying him belly up on a table and whipping him with his belt; and two days later, do you remember? the suspect died of internal bleeding."
"Excuse me, may I speak to you freely but with all due respect?"
"You can."
"I believed that Dr. Perati had been right because he had not been reproached by superiors."
"Then you don’t know that the matter had been buried by order of the federal of Naples22 , because Perati was extremely fascist and a bootlicker; and yet, in the mind of the dead man’s mother the thing had not been buried at all, and what’s more, a couple of weeks after her son’s death, she had learned that he was innocent of both the wounding and the theft, and you knew this, didn't you?"
"I knew that the baker had recognized the real culprit in the street and had reported it to one of our patrols, who had stopped him and brought him here."
"Yes, and the dead man’s mother had been made aware of it by a friend of her son’s, who heard the truth going around, and you know what? It had not been too unjust, after all, that the woman had come to us asking to speak to Perati, with the excuse of having revelations to make to him, and once she was in front of him she had pulled out a small meat knife from her breast and let go a slash that had gone into his heart; and I’m almost sorry that she was blocked immediately afterwards and that she is now awaiting trial, because I fear she will be sentenced to death for premeditated murder."
"Let’s hope they grant her mental semi-infermity," Bordin had agreed.
"Let's hope so; but apart from that, you can go to the vehicles depot for me now with this service sheet... here: it’s my authorization to pick up a car with driver. Then go and check is Esposito is known in Vicolo Santa Lucia." He had also given him the suspect’s license: "Show this photo to the mother, that’s if she exists, and to the neighbors as well, and gather as much as you can on him."
"Yes, sir! On the way back though, Commissioner, maybe I could go to my room to sleep because I’ve already completed my hours of service for today."
"Duty and sacrifice is our motto," he had responded smiling.
Since Police Headquarters knew that the social temperature in the city was climbing and an uprising was quite likely, the brigadier had decided to go by the radio room to get some news on the situation outside before going to the garage. As soon as he had heard it, he had returned to his direct superior and told him that patrol trucks had communicated that isolated gun battles had begun. He concluded asking: "Sir, do I really have to go there today, or can I wait for tomorrow, when maybe things will have calmed down?"
Before D'Aiazzo had decided, the rumble of the diesel engines of vehicles had started to come up along Via Medina where Naples Police Headquarters were located, and still are, and were going past the main entrance of the building in column, as they had done every day for two weeks. It was a motorized platoon of German grenadiers going to relieve another one, of the same battalion, sent to guard a corridor on the top floor of Castel Sant'Elmo, a mighty bulwark that stands on the Vomero hill at 820 feet above sea level overlooking the Gulf and the city. Two non-communicating rooms opened onto that corridor and, at that time, were used as the armory of the fortress. One of them was a large room with conventional weapons and ammunition stored there and in the other, a smaller space, the secret armaments of Italian design and production were guarded.
The weapons were kept under surveillance around the clock in two shifts, from 8.30 am to 8.30 pm and 8.30 pm to 8.30 am. The Germans had occupied Castel Sant'Elmo since September 9, and had seized the armaments, with particular interest in the special ones. The castle itself was a primary target for the Allies in those days precisely because of these unconventional weapons, and for some time their own secret services had been interested in it.
Vittorio D'Aiazzo was about to tell his subordinate to ignore his previous order and to go and get some rest, when there were gunshots from Via Medina, first from rifles and a light machine gun, then, in rapid succession, an assault rifle and a machine gun.
Deputy Commissioner and assistant had instinctively ducked then, with their legs bent, had moved to the window and peeked out to look below, showing themselves as little as possible.
At the same time, several other policemen had looked down from their respective offices, both the staff coming off duty and those coming on, as it was chngeover time, 8.00 am on the dot. Having just arrived, the deputy Head of Police Remigio Bollati had also glanced surreptitiously out his window; his office opened off the same corridor as Vittorio's and the two rooms were next to each other.
Depending on the position of his window and as he looked down, he had seen or glimpsed the German platoon standing still in the middle of the road about fifty yards past the front door and the neighboring driveway. From the shelter of their vehicles, lined up transversely, they were engaged in a gun battle with people who had to be further down the street that couldn’t be seen from the Police Headquarters building, but the gunshots coule be heard very clearly. It could be assumed that they were taking cover behind the walls in ruin and the piles of rubble of two nearby buildings facing each other, bombed a few days before September 8 by American fast-response fortifications.
Chapter 4
To better understand, let's go back a little:
With the Neapolitan Revolutionary Single Front having been formed, and given the reluctance of the Prefect Soprano to take charge of it, the seventy-year-old laborer Antonio Taraia had been elected to head it. On September 24, considering the situation now ripe for the insurgence, he had called a meeting for the following morning in the Sannazaro high school, so as to put the decision about it to the vote. He had arrived at the conviction that it was now time to act, not only because of the news that the Anglo-Americans were now almost at the gates of Naples which he had received in advance from the philosopher Benedetto Croce who had heard it confidentially from Dr. Soprano, but also because, following coded agreements made by radio with the Americans, weapons and two-way radios of the US Army intended for the partisans had just been parachuted in at night, near Naples.
They had been hidden immediately afterwards in seven cellars in as many different areas of the city; the operation had taken place with the essential contribution of a group of bribed camorristi, ready to run serious risks in view of the very high earnings promised to them by the Americans. We should not be surprised by this alliance, the United States had already availed themelves of, and continued to use the mafia’s help in occupied Sicily where, among other things, numerous new notoriously mafia mayors had been installed by the conquerors. The camorra, as well as the Mafia, was organized in an almost military fashion and, in particular, had many large trucks available in Naples.
The arms operation had been meticulously organized by the Americans; among other things, instruction leaflets on the use of the parachuted weapons, written in correct Italian, had been taken to the Sannazaro high school by some American agents who had crossed the lines at night. In this way the Neapolitan patriots could be theoretically instructed on their operation by the agents themselves, which would make the practical instruction faster and easier. For logistical reasons, this would take place just a little before the uprising, at the moment the weapons were recovered from the seven storage places.
At the meeting of September 25, the decision to rebel was unanimous. Around noon, messengers had been sent to tell the custodians of the American war material.
The following day, Sunday, seven leaders of patriot groups who had already assisted at the storage of the weapons in the secret places, had presented themselves not long before curfew time, one at each storage room, to prepare the weapons to be collected the same night by their men, who would arrive at the hiding places around 5.00 am on Monday, September 27.
So, after 6 am on that same day of September 27, having collected their weapons, the groups of freedom fighters had headed to their targets. While the platoons trained in the Sannazaro High School by the American agents were carrying U.S. weapons, namely M1 Garand semi-automatic rifles and BAR M1918 Browning machine guns that used the same 7.62 caliber projectiles, Mk2 pineapple hand grenades and M1 bazooka portable anti-tank rocket launchers, the other groups of insurgents had weapons captured from the Germans in the clashes during the early days, namely Mauser Kar 98k rifles, MP80 assault rifles, 24 hand grenades and Panzerwurfmine grenades with their Panzerfaust anti-tank bomb launchers; there were also personal knives or taken from domestic kitchens and some double-barrelled shotguns previously secreted in cellars or attics by their fond hunter owners after the German occupation,.
That morning, however, the first gunshot had not been preordained. On the contrary it had ignited spontaneously at the Vomero by relatives of people that had been rounded up. They had stopped an off-road Kübelwagen Typ 82 of the Wehrmacht, killing the marshal who was driving it and putting the other soldiers to flight; other non-organized actions had taken place around Naples soon after and, here and there, carabinieri on patrol and officers of Public Security and the Guardia di Finanza had spontaneously joined the rebel groups.
Shortly before the start of school lessons, ten unarmed high school students had thrown themselves, on the spur of the moment, at three Germans who were on patrol in their Kübelwagen, proceding at walking pace. They had forced them to get out, disarmed them and set fire to their off-road vehicle, while the Alemannic threesome had fled. Those Germans, however, had raised the alarm with their department, and two German platoons had arrived with the support of a powerful sdKfz 231 Schwere Panzerspähwagaen 6 rad armoured car. The ten young people had taken refuge and barricaded themselves in the nearby San Martino Museum and the armored vehicle had begun to strafe the windows, as news of the students’ action and the danger they were in was spreading through Naples, echo after echo.
Among the actions which, instead, the Resistance had prepared, were first of all the well-known attack on the column of German grenadiers in Via Medina and the action of a platoon of carabinieri who, with their colonel commander’s approval had headed to the San Martino Museum aboard a Lancia CM truck23 to fight the Germans were besieging the rebellious students with their short 91muskets and SRCM 3524 hand grenades. Some civilians in the area had spontaneously placed themselves at the side of the Benemerita military.
That same morning, still in response to the democratic leaders’ previous order, one hundred freedom fighters had attacked Castel Sant'Elmo. Inside, among the Germans barricaded there, was the tired platoon of grenadiers who had remained on guard at the armory the whole night, without being relieved because, as we know, the fresh platoon coming on duty had been engaged in combat in Via Medina.
As the pressure of events increased, the post commander, Colonel Scholl, had moved his powerful Tiger- and Panther-class panzers, but a number of them had been blocked and set on fire by rioters, thanks to a few panzerfaust25 stolen from the enemy, American bazookas and Molotov cocktails.
Chapter 5
As the gun fight in Via Medina continued, the head of Police Headquarters, Dr. Carmelo Pelluso, having moved away from the window of his office on the first floor, from which he had cautiously watched the German platoon engaged in combat, was about to call his Deputy Commissioners by intercom to give orders regarding it, when the phone on his desk had started ringing.
At the other end of the line was his direct superior Dr. Soprano. The Prefect had reported to the Chief Commissioner that armed conflict had begun in several areas of Naples and had told him the news that the American armed 5th and the 6th Corps as well as the British 10th were attacking the Germans in the direction of Naples and Avellino and the German units in the field were beginning to fall back, bypassing the Neapolitan city, to consolidate their lines further north. He had concluded by leaving the Commissioner in Chief free to decide which concrete orders to give his men, but with the constraint of not forcing them to fight the Germans.
Dr. Pelluso had not obeyed completely: after saying goodbye to the Prefect, he had indeed commanded his deputies to give their subordinates the simple invitation, not the order, to join the population against the Germans, but he had added decisively: "Tell everyone that I personally am on the insurgents’ side; however anyone, for mere hypothesis, who does not want to follow me will not be in any trouble; he will though have to hand over his gun and remain clonsigned to Police Headquarters in the holding cells."
Carmelo Pelluso was not an anti-fascist of the first hour: like many others, including Deputy Commissioner Vittorio D'Aiazzo, he had carried the Fascist Party card until July 25, mandatory in reality for public officials. He had, however, already joined the Action Party at the end of that month and had not changed sides after the German occupation and the very recent return of Mussolini to the Government of the part of Italy not occupied by the Allied armies. On the contrary, he was now actively collaborating with the leaders of the anti-fascist parties of the Single Revolutionary Front and, first and foremost, with one of its leading exponents, who was also his personal friend, the azionista26 Professor Adolfo Omodeo. On September 1, the latter had been appointed as rector of the University of Naples Federico II by the Badoglio Government. From there he fueled the rebellion against Nazi-fascism among the intellectuals, together with the liberal Benedetto Croce.
The policemen loyal to Mussolini, a commissioner and a dozen agents, graduates and non-commissioned officers had been disarmed and, under the direct control of the chief commissioner, had been locked up, respectfully but under armed escort, in the holding cells. Pelluso had inquired if there were already other prisoners in those rooms and had been told that the only one in a holding cell was a certain, real or presumed, Gennaro Esposito, suspected of the murder of a prostitute named Rosa Demaggi. The commissioner in chief had looked very disappointed.
In those same minutes, Vittorio D'Aiazzo was leaving the barracks from the driveway, at the command of an old, obsolete armored vehicle belonging to Police Headquarters. He considered himself a Christian demoliberal in pectore even though, after tossing away the Fascist card on July 25, he had not joined either the Catholic party or the Liberal party and, unlike the chief commissioner Pelluso, had not made contact with men of the newborn Resistance. On the other hand, that was how it was for the great majority of those Italians who would then fight Nazi-fascism, for over a year and a half, until the end of the war.
Brigadier Marino Bordin had climbed aboard the armored car with Vittorio D'Aiazzo even though, like him, he was tired out from the sleepless night. He was a courageous but rough man and, despite not having political ideas, he harbored deep animosity for the Germans because of their contemptuous arrogance towards the Italians. Two police officers had also boarded the armored vehicle, Tertini and Pontiani, and the ordinary marshal Aroldo Bennato, head mechanic of the police headquarters repair shop, who had placed himself at the wheel. All three were fresh after a night of rest, and had just come on duty.
The armored car, or to be precise the machine gun armoured car as it was catalogued, was a tool from the First World War, an Ansaldo Lancia IZ equipped with three 7.92 mm heavy Maxim machine guns. Only this armored car and two similar to it had not been confiscated from Police Headquarters by the occupants, having been judged no longer of any use because obsolete, unlike the most modern armored cars 611 FIAT 1934/35 and AB FIAT 1940/43 that the Teutonic tank drivers had willingly added to their armored vehicles. The Ansaldo Lancia IZ was a model which was slow and hard to maneuver. But it had considerable firepower, and in fact, when it came into service at the end of the First World War, it had made immediate destruction among the Austrians; moreover, contrary to what the Germans must have thought, the three twin armored cars had been kept in perfect efficiency thanks to periodic reviews by the workshop manager and his mechanics and, for the machine guns, by the gunsmiths.
With the five policemen on board, the armored vehicle had noisily entered Via Medina, emitting smoke, about seventy yards behind the Germans who were still intent on firing Garand rifles on the rioters, while the patriots’ BAR machine gun was now silent with its operator slumped face-down over it, dead. The number of attackers still alive had been reduced to less than half, since the Germans had a so-called Hitler's saw, a tremendous 7.92 mm MG 42 machine gun, the best in the world for performance and lightness. In fact, even today in the 2000s, the model is supplied to NATO27 ; and for every ten bullets inserted into the tapes by the Teutonic machine gunners, one was an armor-piercing type, capable of breaching the crumbling walls and piles of rubble of the two bombed houses, from the cover of which the patriots were firing. Some Germans too were dead on the ground, a small part of their platoon.
Vittorio D'Aiazzo had ordered the warrant officer to stop the vehicle and the police officers to get behind the two machine guns, as he himself got behind the third. The trio had armed, aimed at the enemy grenadiers and, at their superior’s order, had opened fire non-stop despite the risk of jamming the weapons. The three improvised machine gunners had eliminated the enemy platoon, whose men had not had been in time to turn their armor-piercing bullets against the Italian armored MG, though they could have had the better against the slender coverage of the Italian vehicle. Above all, they had not been able to launch an anti-tank bomb with a Panzerfaust, with which they were equipped.
After the massacre of Teutonics, the armored car had slowly resumed its passage, winding its way past the dead and the enemy vehicles; due to insufficient space it had pushed a small truck out of the way. About forty yards away the surviving patriots, only six people, none of whom had been hit, had emerged from the rubble and had come out into the open to meet the armored vehicle. There were five men and a small slender woman who looked no more than eighteen, on her face an expression of contempt.
When the armored arrived about ten paces from the small group, Vittorio had given the order to stop. He got out with three of his men, leaving the wrrant officerl on board at the radio. The policemen and partisans had taken care of the Italians on the ground, sixteen of them, none of whom gave signs of life. Six of them were in appalling condition, four almost sawn in half by bullets from the MG, the fifth was missing the face, replaced by a bloody cavity, the sixth deprived of the skull cap so that you could see his brain and cerebral matter which had come out of his nose had set on his mouth and chin.
The girl had been beside the latter during the fight, and had told D'Aiazzo that the man's brain had pulsed for a while after suffering those devastating blows; impassive, she had concluded the gruesome report saying: "I don’t know if he was still conscious, because he was immobile, but I think so."
"I really hope not!" the Deputy Commissioner had replied rudely, annoyed not so much by the macabre description, but by the coldness that the young woman had shown.
One of the Italians killed had a small bag made of jute slung across his chest which held a US Motorola Handie-Talkie SCR536 one-way radio, light but not powerful; still showing no feeling, the girl had taken it from the deceased and had put it on her shoulder. She had then examined the corpses of the Germans one by one, very carefully, and when she had finished the inspection, her face had darkened.
Vittorio had ordered the removal of the deadly MG machine gun from the tripod with its ribbons of bullets, and had explained that once it had been taken off the support, that weapon could perform very well as a submachine gun, because it was not very heavy, just a few dozen pounds, and the bipod folded under the barrel could be lifted up. The girl had appropriated it, putting down her Garand rifle, saying that she knew how to use it. She had put two ribbons of MG bullets across her body bandolier-style and the machine gun on her right shoulder, her hand on the barrel to keep it balanced.
D'Aiazzo had grabbed the dangerous Panzerfaust and asked: "Do any of you know how to use this thing?" He had had a yes from one of the six who, although he was in civilian clothes, had declared that he was a grenadier and had explained that he had been "caught by surprise here in Naples by the armistice."
A moment later the warrant officer had leaned out the door of the armored vehicle and told his superior that he had picked up the news from the radio room of Police Headquarters, that a female voice had telephoned their switchboard reporting that Germans were machine-gunning the houses in Piazza Carità.
Vittorio had decided to intervene. Since the armoured car could accommodate up to six people, he had asked the young woman if she wanted to get in. She had refused and, given the urgency, he had not repeated the invitation, and ordered his men to get on board. He was the last to get inside and had commanded the warrant officer to head to the target.
Meanwhile, many other policemen were leaving Police Headquarters to confront Germans: some left on foot through the front door or a secondary door, some via the driveway on trucks, jeeps, three-wheeled motorbikes or on board the two remaining armored cars. Most of them had nineteenth-century '91muskets, some had a modern MAB submachine gun28 slung over their shoulders, many were carrying SRCM bombs or tear gas grenades in their pockets. Those cops were going to the most diverse destinations. In particular, upon chief commissioner Pelluso’s specific order, a platoon with several men in civilian clothes and the majority in uniform, had boarded an OM brand flatbed truck and headed towards Piazzetta del Nilo, only a kilometer away from Via Medina: also on that truck, in the cabin next to the driver, was the alleged sergeant major Gennaro Esposito.
The armored car under the command of D'Aiazzo had set off again, clanking and sputtering, with the six patriots walking behind it. Warrant Officer Bennato drove it slowly, not only because of the vehicle’s age, but so the partisans on foot who were using it as a kind of bulwark, could keep up with it without tiring themselves. After the first hundred yards or so one of the six, looking at the minute build of the young woman, had offered to exchange the heavy MG with his own rifle, but she had refused annoyed and snarling "Naah" which, to all intents and purposes, must have meant no.
As they approached Piazza Carità, the eleven patriots had heard volleys of machine gun fire. Two minutes later, the echoes of assault rifles had reached their ears followed by a detonation. After another couple of minutes, more volleys of machine gun fire were heard and little by little as the armored car approached, the crackle had become louder. They had almost arrived at the square, and it was now beyond doubt that the shooting was taking place right there.
Vittorio had ordered Bordin and the two police officers to go to the machine guns and arm them, and to be ready to shoot at his command. He had gone behind a forward embrasure to watch what was happening outside, ready to order them to open fire.
Chapter 6
The armored car had emerged at walking pace from Via Cesare Battisti into Piazza Carità.
The German dragoon loomed through the forward embrasure, standing still about forty yards away at 45 degrees to the right of the Italian vehicle: it was a Panther tank with a formidable 110 millimeters armor, armed with a 75 mil cannon and two MG machine guns, one in the turret and one in the body of the hull forward, which until a short time before had been spewing fire. It almost seemed as if the beast was resting after a gigantic effort. And it was evident where its effort had been directed, because on the ground lay the bloody bodies of civilians of both sexes. The windows of the buildings all around the square were shattered, and there were deep rents in the walls. A semi-destroyed off-road Kübelwagen that was still smoking and four charred corpses, one inside and three on the ground, wearing Wehrmacht helmets which were now black, made it clear that the retaliation of the German tank had followed an attack on the truck with a Molotov cocktail:
At the moment of the assault on the Kübelwagen, the Panther was patroling the nearby Strada del Formale. The crew had heard two explosions a couple of seconds apart, and the tank leader, a career marshal named Konrad Müller, had realized which direction they had come from. He had ordered the vehicle to head towards Piazza Carità. When they arrived, the tankers had found the remains of their four comrades and the truck, but there was no one in sight because, after throwing two incendiary bottles, one of which had hit the mark, the bombers had fled, and the residents had taken refuge in the houses and shops, closing the doors and shutters.
Without hesitation, the non-commissioned officer had given the order to machine-gun the facades of all nearby buildings at eye level and, while his MGs crackled, he had radioed the Command for instructions. They had ordered him to take revenge by rounding up civilians, ten for every German killed, and to shoot them on the spot. The corporal deputy commander of the Panther and two tankers had got out armed with MP80 assault rifles and model 24 hand grenades and had thrown the grenades at shutters and gates, killing or injuring those who had sheltered inside.
With a loudspeaker, Marshal Mülle in a stunted Italian had ordered everyone to come out the houses, otherwise all the buildings would be blassted with the cannon, with the residents inside them; he had promised that if they presented themselves to the German sub-team in an orderly manner, they would just be questioned and then let go. Forty-two people had thus been rounded up, two more than ten times the dead Germans. All the same, even though the corporal had communicated to the tank chief who had appeared from the turret, that there was an excess of the people rounded up, his superior had considered the measure appropriate. He was a convinced Nazi even if he was not SS, and he had given the order to "execute" them all. Those unarmed civilians had been shot down by bursts of assault-rifle fire.
When the butchers had climbed back aboard their panzer, the marshal had commanded the gunners to start shooting again all around, this time aiming at the upper floors. The terrorist barrages continued for many minutes while that racist Konrad Müller, expressing himself in his Bavarian dialect, had pronounced hateful expressions that in Italian would have sounded like this: "Italians pieces of shit! Traitorous bastards! Breed of pigs!"
The steel dragon was about to resume its patrol through the streets when the armored vehicle with more Italian pieces of shit on board had arrived. It was much inferior to the Panther in both armor and firepower. Warrant Officer Bennato could do nothing but attempt to backtrack quickly, in the very faint hope that the enemy had other orders to carry out immediately and would not launch themselves in pursuit. He had braked suddenly, without needing to receive the command, engaged reverse gear and stepped on the gas, while the six patriots on foot, seeing the armored car starting to reverse, had stopped and were preceding it in the retreat. Only part of the vehicle had managed to slip into Via Battisti, however, because the engine had flooded and turned off because of the sloppy maneuver, and had stopped with the muzzle still exposed to the enemy.
Contrary to the Italian’s faint hope, instead of resuming the patrol around Naples the commander of the Panther had decided to destroy the rebel vehicle and had ordered the gunner to aim straight at the enemy bow.
Through the embrasure Vittorio had glimpsed the turret of the tank start to rotate directing fire at the armored vehicle, and had shouted at his men to get out and lose themselves in the meanders of Via Battisti. As he gave the order, he himself had headed to the door, and was the first to touch the ground. He would later have reasoned that, after all, lingering would not have helped to get the others out faster; in reality the instinct of self-preservation had simply prevailed in him. Marshal
The cannon shot had rumbled an instant after Bennato, for last, had jumped out. The projectile had exploded precisely on the exposed part of the vehicle at which the gunner had aimed. In explosive sympathy, the Panzerwurfmine anti-tank bomb had also exploded inside the grenadier’s Panzerfaust, the weapon which until a moment before had been on his shoulder but which he had thrown away to give himself a better chance of escape. The Italian armored vehicle had been hurled backwards and set on fire, hitting and crushing the four patriots nearest to it, as thick large splinters spread like the spokes of a wheel, wreaking havoc.
Warrant Officer Bennato had been killed, hit in the neck by a red-hot piece of sheet metal, and had died instantly with his head cut sliced from his body. The grenadier had been torn apart by the Panzerwurfmine bomb and shrapnel from the Panzerfaust, to which he had still been too close. The officers Tertini and Pontiani, hit in the back by a hail of fragments, had died minutes later, face down on the pavement. Only the Deputy Commissioner, the brigadier and the young woman had managed to get away, just a moment before the blast, into the nearest entrance hall. At the same time, because of the violent displacement of air, the decrepit exterior walls of two old buildings standing next to the armored car, had collapsed dragging the residents with them and burying them to death.
Vittorio and his two companions had rushed through the courtyard where they had taken refuge and then, passing under a transversal arch of a wall, they had entered the court of another building. Here the young woman, who had already thrown away the MG machine gun at the start of the hasty retreat, had got rid of the tapes of ammunition she was wearing across her body and was about to toss away the bag with the radio as well, but Vittorio had taken it from her and, without a word, he had put it crossbody on the brigadier: "It could come in useful," he had said. Going warily from court to courtyard, from courtyard to air shaft, from air shaft to courtyard, the trio had been able to arrive in Via del Chiostro, where there were no Germans, a street which ended and still does today in Via Monteoliveto, where the girl lived. She had intended to take refuge precisely in her own home. The two policemen instead planned to get to Via Medina, which followed Via Monteoliveto beyond the intersection with Corso Umberto I, and return to Police Headquarters.
Vittorio had peeked out into Via Monteoliveto glancing left and right. With dismay, not far away to his right where the street met Corso Umberto I, he had seen a checkpoint of a platoon of Waffen29 SS equipped with trucks, motorbikes and a 47 mm Panzerjäger self-propelled tank-destroyer cannon. This was an antiquated model resulting from the adaptation of an even more ancient panzer and a not very effective weapon towards modern tanks, but was deadly against non-armored vehicles and buildings. The Germans had lined up the vehicles behind each other along Corso Umberto I, where it intersected Via Medina and Via Monteoliveto. The purpose was evidently to prevent vehicles from entering the Corso or crossing it. Since the tank-destroyer cannon was facing Via Medina, Vittorio had assumed, correctly, that the blockade was to stop vehicles and men from leaving Police Headquarters. He had also imagined that, to hinder the passage of vehicles in both directions, there would have to be another place further beyond Police Headquarters itself, approximately at the point where the patriots' battle with the German grenadiers had taken place.
So, crossing Corso Umberto I and joining his colleagues who were still in the office was not on the cards. It was now a matter of everyone sheltering in the girl's house. Since the brigadier was in uniform, D'Aiazzo had thought it best, before the trio arrived in sight on Via Monteoliveto and perhaps be noticed by the Germans, to give his employee the jacket of his own gray lanital suit30 . In that way, he could slip it over his own jacket, hiding it as best it could and covering the bag with the radio that was hanging over the non-commissioned officer’s abdomen. Which is what they did. Marino had also hidden his military cap on his chest, over the uniform jacket and under the suit jacket before buttoning it.
The girl's house stood to the left of Via del Chiostro on the same side of Via Monteoliveto where the other exited. One at a time about thirty yards from each other, the threesome had moved, with the young woman in front, the brigadier behind her and the Deputy Commissioner last. As he had advised, they had walked slowly and, although the Nazis had seen them at the checkpoint, which was not safe, they had certainly aroused no suspicions since no German had left the intersection to come and check their documents.
It was a small building with only two apartments, one above each other, the most spacious of which was on the first floor with ceilings ten feet high, while the other, where the young woman lived with her parents, was a mezzanine with eight feet ceilings; it overlooked a warehouse on the ground floor that opened onto Via Monteoliveto through a small door to the left of the front door of the building as you entered, and even further left, a driveway which was closed at that moment by a shutter. The house was owned by a peddler of fruit and vegetables who lived on the first floor and used the warehouse for his business, while the mezzanine was rented to the young woman’s family.
The girl had opened the front door and entered the small atrium of the building, which had a musty smell, leaving the door pulled to and waiting for her companions. Some fresh air had come in through the crack. One by one the two men had come inside. Vittorio had pulled the door shut behind him and with the young woman in the lead, the group had immediately gone up the half flight of stairs that led to the mezzanine.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
