Naples ’44

Theme

Crime & banditry

Crime & banditry
Unknown · Public domain

Background

Camorra, bandits, vendettas, organized crime

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In Naples ’44

Appears in 17 diary entries.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. December 20 1943
    Investigating a wartime denunciation case, Lewis interviews an informer with a criminal record about his role in betraying escaped Indian soldiers to the Germans.
  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 7 1944
    A visit to Donna Maria "La Pitonessa," a former circus performer turned wealthy landowner, in the Camorra zone.
  6. February 5 1944
    Thieves brazenly strip the wheels from vehicles at the supposedly secure Field Security Headquarters, showcasing local audacity and ingenuity.
  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 7 (ii) 1944
    Frustrated by unresolved banditry, the General pressures Italian police into a harsher new anti-bandit operation, which Lewis observes as an onlooker.
  9. May 11 1944
    A visit to the confident, well-connected prisoner Fortuna, who expects to be acquitted of a penicillin-racketeering charge despite Lewis's evidence.
  10. June 4 1944
    A brutal act of vigilante revenge against Moroccan soldiers accused of atrocities is reported, carried out with ritualized, disturbing cruelty.
  11. August 20 1944
    The local Marshal frets over bandit threats to the town, but Lewis notes how absurdly under-armed and unprepared the local security forces really are.
  12. August 21 1944
    A schoolmaster explains the long, entrenched history of banditry in Southern Italy, including bandits' traditional ties to landowners.
  13. 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.
  14. September 11 1944
    A reported gangland-style shooting near a café vanishes without a trace or a single willing witness, revealing the town's undercurrent of fear and silence.
  15. September 16 1944
    A section colleague is shot and wounded by a bandit disguised as an American officer, forcing Lewis to weigh his own role in the anti-bandit effort.
  16. September 19 1944
    A tense overnight checkpoint operation against suspected bandit traffic is set up on a lonely road, staffed by a poorly coordinated mix of Allied and Italian forces.
  17. September 20 1944
    A search for confiscated goods turns up little, and Lewis senses a cooling, more guarded attitude from the Marshal and townspeople toward him. He reflects that what he'd been treating as bribery may really be a customary, expected exchange of courtesy gifts — and that his own rigid refusal of it has cost him local goodwill.

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