Naples ’44

Place · Town

Nola

Nola
Bocachete · Public domain

Background

Nola is a city and comune in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania, southern Italy. It lies on the plain between Mount Vesuvius and the Apennines. It is traditionally credited as the diocese that introduced bells to Christian worship.

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In Naples ’44

Appears mainly through its Feast of the Lily, whose towering ceremonial structures and procession foul the army’s telephone lines — one of the book’s set-piece collisions between folk ritual and the occupying army.

Appears in 5 diary entries.

  1. October 6 1943
    Arriving in a ruined, waterless Naples, the section settles into a grand requisitioned palazzo on the Riviera di Chiaia.
  2. November 25 1943
    Wartime hunger drives extreme culinary improvisation, including eating storks and rumors of a manatee served at a banquet for General Clark.
  3. April 7 1944
    Interviews with escaped British POWs reveal the risky generosity of Italian camp workers who smuggled them civilian clothing.
  4. June 27 1944
    A colleague describes a revived, medieval-style flagellant procession at Guardia Sanframondi; two more feast stories follow — Nola's Feast of the Lily disrupting army telephone lines, and a trip to Amalfi for the thrice-yearly 'manna' relic of St Andrew.
  5. August 25 1944
    A grenade attack on an MP sergeant prompts a tense but ultimately toothless conference about how to respond to the now-motorized bandits.

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