Naples ’44

Place · Town

Battipaglia

Battipaglia is a town and comune in the Province of Salerno, in the Campania region of southern Italy. With around 50,000 inhabitants, it is one of the most populous municipalities in the province after Salerno itself, and the main agricultural, industrial and railway hub of the Sele Plain.

In the book

Seen only in ruins — carpet-bombed by the Allies — as Lewis hitches back toward liberated Naples: an early measure of the destruction visited on Italian towns on mere suspicion.

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Appears in 3 diary entries.

  1. September 12 1943
    A German counterattack triggers real chaos — panicked tank crews, gas scares, and rumours that Mark Clark may abandon the beachhead.
  2. September 18 1943
    An account of a botched American paratroop drop, followed by the grim sight of German tank crews killed in their vehicles.
  3. October 4 1943
    Discharged and hitching toward newly-liberated Naples, Lewis passes through Battipaglia, devastated by Allied carpet bombing, and learns nearby Altavilla was shelled to rubble on the mere suspicion it held Germans. Further on, he witnesses desperate Neapolitan housewives publicly exchanging sex for tins of rations with American soldiers.

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