Ghosts of Ortona, page 19
Perhaps Bill’s judgement of London wasn’t really based on London’s actions. Perhaps what it really came down to for Bill was London’s attitude—he felt that London had wanted to do it anyways and was happy to be given a reason.
Or perhaps there were important details still missing from the story which would explain why Bill felt the way he did. This might include the location of London and the officer in relation to the attack from upstairs. Perhaps London had no need to shoot in the officer’s direction. Furthermore, perhaps some elements of the story as it was reported in the newspaper did not actually happen, or not in the order in which they were told. Had there really been a shot fired or grenade thrown by the Germans from upstairs? If so, had that actually come before London shot the officer—or had it come after the officer was shot, as a reaction, not the provocation? After the fact, there could have been an understanding among Bill and his comrades that they would tell the story in a way that protected London. Such an understanding could even have been silent, never spoken. In the context of a protective group narrative with shared silence about certain details, Bill might never have known if his comrades had seen the same things that he did. In his way of remembering and feeling about the incident, Bill may have felt forever alone.4
He was certainly isolated from his comrades in his experiential absence from Christmas. They said he was there at the dinner. He had no memory of it. This was the famous meal which, in the words of the war diarist, “this regiment will never forget.” Bill had forgotten. So what was it like for him, after the war, to attend all those re-enactments as it became a public tradition? He was one of the dwindling number of veterans who were honoured for having been there—yet he carried no trace of it within.
To explain that glaring gap in his memory, Bill had turned to the grenade blast that had knocked him unconscious. He remembered waking up alone in the street but had no recollection of how he got out and found his company. “I guess I walked out!” He reasoned that the physical shock of the blast—its impact on his brain—could explain why he had no memory of making his way to the church, eating dinner, and celebrating Christmas with his comrades. “I guess I was kinda still dazed, you know.”
However, in order for this post-blast “daze” to work as an explanation for his memory gap, the blast needed to have happened before the dinner. And for this to be true, the events leading up to the blast needed to have happened on Christmas morning. And so, working backwards from his need to explain his memory gap, Bill may have reasoned that it was during Christmas Eve and Christmas morning that he’d been a captive of the Germans.
As we know, that’s not when it actually happened. The War Diary, Don Harley’s testimony, the newspaper article, and Padre Durnford’s diary all place the captivity and rescue during the night after Christmas dinner and in the morning of the next day. But those are all archived materials. The one place where Bill might have noticed a discrepancy between his story and other accounts was in his regimental history, which briefly mentions the event:
Early on Boxing Day the enemy managed to surprise this small group of Seaforths and capture them. For about seven hours the Germans held them until the rest of the company recaptured the house and the Seaforths were released.
It’s possible that Bill never read the regimental history. And if he did, he might not have noticed how the incident was dated—or if he did notice, he might have thought it was wrong. After all, the author could only write what he’d been told, and when it came to this story in particular, Bill probably felt that not everything that was told had been true.
There may be another and more important reason that Bill placed his story on Christmas Day. Beneath the surface, there was an emotional logic to that choice—it aligned with his belief in what Christmas is meant to be. His expectation of peace on that day was implicit when he told me the timing of his bomb blast: “It was Christmas Day in ’43, mind you. We didn’t stop for Christmas Day.” That remark is only meaningful if it’s grounded in the unspoken belief that they should have stopped.
During Bill’s time as a captive in the house, there was the hint of a stop—a brief moment of peace and, if not fellowship, then at least friendliness. The conditions were unequal, of course, and imposed by force; the Canadians were being held against their will. But the Germans “treated us real good.” There were gestures of reciprocity, not only in the gift of cigarettes, but perhaps in other things Bill no longer remembered—things that nonetheless may have left an impression on him. According to the newspaper article, the German officer didn’t just “pump” the Canadians for tactical information; he also wanted to know what they had heard about Hess, the Nazi leader officially branded a traitor.5 And according to the padre, the officer inquired about Christmas dinner. Perhaps he was being strategic—hoping that a show of friendliness might get the Canadians to let something slip. But he might just as easily have been curious: eager to learn something about these men who, until now, had been as ghostly to him as the Germans had been to the Canadians. His interest in what they knew about Hess suggests that he wasn’t blindly loyal; he had doubts about his own government’s version of events.
In any case, it’s impossible to know whether the officer and the other Germans in the house were sincere when they were being amicable. They may not even have known that themselves. By all accounts, they were as mentally and physically exhausted as the Canadians. That’s certainly how Bill saw them—tired and frightened like him. In this, and in other ways, Bill had an experience of their shared humanity. It made sense to him that such a moment would happen on Christmas Day.6
So this was Bill’s story of Christmas in Ortona—the story he kept hidden. It’s what he truly remembered—even as he upheld his regiment’s tradition of commemorating the “unforgettable” Christmas dinner, the public memory that he stood for (“We all stand up”) but didn’t share.
In the end, he chose not to hide it anymore.
“It doesn’t matter…Tell the story…Tell the story.”
To the world, it may not mean much. But to him, it was no small thing to give away. I can’t say for certain that I’ve understood what it really meant to him. I don’t know how it will be received. He took the risk of letting me tell it—releasing it, so it would no longer be his alone.
THE WORLD OUTSIDE WAS quiet. The sun had dropped below the mountain tops, and long shadows spread over the valley. The cattle were gone from the pasture. There was no sign of Bill’s son, nor the puppy.
As I walked up the gravel driveway, the older dog suddenly appeared beside me and trotted ahead. She led me as far as the top of the driveway, then stopped and watched as I went through the gate. Before getting into my car, I stood for a moment, looking back. Far across the valley, where the pasture met the forest, nothing was stirring—nothing, at least, as far as my eyes could tell. I opened the car door. The dog turned and trotted back down to the house.
Driving slowly down the dirt road, rattling once more over the cattle guards, I wondered how it was going to be for Bill now that he had told his story. He and the young man would be eating dinner now, and then probably they’d watch whatever was on the TV. I remembered Bill squeezing his eyes shut when he recalled the picture that was found in the officer’s pocket. As brown leaves drifted from the forest canopy across my windshield, I thought of how a feeling for an unknown man and his wife and daughter had travelled to a place that was so remote from them, and had survived for so many years. I thought of how that feeling had outlived them, perhaps even the little girl. I thought of how in this quiet mountain valley those unknown lives had been a memory. The fact that they were remembered here was something they would never know.
IT WAS DRIZZLING RAIN when I stepped out onto the Corso. The little shops on the pedestrian street were still shuttered and closed. Reading the map that I’d picked up at the hotel reception the night before, I turned left at the palm trees in Piazza Porta Caldari, walked along via Costantinopoli to the church, followed via Margherita d’Austria in a switchback down the slope of the escarpment, and started hiking across the valley, leaving the town behind.
The road through the valley had no shoulders; whenever a speeding car approached, I stepped over the guardrails into wet brush. Fortunately, it was only about a kilometre until the road ascended the hill of San Donato. On the hilltop, through a grove of olive trees to the left, was the lane to the cemetery gate.
As I walked in, a three-wheeled Vespa truck pulled up and two men in blue overalls got out. These were the cemetery groundskeeper and his young apprentice. The groundskeeper, a portly man with a thick moustache and cheerful manner, guessed immediately that I was Canadian. To my great relief, he confirmed that there was an event here this morning; he and his apprentice had come to set things up. To my slight disappointment, however, the event wasn’t due to start for another ninety minutes. A chilly wind was blowing in from the ocean, there was nothing on this hilltop but the cemetery, and I had hurried here without picking up a coffee. The two Italians went away to a little building off to the side, and I walked ahead into the grounds of the Moro River Canadian War Cemetery.1
The first area that I found myself in was a wide green lawn. At its back centre was a massive rectangular stone on a base of three shallow steps. On the stone were inscribed the words, THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE. Behind it, through a row of trees that were leafless now in December, I could glimpse some white grave markers and a tall white cross. A path went from the Stone of Remembrance through the tree line into that space.
When I stepped through the trees, the space opened before me and I was met by a sea of white headstones. All were uniform in shape, size, and colour, and all were perfectly aligned in row after row, with little rose bushes in front of them. As I walked up the middle path towards the stone white cross, I felt the rows of headstones sweep across my peripheral vision. After passing the sixteenth row, I arrived at the cemetery’s centre where the twenty-foot-tall cross stood atop a hexagonal base.
Now I noticed that the cross was overlain with a dark metal sword. The hilt was aligned with the cross’s three points, with the blade extending downwards. This was the same vaguely medieval style of sword as the one I’d seen in Ted’s living room. On the base of the Cross of Sacrifice, there was no inscription. It spoke for itself.
The groundskeeper and apprentice drove up to the Cross in their Vespa truck and began setting up two portable flagpoles. I wandered away, studying the headstones. The top of every stone was inscribed with a maple leaf identifying the buried soldier as a Canadian. Then came the man’s military number and rank, followed by his name, his regiment, his age and the date of his death. On most headstones, the space below was inscribed with a cross. A few had the Star of David. On some, the space was blank, no religious symbol at all. Finally, at their base, most of the headstones were inscribed with an epitaph, unique to each man, provided by his next of kin.
Son, while you lie in peaceful sleep your
memory we shall always keep
He died in freedom’s cause. He will always be
missed by those who knew him best
Until the day break and the shadows flee away
I walked the cemetery’s entire hedge-lined perimeter. The view inland to the west was of the distant snow-capped Maiella Mountains. Over the eastern, seaward edge, I could see the choppy waves below, and the coastal cliffs and gulleys undulating north to Ortona. Then, amid the sound of the wind and the waves, I heard something new. Back at the Cross of Sacrifice, the flags of Canada and Italy had been raised. They were flapping and fluttering, and their metal connectors were clinking against the poles.
I wasn’t sure I was having the feelings that I should be having in this place. The cemetery was peaceful, pretty, but also a bit uncanny—a nicely kept green lawn with red roses and one thousand five hundred and sixty-three stone reminders of violent death, each stone bearing a heartbroken thought from back home. Words and bodily remains from my country had long preceded me here. Unlike me, they would never leave. These impressions mingled with my growing, self-conscious anxiety. Was it okay that I was here? Was I going to be the only non-veteran? How was Ted going to react? In the haste of my last-minute decision, I hadn’t told him that I was coming. Actually, it wasn’t haste. I could have called him. I just hadn’t wanted to. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a really strange thing for me to do.
At the Cross now, the two Italians were setting up a pair of speakers. They were friendly. This place was normal to them. Hoping to shake off my malaise, I went over and chatted with them while they worked.
THIS WAS BEFORE I met any of the veterans. It all began with Ted.
At the time, I was finishing my PhD coursework and hadn’t yet decided on the topic for my research. Then one day in August 1998, I happened to read a small item in the newspaper about a group of Canadian veterans who were planning to meet their former German enemies.
Edmonton Journal, 10 August 1998
Canadian, German Vets May Gather For An Historic Christmas Eve Dinner
Old army foes from Canada and Germany who fought the Battle of Ortona in Italy in the Second World War could meet for a historic reconciliation dinner.
The 10-day battle in late December 1943 was the most vicious fought by the Canadian army in the entire Italian campaign of the war.
The dinner is planned for this Christmas Eve, on the 55th anniversary of the battle, back in Ortona, an ancient seaport perched on cliffs above the Adriatic Sea on Italy’s east coast.…
“It’s a reconciliation between old foes,” said Edmund Griffiths, chairperson of the Ottawa branch of the Three Rivers Regiment Veterans Association which is trying to organize it.
I had been thinking of doing my fieldwork on something related to war memory. This event certainly looked interesting. The group had approached the Ministry of Veterans Affairs for support, but the ministry had turned them down, so they had started a public fundraising campaign. The point of contact for the campaign was the office of Peter Goldring, Reform member of parliament for Edmonton East and the Official Opposition party’s Veterans Affairs Critic. I called the office, explained my interest, and the staff put me in touch with Ted.
Over the phone, Ted’s tone was combative and intense. I wasn’t sure how much he noticed anything I said about my research—which was fair enough. He addressed me as someone who might be useful to his campaign. The fundraising had just begun, he had limited time to achieve his goal for Christmas, so naturally he was trying to make every conversation count. He gave me a quick run-down of the plan for the Christmas Eve dinner. Thirty Canadian veterans would go to meet thirty of their German counterparts. The Canadian contingent would comprise six veterans from each of the five Canadian army regiments that had fought in Ortona. Ted went into more detail than I could comprehend in that moment regarding his rationale for picking those five regiments. Apparently there was some controversy. Some vets from other regiments were unhappy about being excluded, and they were already complaining to the media, so that was a public relations fire that Ted was now trying to put out—as if he didn’t already have enough problems in getting this thing off the ground. He told me the names of some journalists who were supportive. Radio stations in Ottawa and Edmonton had started a friendly competition over who could fundraise the most. Meanwhile, MP Peter Goldring was pressuring the Department of National Defence to provide Ted’s group with free transport to Italy on a Royal Canadian Air Force plane. As for Veterans Affairs, those “bureaucratic bean counters” were not helping one bit. They claimed to have no money in their budget. But the real reason for their obstinance, Ted said, was that the current minister was a navy admiral—“he doesn’t give a damn about the army.” This prejudice was compounded, Ted said, by the same old prejudice against the Italy veterans. The glory was always reserved for the D-Day and Normandy fighters. No one cared to remember the “spaghetti-league troops.”
In urgent campaign mode, Ted was in constant calls with newspaper reporters and talk radio hosts. I didn’t doubt that his words to me were genuine, but I sensed that what I was hearing from him had already been practiced and honed. His lines were well suited to fuelling the flames of public outrage and lighting fires under powerful asses. I couldn’t reciprocate Ted’s passionate and punchy attitude, but I did look for ways to affirm him. On the lack of recognition of the Italian Campaign, I told him that he was absolutely right. As a case in point, I noted that despite my interest in Canadian war remembrance, somehow I had never heard of Ortona.
“Are there any monuments in Ortona?” I asked him.
“Just a graveyard,” Ted brusquely answered, “where all my friends from public school are buried.”
For a moment, I was stunned into silence. And then part of me suspected that my stunned silence had been Ted’s intended effect. It was like he’d thrown his bereavement at me, knowing it would catch me by surprise and that I might feel ashamed. Maybe I was misinterpreting—it was hard to tell on the phone—but the whole conversation with Ted had vaguely reminded me of past experiences with aggrieved and entitled types of men who seem to take satisfaction in throwing you off your balance. I wasn’t sure how mixed up I wanted to get in Ted’s business.
In the weeks that followed, I tracked the progress of the campaign to support the Ortona pilgrimage. Its rhetoric was populist and conservative, consistent with the political leanings of its leading proponents. The opposition Reform Party and the right-wing Sun newspaper chain framed the effort to send Ted’s group to Ortona as if it was a struggle against the federal Liberal government and liberal elites. “Liberal Grinch Steals Christmas From Canada’s Ortona Veterans” was the title of a press release from Goldring’s office. “Ordinary Canadians will make it right,” declared the fundraising appeals, “Canadian pride will make it happen.” The Ottawa Sun described the campaign as a “People’s War.” And “the people” responded. Golf tournaments and country music concerts were organized, with the proceeds going to the Ortona campaign. Donations came in from small businesses, Lions Clubs, city councils, firefighters, and even the Ottawa airport air traffic controllers. Sun columnist Earl McRae updated his readers regularly on the progress of the “war,” telling “the people” they were “winning” and urging them to keep pushing hard for “victory.” At shopping malls around Ottawa, a Patsy Cline impersonator raised $3,200 selling decal stickers with the message, “If you love freedom, thank a vet.” It was reported that a little girl donated seven dollars from her allowance.
