Naples ’44

Place · Town

Afragola

Afragola
Original uploader was Utente:Danielevincenzo at it.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

Background

Afragola is a city and comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the region of Campania in southern Italy. It has 61,581 inhabitants.

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In Naples ’44

One of the small towns ringing Naples that Lewis polices, standing in for the poor, Camorra-shadowed hinterland just beyond the city. It recurs around denunciations, vendettas, wire-theft prosecutions and the bandit Domenico ‘Lupo’.

Appears in 10 diary entries.

  1. October 8 1943
    Floods of dubious civilian tips overwhelm the section, including a "spy" who turns out to be rumored a witch by superstitious villagers.
  2. December 5 1943
    Lewis avoids an unwanted arrest by spending the day on unrelated errands, reflecting on the unit's discomfort with being used for private vendettas.
  3. December 18 1943
    Lewis describes how gullible unit commanders and their local interpreters get dragged into baseless denunciations and village feuds, including against a corrupt police marshal.
  4. January 5 1944
    Lewis takes charge of security for several nearby towns, unknowingly located deep in Camorra territory, and finds poverty behind their picturesque exteriors.
  5. January 12 1944
    The wire-theft crackdown continues to unfairly target small, desperate offenders like an elderly scrap-merchant, while real traders go untouched.
  6. February 12 1944
    Lewis reflects on the cultural gulf between cosmopolitan Naples and the archaic, vendetta-bound countryside just miles away, as seen through Lattarullo's ignorance of it.
  7. May 3 1944
    The story of Domenico "Lupo" (Wolf), a released bandit who reorganizes his Camorra-style Robin Hood operation with Allied-issued credentials.
  8. May 28 1944
    A grim account of widespread, brutal mass sexual violence against civilians committed by French colonial troops advancing through nearby towns.
  9. June 4 1944
    A brutal act of vigilante revenge against Moroccan soldiers accused of atrocities is reported, carried out with ritualized, disturbing cruelty.
  10. June 9 1944
    Hospitalized again with malaria, Lewis receives a parade of eccentric visitors from his network of contacts, to the disapproval of hospital staff.

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