THE GARDENER’S STORY

“Were you in the Second World War?” asked the gardener.

“Sure. US Navy. Pacific theatre.”

“But not here in Italy?”

“No. My kid brother was. He fought with Mark Clark.”

The gardener nodded, as if staring into the past.

“All through 1944 the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, from Sicily to the far north and the Austrian border. All that year the German army fought and retreated, fought and retreated. It was a long retreat. At first they were the allies of the Italians, then after the Italian capitulation the occupiers.

“Here in Tuscany the fighting was very fierce. Field Marshal Kesselring commanded. Facing him were the Americans under General Clark, the British under General Alexander and the Free French under General Juin. By early June the fighting front had reached the northern border of Umbria and the south of Tuscany on this western sector.

“South of here the terrain is rugged, range after range of steep hills, valleys holding hundreds of rivers and streams. The roads wind along the mountainsides, the only possible passage for vehicles. They are easily mined and can be raked by gunfire from across the valley. Hidden spotters on the peaks of the hills can drop the artillery shells from behind them right onto the enemy with great accuracy. Both sides took heavy casualties.

“Siena became a big medical centre. The Wehrmacht’s Medical Corps set up several hospitals here and they were always full. Towards the end even they overflowed and several nunneries and monasteries were requisitioned. And still the Allied tide rolled on. Kesselring ordered all wounded well enough to be moved to be sent north. Columns of German ambulances rolled north day and night. But some could not be moved and had to stay. Many died of their wounds and are buried outside the city. The pressure on space eased for a while; until the last ten days of that month. Then the fighting redoubled, and it was close. In those last ten days a young German surgeon was drafted in here, fresh from college. He had no experience. He had to watch and learn and operate as he went along. Sleep was short, supplies running dry.”

There was a roar across the summer sky as, out of sight, the last of the parading Comparse entered the Piazza del Campo. Each of the rival Contrade was parading once round the giant sand racetrack laid over the cobblestones. An even louder shout greeted the arrival of the carroccio, the ox-drawn cart bearing the lusted-for banner itself, the object of the day’s pageantry, the Palio.

“The German force in this sector was the Fourteenth Army, commanded by General Lemelsen. On paper it sounded great, but many of the units were exhausted by months of fighting and way under strength. The main contingent in it was General Schlemm’s First Parachute Corps and Schlemm threw everything he had got from the sea to the mountains south of Siena.

That was his right wing. On the left, further inland, the tired-out 90th Panzer Grenadier Division tried to hold off General Harmon’s US First Armored.

“Right in the centre of Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, and facing Siena city, were the Free French of General Juin. He was flanked by his own Third Algerian Infantry and Second Moroccan Infantry. These were the forces held by the Germans in five days of vicious fighting from 21 to 26 June. Then the American tanks smacked through the panzers and Siena was outflanked, first on the east, then by the French on the west.

“Units of the retreating German companies pulled back, bringing their wounded with them. There were grenadiers, panzer men, Luftwaffe Field Division men and paratroopers.

On 29 June, south of the city, there was one last and final clash before the Allied breakthrough.

“It was violent and hand-to-hand. Under cover of darkness the German stretcher-bearers went in and did their best.

Hundreds of wounded, both German and Allied, were brought back into Siena. General Lemelsen pleaded with Kesselring for permission to straighten his line, seeing as he was outflanked on both sides and risked being encircled and captured with the entire First Parachute Corps inside Siena. Permission was granted and the paras pulled back into the city. Siena bulged with soldiers. So many were the wounded that this courtyard beneath the walls of the old nunnery was commandeered as a temporary shelter and field hospital for about a hundred of the last-arriving Germans and all the Allied wounded. The newly arrived young surgeon was given sole charge of it. That was on 30 June, 1944.”

“Here?” said the American. “This was a field hospital?”

“Yes.”

“There are no facilities here. No water, no power. Must have been rough.”

“It was.”

“I was on a carrier back then. We had a great sanatorium for the injured.”

“You were lucky. Here the men lay where the stretcher-bearers placed them. Americans, Algerians, Moroccans, British, Frenchmen and the hundred worst-injured Germans. They were really placed here to die. At the end there were 220 of them.”

“And the young surgeon?” The faded man shrugged.

“Well, he went to work. He did what he could. He had three orderlies assigned to him by the Surgeon-General. They raided local houses for mattresses, palliasses, anything to lie on. They stole sheets and blankets from all around. The sheets were just for bandages. There is no river running through Siena but centuries ago the Sienese built an intricate grid of underground aquifers to bring fresh water from mountain streams right under the streets. That provides access wells into the flowing water. The orderlies ran a bucket chain from the nearest right into the courtyard.

“A big kitchen table was taken from a nearby house and set up right there, in the centre, between the rose bushes, for operating. Drugs were scarce, hygiene shot to hell. He operated as best he could through the afternoon and into the dusk. When night fell he ran to the local military hospital and begged for some Petromax lanterns. By the light of these, he went on. But it was hopeless. He knew the men would die.

“Many of the wounds were terrible. The men were all in trauma. He was out of painkillers. Some patients had been torn by mines exploding under a comrade a few yards away. Others had shell or grenade fragments deep inside them. There were limbs shattered by bullets. Soon after dark the girl came.”

“What girl?”

“Just a girl. Local, an Italian girl, he presumed. A young woman, early twenties maybe. Strange-looking. He saw her staring at him. He nodded, she smiled, and he went on operating.”

“Why strange-looking?”

“Pale, oval face. Very serene. Short hair, not bobbed as in the fashion of those days, but sort of pageboy cut. Neat, not flirtatious hair. And she wore a kind of cotton shift of pale grey.”

“She helped out?”

“No, she moved away. She walked quietly among the men. He saw her take a cloth, dip it in one of the buckets of water and wipe their brows. He went on working as each new case was brought to the operating table. He went on even though he knew he was wasting his time. He was just twenty-four, hardly more than a boy himself, trying to do a man’s job. Dog-tired, trying not to make mistakes, amputating with a bone-saw sterilized in grappa, suturing with domestic thread greased with beeswax, morphine running out, had to ration it. And they screamed, oh, how they screamed ...”

The American stared at him hard.

“My God,” he whispered. “You were that surgeon. You’re not Italian. You were the German surgeon.”

The faded man nodded slowly.

“Yes, I was that surgeon.”

“Honey, I think the ankle’s a bit better. Maybe we could still see the end of the show.”

“Quiet, hon. Just a few minutes more. What happened?”

In the Piazza del Campo the parade had left the arena and its participants had taken their places in the allotted stands fronting the palazzos. On the sand track only one drummer and one flag-bearer from each Contrada remained. Their task was to show their skill with the banner and staff, weaving intricate patterns in the air to the rhythm of the tambours, a final salute to the crowd before the race and a last chance to win the silver chalice for their own heraldic guild.