Naples ’44

Theme

War & violence

Combat, bombing, casualties, atrocities, military operations

Appears in 32 diary entries.

  1. September 8 1943
    Aboard ship off Italy, news arrives of the armistice; Lewis notes the total lack of intelligence about what awaits them at Salerno.
  2. September 9 1943
    Landing at Paestum amid dead soldiers and eerie calm; the section is left rudderless, with no briefing, next to the ancient temples.
  3. September 10 1943
    A strafing run and near-miss becomes almost routine; Lewis contrasts his own hardened nerves with the panic of green American troops.
  4. September 11 1943
    HQ moves to a tranquil rural setting, but there's a creeping sense that the Fifth Army is unprepared and undefended.
  5. September 12 1943
    A German counterattack triggers real chaos — panicked tank crews, gas scares, and rumours that Mark Clark may abandon the beachhead.
  6. September 14 1943
    An intense night battle near the beachhead, with naval bombardment lighting the sky and hurried, ad hoc arming of the intelligence men.
  7. September 15 1943
    A comrade's harrowing return from Salerno; confusion persists as officers and men lose track of each other amid ongoing shelling.
  8. September 17 1943
    A brief, peaceful excursion to the hill village of Capaccio offers a striking contrast to the surrounding warfare — including a first encounter with a German POW.
  9. September 18 1943
    An account of a botched American paratroop drop, followed by the grim sight of German tank crews killed in their vehicles.
  10. September 20 1943
    Reaching Salerno amid ongoing fighting, Lewis witnesses a brutal interrogation of an Italian civilian by a British officer.
  11. September 28 1943
    Hospitalized with malaria, Lewis hears disturbing accounts from wounded American soldiers about orders to kill surrendering Germans.
  12. 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.
  13. October 6 1943
    Arriving in a ruined, waterless Naples, the section settles into a grand requisitioned palazzo on the Riviera di Chiaia.
  14. October 20 1943
    A motorcycle ride brings Lewis upon the horrifying aftermath of a sudden explosion, with bodies and dust coating a frozen, silent street scene.
  15. October 22 1943
    Amid ongoing famine, Lewis investigates an assault on a peasant family by deserters, and is later approached with a plea for help from one of the victims.
  16. October 23 1943
    A false tip about mass delayed-action mines triggers a chaotic mass evacuation of Naples, including hospital patients and the bedridden.
  17. October 24 1943
    Lewis is sent to investigate whether the German soldier behind the mine hoax should be executed as a spy.
  18. 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.
  19. January 14 1944
    Amid a flood of usually-worthless rumors, one turns out to be true — an imminent Anzio landing — sending Lewis scrambling to trace a security leak.
  20. January 22 1944
    The Anzio landing succeeds, seemingly aided by German unpreparedness — underscored by discarded operational maps found being burned by locals for fuel.
  21. March 5 1944
    The growing, increasingly careless traffic of "line-crossers" and letter-couriers moving between Allied and German territory raises serious security concerns.
  22. March 14 1944
    A harrowing case of a boy maimed by soldiers guarding supply trucks against child gangs who steal from them.
  23. March 15 1944
    After a bombing raid, Lewis witnesses the devastating aftermath among civilians in Santa Lucia, including dead children and grieving families.
  24. April 7 1944
    Interviews with escaped British POWs reveal the risky generosity of Italian camp workers who smuggled them civilian clothing.
  25. May 28 1944
    A grim account of widespread, brutal mass sexual violence against civilians committed by French colonial troops advancing through nearby towns.
  26. June 4 1944
    A brutal act of vigilante revenge against Moroccan soldiers accused of atrocities is reported, carried out with ritualized, disturbing cruelty.
  27. August 3 1944
    Lewis assesses the security risk of holding a wounded, notorious Italian saboteur in a hospital ward run by a nurse he knew previously in Algeria.
  28. August 12 1944
    Posted to Benevento to single-handedly take over security duties, Lewis finds a city devastated by an air raid and living in prolonged, near-universal mourning.
  29. August 13 1944
    A resourceful orphaned girl, Giuseppina, comes seeking a blanket — a valuable currency — revealing the precarious survival of war orphans.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. October 8 1944
    Mob violence breaks out against local girls seen with Allied soldiers, and the section is controversially ordered to intervene with sub-machine guns.

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