I know we told Agostino we’re going to Naples and Pompeii, I said, but there’s no need if you’re not up for it. No, Dad wanted to go. Rather than take the Autostrada we headed off down Route 6 again, the Via Casilina.
As we drove through a pass we saw two shadowy green tanks on a groomed hillside, and then, on the other side of the road, a group of parked motorcycles decked out in military dun in front of a cemetery. We stopped out of curiosity. This was the Italian Military Cemetery at Monte Lungo where, in 1943, an Italian contingent had been wiped out in a matter of minutes by German fire in a battle before Cassino. The owners of the vintage bikes were a group of Italian historical enthusiasts, they said, dressed in military uniforms of various sorts — the German motor cycle corps (a bizarre one-piece khaki coverall, if this fellow was to believed, a grotesque cross between jodhpurs and baggy overalls), Italian Alpine troops and the like. We talked to them — they were happy to meet a real old soldier — and Dad told them a story or two. Everyone had treated him kindly, but these people showed respect. They shared their disdain for the Americani and in particular the dangers of Yankee “friendly fire”.
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There were always these sneers at the Americans: the brief periods they spent in the line, their profligacy with munitions (“Million Dollar Hill”, for example, undefended by the Germans when it was bombed), their under-trained and inaccurate pilots, their alleged cowardice (such as Dad’s story about the Kiwi machine gunners, or another he told about a jeep-load of Yanks who decided they’d come far enough when a shell landed nearby at the “Crossroads” on Route 6 behind Trocchio).
One of Dad’s favourite stories related to a massive American gun that was firing over Trocchio towards Monastery Hill. Messages from the battery’s OP on Trocchio were relayed through a loud speaker at the gun site and there was huge amusement when the speaker blurted out that they had overshot the mark by “six mahls” — in Dad’s tortuous and offensive Yank accent. It was partly sneer and partly envy. These guys had the gear — shame they couldn’t use it. This state of affairs was contrasted with the situation earlier, in the Desert. His tales of little Honey Tanks circling German Tigers like Red Indians around a covered wagon. The Tigers could kill at several miles, but to penetrate their armour the Honeys had to get within a couple of hundred yards. Always the same theme. We didn’t have the tools for the job.
I wondered how fair these stories were to the Yanks. There were similar accounts of sacrifice from their men as from the others at Cassino, but it was hard to escape the conclusion that there was perhaps a cannon fodder approach from the American command that the other nations couldn’t afford. We have more planes and guns, more munitions and men — let’s throw it at them. Men like Freyberg and Kippenberger had seen action in the first war, and weren’t as wasteful of lives, that currency the generals spend.
I’d listened to Dad’s stories of the New Zealand Division’s first action in Libya and of the moment of truth facing every reinforcement under fire for the first time — What do I do? What’s happening? Am I a coward if I duck?
And I thought of the kids — my kids, why not? — coming under fire for the first time ever on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Before we left I’d read Maurice Shadbolt’s book of interviews with Gallipoli veterans, and I was of a mind to wonder how one got from being me to being a soldier. I certainly didn’t want to play soldiers, like these Italians with their motorbikes and their uniforms. But to each his own.
We took photos, watched them mix with teenage admirers of their bikes and then looked through the museum, where Dad shuddered at a Breda machine gun. The Italians could really handle their guns, he said, no doubt about it. But you got up and into them and they always gave up. We captured thousands of the bastards. I don’t think most of them were really interested in the war. Their officers were real bastards, the ones that I came into contact with.
We were soon out of the hills and on to the plains. Towns appeared, became drabber and busier, and finally we were on the outskirts of Naples, driving with a thousand others down a frantic narrow road walled by tall balconied apartment buildings and laundry flapping in the sun. It went for miles, direct. I’m bloody glad I don’t live here, said Dad. Bloody hell.
The footpaths were busy, too, with people working, walking, talking. Occasional groups of likely lads on the footpaths and many more in pairs on their scooters reminded us of the guidebook warnings and we wound up the windows and locked the doors. But it was hot as hell and the windows were soon down again. Cars and scooters wove in and out like maniacs, but Dad consigned himself to my care with unusual grace, alternating between the opinion that you never got this sort of consideration out of New Zealand drivers, and the occasional bloody hell as some fool pressed the issue a little harder than most.
Cars, mostly tiny thank god, were driven everywhere against the footpath and over it like leaves against a fence. Plenty of parking. We continued into town and suddenly were on a street, God knows what, which oozed money and elegance. Till then the opinion that this was the third world had made sense. But this was Italy, if overcrowded and weary, and the European style here was neither ersatz nor imported.
We got trapped in a jam at a roundabout. A blue and white police car screamed past us going in the other direction. Then the jam freed and we came out and saw high ground that seemed to indicate the bay, and some sense of where we should go. We were following Dad’s theory (use a compass or the sun and forget about the roads) to which I was a convert as we had no map. Once we reached the bay we could turn left and sooner or later find a road south to Vesuvius and Salerno. We reached the road paralleling the bay and the traffic sped up. Immediately the fact that we were travelling on rough cobbles became apparent. We had no choice but to turn right, which was the wrong direction, but eventually saw an opportunity that shot us across the road into something official, from which we had to make a smart about turn. We headed off down the strada. Although in typical fashion signs were small and far between we were at least heading south on a main road. The roadsides were indeed third world, lined with stalls for fruit and knickknacks, terracotta and god knows what. We stumbled on, the cobbles drumming into our ears and backsides.
Our strategy bore fruit when I realised that Ercolano was Herculaneum. Then we saw Vesuvius, and then, having got lost in the streets leading up to Vesuvius, the Autostrada. We took it, though Dad was sure we had already overshot Pompeii, and stopped at a service centre for food and directions.
Three good things happened at once. We found that we were just one kilometre from the Pompeii exit, that Dad liked foccacia with salami and formaggia, and that they stocked limone liquore, of which I bought three bottles for presents. Dad had a brief misunderstanding with the toilet attendant, who wanted 200 lire, and we headed off. From then on he pissed for free whenever he could.
Pompeii was huge – a real city under the brow of Vesuvius. In a sense I found the streets of little houses the most interesting, squat little stone terraces with water urns let into the stone walls, narrow stone beds, introverted little nooks and crannies (everything so laborious, no bigger than necessary). We walked for ages, or so it seemed to Dad, who soon started to complain that it all looked the same. It did too, I realised — we had entered areas that were away from the tourist route. It was like wandering around in Jakarta or Jaisalmer and being reminded that we all have to earn a crust — at least those of us who live in small houses like these, and some of us who don’t.
We returned to the main plaza and walked through the baths with their impressionistic little frieze of bearded men and the carved decorations — beautiful, but a little rough and unpolished — not the last thing we saw that made me think how almost contemporary the decorations were, how thoughtful, as if the idea was more important than the craft. Get on with the next thing. Turning another corner we stumbled onto the rear of a ristorante in the dead city, an elegant little dining area — antiquarian chic — and then took the long walk down the carriage way, with its worn ruts, to the rather lovely Villa di Misteri and its frescos.
When we were back Dad returned to the car and I went on to the Villa di Vieteti, full of — one might say — designer frescoes (little vignettes in the centre of large coloured panels, very contemporary) and gurgling matrons admiring the weary priapic at the entrance. I trudged on to the amphitheatre, quiet and green, with occasional couples snacking on the terraces, and back down the main street. It was here that workmen were excavating the road, with millenia-old soil piled brown and weary beside the trench, as if it had been turned over and inspected a thousand times before.
I took more photos of quiet stone gardens – and stumbled over a little street with a knocking shop in it. It was busy with a tour group and a camera crew anxious to get more point of view shots before they dismantled their lighting. The stone beds here were a little more sportive, but the rooms themselves were only big enough for the sexual specialities depicted above each doorway. Like the designer frescoes, the package tour crowd, the TV crew, and the fact that this area had been thoroughly restored, suggested that public tastes change little.
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Dad was waiting patiently and we drove straight home down the Autostrada. Dinner was a breeze. Some smoked salmon went down really well and that was all Dad wanted. We had by now determined a number things which he could eat. His other early mainstay was vegetable soup. Later he added grilled fish, fettuccine alle funghi and (at an expensive Roman ristorante) roast beef and mashed potato. Gelati, strawberries and cake were fine desserts. A packet of vanilla wine from home lasted the fortnight and he never touched the weetbix Heather had suggested he bring as a second comfort food item. He never had trouble getting tea.
We both slept well and, believing we were going to Agostino’s, checked out.