A Paisan Captured by the Italians

         People couldn't forget Frank's name because he looked just like Frank Rizzo, shorter, but just as solid. The pencil going over the inventory sheets looked ridiculously small, out of place, in his big hands. He had been a police lieutenant too, until his heart forced him to take a campus job.  Just after Vietnam, people didn’t tell war stories, but when a radio story mentioned D-Day he looked like he might want to talk.

         “We didn't have Italian-Americans in my day, we just had Americans.  Even in the war, with Italy on the other side."

         “Were you in it, the war?"

         "I was in D-Day.  I originally got sent to Italy, but ended up there after this green lieutenant  let us get captured by the Italians.”

         “The Italians captured you?”

         “They did," he admitted, "and took us to this camp where they lined us up.  The Italian officer was OK, really, until he got to me.  ‘De _________ ‘, he says,  ‘is that your name?".

         “'Yes, sir, I told him,” Frank continued. “then he starts yelling ‘You're shooting at your own people. You're a traitor!’”   

         “So I keep calm and tell him, ‘No, sir,  I’m American'. This goes on a little bit.  I tell him, yes, my people are from here, but that’s a long time ago.  He just keeps on going -- and then he spits in my face.  So what do you think I did?".  He lit up a cigarette, leaned back, and waited for a guess.


         “What could you do, with all those guards and .  .”

         “I decked him,” he said, then leaned forward and smiled.

         “What happened to you?"

         “A few of his boys acted like they were kicking the crap out of me, but really not that bad. I don't think they liked him much.  He was too much of a hard ass for them.  You see, by that time we knew Mussolini couldn’t last.  So they just wanted to wait out the last couple of battles in the camp and get home in one piece.”

         “Now for me,”  Frank continued, “I just got over there, so wasn't ready to sit on my ass yet."

         “So in a couple of days, I got out solitary, what they called The Hole, which wasn’t really that bad.    We had a meeting of all the prisoners.  We had a captain, an American captain, in charge.  He says 'OK Who wants to escape?'.  I couldn't believe it; nobody put a hand up!  Looks like our guys had the same idea as the Italians.  Finally, I put up my hand."  Frank put  hand up, then waved it around, imitating his captain.

         “’What do you mean, you want to escape?’, he says,  ‘You just got here!’  This captain looks at me like I'm nuts.  See,” Frank explained, “ Our guys had the same idea as the Italians, just ride it out.  Even though we were supposed to try and escape.”

         “So he starts with ‘you can talk to them, Frank, you know they’re not so bad.  And the food’s OK’. ”          

         “'So, of course Italians are gonna make decent food, I told him,"  Frank said, "That's not the point.  I'm supposed to escape and I want to escape’.  We go on for a while; finally he gets ticked off enough to say ‘All right, go escape’."

         Then Frank sat back and lit another cigarette, and looked happier then I’d ever seen him.  “The underground came the next day and got me out.  It was the best time of my life."  He leaned forward, like he was hungry.  "We'd go from farmhouse to farmhouse, at night.  The people would dig up the best wine, the wine they'd buried in the back, the best cheese, prosciutto . . . and the girls.  They loved Americans then, I'll tell you'

         “How long did you get to take off, Frank".

         “Not too long.  I made it to England just in time for D-Day.

         People in the 70s, especially those who just missed Vietnam, didn't know how to talk about a battles.  Most vets didn't offer, and little brothers were too intimidated to ask.  Frank understood, and spared the worst details:

         “It was bad," he said.  "The landing craft were slow, like a shooting gallery.  You had to jump off into about 4 feet of water.  With shells going off all around you, churning up waves that almost drowned a few guys."

         Frank got very serious for a moment, the dink of was terrible.  I finally found a foxhole, so I could get a smoke after all that.  But it turned out that one of those waves got my cigarettes all wet.  After all that, I couldn't even get a smoke."

         “So I see some smoke coming form the next foxhole, and the guy says 'Sure c'mon over'.  I got about halfway there, and I must have got hit on the head with a shell fragment.  Lucky I was wearing my helmet."

         “Couple weeks later" he continued, "I woke up in a hospital in England.  When the bandages came off I could see again."

         “How long did it take to get home?" I asked.

         “They didn't send us right home then.  I was an MP with the occupation for a while.”  He put out his cigarette, and said, “but you got me talking long enough.  It's time for you to get back to work."