Naples ’44

Theme

Personal reflection

Lewis’s own introspection, changing perspective, mood

Appears in 16 diary entries.

  1. September 11 1943
    HQ moves to a tranquil rural setting, but there's a creeping sense that the Fifth Army is unprepared and undefended.
  2. September 21 1943
    Ordered back to the idle beachhead life at Paestum despite its pointlessness; the section finally gets a small, real intelligence task that evening.
  3. November 1 1943
    Lewis is indignant at the drastic cut to informant funds, arguing money isn't really what motivates their most dedicated Italian contacts.
  4. 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.
  5. March 19 1944
    Vesuvius erupts in a spectacular, awe-inspiring display, which Lewis compares to Pliny's ancient description of the eruption that destroyed Pompeii.
  6. March 20 1944
    Ashfall blankets the region; Lewis consults a seismologist about the risk to military installations near the volcano.
  7. April 1 1944
    A leisurely boat trip to Capri with Captain Frazer, Lola, and her friend Susanna captures a rare golden, carefree day amid the war.
  8. May 31 1944
    Post-Fascist Italy's political life fragments into dozens of parties, some espousing bizarre or fringe ideas, reflecting a climate of instability.
  9. July 12 1944
    A rare day off as tourist to Pozzuoli reveals a town strangely untouched by the war, calmer and more foreign-feeling than the rest of the Naples area.
  10. July 26 1944
    An almost novelistic assignment to escort a mysterious, allegedly dangerous female internee to Rome for interrogation raises awkward questions among the section.
  11. August 18 1944
    Lewis settles into a stripped-down, damaged hotel in Benevento, comically failing to avoid the pasta he'd meant to forgo in favor of rations.
  12. 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.
  13. September 23 1944
    Lewis realizes with unease that locals now regard him as a possible *jettatore* (bearer of the evil eye), noting superstitious gestures made in his presence. He then reflects that a year after liberation, still hungry and diseased amid lawless ruins with only the distant promise of corrupt democracy ahead, Neapolitans may reasonably look back on the Mussolini years as a lost paradise by comparison.
  14. September 25 1944
    A reunion with an old colleague who has become almost entirely assimilated into Southern Italian life prompts reflection on how deeply the region changes people.
  15. October 6 1944
    Back in Naples, Lewis finds the section overworked, understaffed, and increasingly worn down by illness after months of dispersal. He reflects that the strange fascination of the intelligence work itself — a kind of legalised eavesdropping on humanity — is what keeps him working dangerously long hours despite the toll.
  16. October 24 1944
    Lewis is abruptly ordered to a new mission repatriating Russian ex-POWs, sensing this marks the end of his time in Naples.

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