Chapter 13
Aug. 21, 2012
The War in Tuscany 1943-1944
War in Val d'Orcia
A few chapters back, we mentioned sitting in a church in Siena and noticing that the upper windows were either plain glass or stained glass, in no particular order. It was surmised at my observation that missing stained glass windows and damage to the church must have been results from Allied bombings during WWII.
And so it was. Subsequent research revealed that Tuscany played a big part in the war, with the Allied ground forces driving out the Germans in 1944. The action in Tuscany and this region was devastated by the war and by the German occupation, the vary place where we spent a week on a farm last June, driving the rural roads and visiting the many hill towns
Looking out upon these vistas in the beautiful of places on earth, one could not image the horror that was occurring here in 1943 and 1944..
We are reporting here on the Val d'Ocia, the valley of Tuscany, involving the towns of Pienza, S. Quirico d'Orcia, Montepulciano, Chianciano, Sarteano, Castiglione d'Orcia, Contgmano, Radicofani and Monticciello. Also, there were many small villages involved in between the larger towns.
In particular, we will be visiting the villa and farms of La Foce, almost in the middle of the valley. And since it was a rather large estate, it was a regular site for Germans, Italian partisans, Allied prisoners of war, and escapees. All found something of refuge in this estate, including some 23 children harbored from the ravages of bombings in Turin, Bologna and Modena, their homes destroyed and sent here by their families for safe refuge..
Many books exist about the war in Italy, but we will focus on one book in particular for the next two chapters – War in Val d'Orcia, an Italian war diary 1943-1944 written by Iris Origo, mistress of La Foce
This book in diary form chronicles the brutality of the German occupation, the people who survived the brutality and those who did not.
Two examples of man's inhumanity to man: . In June 29, 1944, German SS troops stormed the Tuscan village of San Pancrazio and systematically murdered 73 people.
On Aug. 24, 1944, German troops entered the village of Paduledi Fucecchio and massacred 184 men, women and children. In all, it was estimated German atrocities murdered more than 15,000 Italian peasants, most in retribution from partisan killings of German troops, and some, for no reason at all.
In Rome on September 26, seven German soldiers were killed by Roman population, and in retaliation, the Germans rounded up 6,000 Italians and sent them off to German concentration camps. It also was the day Allied forces for the first time bombed Florence, Pisa, Livorno, Verona and Bologna with serious loss of life and property events unravel surrounding the farms in the d'Orcia valley.
She writes in her diary that the farms were in the way of the Allied 8th Army and the German occupation. There were 57 farms in number within seven thousand acres inhabited by about 600 people.
The farms relate to a central farm with the villa, La Foce at the center of its activity with a dairy, carpenter shop, oil presses, laundry, granaries, wine cellars. The villa is a 16th Century house, with formal and informal gardens, field hands, carpenters, brick layers, nurses for the clinic, all live in homes nearby or on the farm, basically a self-sufficient village.
It is this large estate, La Foce, which attracts Italian army and Italian partisan soldier escapees, political agitators, prisoners of war, young Italians escaping the German draft, Allied airman and peasants bombed out of their homes. The villa with all its self sufficient resources has the ability to house and feed hundreds of these people, some passing through and others hiding in the nearby woods. The Germans too towards the end of their occupation, take over the property as field headquarters, then make it part of a line of defense against the advancing Allied armies.
In all the farms, Germans continuously confiscate cars, motorcycles, bicycles, cattle, chickens, ducks, personal belongings, guns, food anything they can simply take.
A friend writes: “There is a good deal of bombing of towns and villages along the railway, and much indiscriminate machine gunning along the roadways. What will be left of this wretched country? Perhaps a few isolated houses in the woods and hills – all the rest destroyed. I don't believe that the wars of the past, even with the pestilence and famine that they brought, were as destructive as this one. We have struggled to keep our cars and our freedom of movement, then our houses and those we love—and no doubt we shall soon be thankful merely to save our skins”.
Some diary entries:
March 14, 1944.-- The local news is grim. Three young recruits who had failed to report to the Germans have been shot in Siena, in the presence of their comrades, as “an example.” At Piancastagnaio two partisans, who were caught in the woods, have been shot on the spot, and their corpses hung at the gates of the city.
April 25 1944 – In the afternoon, we hear that the man who was killed was one of our workmen – a quiet peaceable man, hard-working fellow, totally unconcerned with politics, whose murder by the Germans seems to us inexplicable. What new danger is coming now? In the dead man's little house, which after 30 years of hard work and self denial, he had at last succeeded in owning, the widow is hysterically moaning and sobbing beside the bed of her boy of eleven, who saw his father killed.
May 18, 1944 – The attack on the Cassino front has begun.
May 19, 1944 – Cassino has fallen.
May 22, 1944 – Every day now, whenever I go out of the house, I find a little group of famished people sitting in the farm courtyard; haggard women, with babies in their arms and other children waiting for them at home; thin, ragged schoolboys or old men, carrying sacks or suitcases—all begging for food to take back to Rome. We give them all that we can, but Antonio begs me to remember that we must also go on providing food for own population and for the two hundred partisans in the
woods.
May 26, 1944 – Anti aircraft guns, stationed at Spedletto, bring down five Allied planes out of an unusually large bomber formation, which is attacking German columns on the road. Some of the airmen save themselves by parachute. From our terrace we can hear the firing, and see the little silver balloons opening and drifting down from the sky. One plane, laden with bombs, explodes as it hits the ground. We see great columns of black smoke soaring up, and long to hurry to the scene to bring first aid; but the Germans will be there before us.
The Allied Armies, still advancing, have broken through the Hitler line.
Next, Friday, Aug. 24, Part two of War in Val d'Orcia, the Germans are driven from Tuscany and the farmers return to find their homes destroyed and looted to the bare walls, farmlands ravaged, a way of life gone with the wind.
