Frank Polizzi - Somewhere in the Stars

As they continued deeper into the neighborhood, what had been a glancing view during the parade became a stark reality for Nick—cratered out buildings multiplied, some houses crumbling down in the heat and dust. The rescue workers were pulling out corpses from previous bombings. Nick got teary-eyed when he saw a tiny shrouded body being placed on an open truck, a family wailing as they followed the body in a procession as the vehicle inched its way through the rubble. Paul shook his head in disgust. Nick figured some children had missed the evacuation, their families too poor and illiterate to escape the city. They had died hiding in buildings that collapsed. He agonized over how many more paesani disgraziati perished and recognized that, if he wanted to get through this with any sanity left, he would have to shelve these thoughts in the back of his memory stacks.

On their way out, they became disoriented by the maze-like alleys and streets, the sun searing their brows, the sweat breaking through the back of their shirts.

“I feel dizzy, Paul. Let’s stop awhile.”

“You look pale as a ghost. Sit over here in the doorway. There’s some shade.” Nick plopped down and Paul slid next to him. He took out an orange and cut it half with his pocketknife. “Here, suck the juice out.” When Nick finished, he gave him the second half. “Maybe the Sicilian sun’s gettin’ to you, Nick.”

“You’re right.” Nick took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“Hope I wasn’t a jerk for puttin’ pressure on you to team up with me.”

“I wanted to spring Papà , so I figured I’d volunteer for this.”

“I was goin’ anyways, with or without you. I came here to kill the enemy, all of them. That’s what we trained for. Your problem is you think too much. I ain’t gonna lose any sleep over this. Just want to get the job over, so we can get the hell out of here in one piece. I’ll tell you another thing cuginu, when we go back home, we will be 100% bonafide Americans.” Paul stood up. “Grab my arm and I’ll pull you up.” Nick worked his way up and wiped his brow again. “I got one question for you.” Paul looked down the street.

“Chi?”

“Why else did you agree to come here?”

“I wanted to stick with you guys. Figured maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. A pipe dream of mine that the Italians would say minchia, we had enough of this Mussolini merda. They’d side with us before we landed on the first beach.”

“Like I’ve said before. You think too much. Remember cuginu —we always played on the same baseball team.” Paul smiled and tapped Nick’s cheek.

Nick and Paul eyed each other that it was time to go and they stumbled over crushed building stones, somehow finding the way back through the portal gate of Kalsa that led to their tank. Paul delighted in Nathan’s just finished artwork—a painting of a Fiat 3000 tank and two Panther tanks on the driver’s side of the steel armored turret. Nick had recognized Nathan’s talent right away but had nothing to say this time, the silence broken by a dog yelping as its skeletal frame foraged through the rubble. It straggled over to them but kept a safe distance. Paul took a blood orange out of his shirt and threw it near the gate. The dog dragged itself to the fruit, clamped it into his mouth and moved furtively through the gate. Nick and Paul recounted what they had seen to Nathan and Al, who smoked cigarettes in silence. After crushing the butts into the pavement, they hopped onto the tank and sat around the edge of the rear engine, facing the Mediterranean. As dusk approached and the sea darkened, Nick’s buddies had already found other things to do but he remained on top.

Nick felt as if he were soldered to the steel, mulling over the bodies he had seen being dragged out of the razed homes. But his crew was lucky they weren’t dead like all those young GIs on the beach, who would be buried here, never to go back home to their families and his thoughts then segued to the dead Italians from their first tank kill. Who were those men? Where did they come from? The north or south of Italy? And what about their parents, wives, children? Yes, he was only killing fascists but Nick would never know if they were real fasciste or just young men drafted to fight Mussolini’s war.

It was not that Nick wasn’t grateful they survived their first amphibious assault, but as he sat at the edge of his ancient, ancestral island, he knew, è veru, it was just the beginning of their odyssey, but this wasn’t going to be a mythological journey. There was no mistaking that he got to Palermo in a tank and not on a passenger liner. If he could ever get himself to return someday, maybe he would see things differently, talk himself out of all the things he had seen, all the things he had done. It already felt years since Nick left home, the voyage murky and unfathomable ahead.

He didn’t want to turn in for the night because he sensed a nightmare was coming on and he didn’t want to embarrass himself near his buddies. He conjured up the Laestroygonians, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, Cyclops and Circe, monsters that the Jesuits filled his head with, the whole damn bunch of them ganging up on him tonight, but he was not as wily and strong as Odysseus who had a wife waiting for his return. Nick went down to the sea and crawled into his sleeping bag, close enough to hear the surf. He would either meet these demons head on near their natural habitat or be swallowed up by a titan wave. Think of all the stories that would be spun about the missing Nick, lost somewhere in the Mediterraneo.

After intense combat in the northwest corner of Sicily, the Allies liberated the island. Lieutenant General Clark led the new Fifth Army in an amphibious invasion of mainland Salerno, codenamed Operation Avalanche, on September 9 th, 1943. An Italian armistice had been declared the day before the landing. Colonel Jones’ tank destroyer squadron had been reassigned to participate in this mission. While the British forces invaded the Salerno beaches, the American troops hit the shores of Paestum.

From the deck of a transport, Nick checked his watch and precisely at 0330 the faint light spread in the sky, revealing the outline of Mount Soprano that loomed in the background. At that moment a division of infantrymen charged onto the shore, not far from the ruins of Greek temples, a counterpoint to the looming mountain.

Nick’s crewmates gathered around him to observe what they would soon be up against as the visibility improved.

“They’re clobbering those infantrymen with everything they got—88mm shells, mortars, you name it,” Nick announced.

“They’re taking all this heat for us, so we can drive onto the beach,” Nathan commented.

Paul extended his neck. “Those dirty, sneakin’ krauts! Why don’t they show their faces?”

“Oh my God, our guys are being picked off in the water.” Al pointed. “Nazi machine gunners there! In those towers.”

“ Madonna , the bodies are piling up before they even reach the sand,” Nick added. “See those flashes. Must be tanks hidden in those buildings.”

“They’re big cannons all right. What did I tell ya, they’re sneakin’ bastards,” Paul interjected.

“Luftwaffe! Over there! They’re strafing our guys in the water, on the sand. Slaughtering them!” Nathan cried out.

Even after the defending Germans in the beach area were killed or captured, the U.S. troops still had to contend with the pandemonium of people, vehicles and supplies landing throughout the day. Further inland Nick could hear shots from the foot soldiers fighting off a squadron of Panzer IV tanks. Judging from his map, the Krauts must have been using the ancient Greek fortification walls. Later on, Captain Monroe revealed how the bazookas, 105 howitzers and the big Navy guns had knocked out the German defenses, their remaining Panzers retreating inland.