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.They were joined in swarms by people of the town and countryside,almost as though they had been called.Seizing everything within theirreach, they had made all kinds of bundles for themselves, which they hadtaken away on their shoulders, or on their heads, or under their arms, ordragging behind them in the dust.Those dark Latin women, who until the previous day had been sosolemn, balancing copper amphorae on their heads, moving slowly aroundtheir musical fountains, had lost all dignity.One of them, overloaded with goods, had had one of her bundles fall tothe ground and hadn t moved from her spot but cried out in an angry yetplaintive voice for help.And it was only a bundle of tent pegs, as I hap-pened to see, which would have been useless to her.In any case, it was bet-ter for that equipment to end up in the hands of civilians than with theGermans, who without a doubt would return in the following days.A deep silence welcomed us now.Near the fallen gate the small house ofthe Life Guards was reduced to a pile of debris.The Germans, after someshooting, had blown it up with the Italian weapons stacked inside, follow-ing a truce.The moon beat down silently on the oaks of the wide courtyard and onthe buildings destroyed by the anti-aircraft guns.We realized that not a liv-ing soul had remained in the barracks.The few souls of the dead yes, maybe,crying, next to the dark stain of blood in which that morning he had pouredout its life, the pitiful end of our arms and of our dignity.Under a row of oaks was a well-aligned battery of heavy anti-aircraftguns, so essential to us, that the Germans allies had given us too late andin too small a quantity.We touched the steel of the breech blocks, the im-prints of the hammer blows with which the Germans had nailed them.While we wandered, a shadow emerged from one of the buildings andcame in front of us.We stopped.38 The shadow also stopped.After having scrutinized us with head leaningforward, it raised its hand to its forehead in a military salute; from the shapeof the uniform I realized that it was an old noncommissioned officer; Ivaguely caught sight of his gray hair. I am the paymaster, officers.There s still money in the pay box andtherefore I can t abandon it.But I ve been left without orders.What ishappening in Italy? Give me some orders. You want orders? we answered, as pity for him and for us clutched atour throats. Listen: do you know the proclamation of the armistice? Inshort, it says that we must not hand over our things to anyone.Here is anorder then, of which we assume responsibility: take away the funds that arein the case, and look after them.When in a few days the situation clearsup, you ll deliver them to the authorities.First jot down our names. Because we hadn t given him an evasive answer, the paymaster listenedto us, stunned, trying to see our faces with his head pushed forward.Littleby little, however, his head was retracted. Yes, sir, he murmured softly, finally. Good, I said, these are our names. I repeated them several times. You will take them down. He agreed: Yes, of course. But he did not obey.Undoubtedly he hadremained quiet, watching over the funds in his custody, waiting for whoknows what orders that would allow him to be in accord with regulations.He had respected regulations his whole life; they had been his guide andhis boundary, and his pride had been in respecting them.Now he couldnot admit that regulations had vanished and become nothing.In truth thepaymaster wasn t waiting for orders; he wandered around looking for themeaning of his life, which had slipped out of his hands and turned intosmoke.*Three days later, on the afternoon of September 12, even in Nettuno, theGermans had brought an end to the disorder that had followed the armi-stice.After having convened all Italian officers at a given time in the smallpalace of the command for a clarifying report, they had taken away theirpistols, then, shouting and even kicking them, had pushed them outside,toward the crowded trucks.Many had fallen into their hands, since many officers remained in thecity four days after the armistice.As for me, knowing the Germans, I notonly had not let myself be deceived but also up until the last minute had39 tried to stop the few colleagues with whom I was acquainted from beingbrought down (I had come to Nettuno from Bolzano only a week before).I had followed some of them, arguing, up to the door of the palace, on thesides of which two German sentries mounted guard.I had succeeded ingrasping the wrist of the lieutenant commander of my battery, to keep himfrom going inside; finally, nodding his head indulgently, he asked me to re-lease his wrist, and had entered last of all.(The memory of this littleepisode, as I learned later, would distress him above all else during his harshyear and a half in a German prison.)On that occasion I saw with my own eyes the kind of blindness thatstrikes men, as they lose even the most ordinary capacity for discernmentthat could dissuade them from following an already formed opinion.TheGospel says it well: they would not even believe in the resurrected dead. When the old general in command of the district, who had guaranteedthe Germans deceit, groped his way, dazed, toward the cab of one of thetrucks, he was stopped by a heavy-set German sentry and pushed with kicksto the back of the truck, along with the others.Men of proven worth, who would have been difficult to capture on thebattlefield by anyone, were among the many taken in so miserably by thedeceit.40 2THE ONLY ONE to listen had been AntonioMoroni.The following day, at first light, Antonio and I set out to reach themountains of Abruzzi.German columns, camouflaged in yellow and brown, were halted in thesmall city, mostly along the sea route colored by the morning sun.One ofthem, in tanks, arrived noisily from the north and passed near us, headedprobably toward Salerno and the Western forces that had landed.We both wore plain civilian clothes acquired the previous night; never-theless, when we saw from afar a German roadblock in the distance, we leftthe road and went around it by crossing yards and vegetable gardens dampwith dew.It broke our hearts to see what was happening and what was about tohappen
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