Ghosts of Ortona, page 25
Then, photos of shops along Ortona’s main promenade. The countdown was on toward our winging our way home. We had one and a half hours of free time in Ortona today, our first of the trip—a subtle hint here of the frustration with the trip’s tightly regimented schedule. Mel showed his comrades shopping for gifts and postcards. In typically modest fashion, he didn’t mention his own story, which he’d told me, of purchasing earrings on the Corso for Eva. There were photos of Ortona’s streets decorated for Christmas—The Christmas spirit was alive and well in the Ortona of today, a far cry from the Christmas of 55 years earlier—and then it was scenes from the bus on the first leg of the journey home—All roads lead to Rome…stop to stretch…hilltop villages…fruit trees…Back home the trip has been given extensive coverage not only in the newspaper but in radio and television. Finally, wrapping up with thanks for the trip’s organizers and sponsors, Mel’s narrative concluded with a message to Mrs Bowen.
The little candle holder that has graced her home for fifty-five years has been returned to its proper place.
“DID YOU KNOW HIM?”
“I knew of him,” Mel said. “Just the name. To see him.”
I was trying to figure out why this candle holder had taken pride of place in Mel’s show. He’d put it at the beginning and at the end of his story about the trip.
Whatever the reason for its importance, it didn’t seem to stem from his relationship with the Bowens. During the war, Ranald Bowen had been a senior officer (regimental sergeant major) in the Loyal Edmontons. Evidently, Mel (a much lower-ranked private) had hardly known Ranald. It didn’t sound like he’d known Ranald’s wife Esther, either. It was only upon being given his “mission” that he’d learned of the candle holder’s existence and how it had come to be in the Bowens’ home.
“But apparently Christmas Day in the rubble in front of San Tommaso church he picked up this candle holder. Dusted it off and put it in his pack. Souvenir of the battle I guess. And brought it home. And, anyway when Mrs Bowen found out that there was people going over to Ortona for Christmas dinner, she wanted it sent back. Ranald died about thirteen, fourteen years ago. And she wanted it sent back because she felt that was the proper place for it. And uh, it only stands about six inches high and it’s in the form of, almost like Pegasus, you know, the flying, what do you call them?”
“Oh yeah. Horse with wings.”
“Yeah. And with a little candle holder on top. And there was still a little piece of candle from 1943 in it. Because they never ever used it as a candle holder, they just had it in, up on a shelf as a memento, you know.”
Mel had really taken his mission to heart, saying figuratively that his life depended on it. He’d gone to the Edmonton branch of a national high-end jewelry store to get a suitable box.
“She gave it to me. And then I went to Birks jewelries and I said have you got a box that I can take this candle holder over in, you know, mess it up nicely in there and protect it, because I said I’m going to deliver this thing or it’s my life, you know. So anyway, they gave me a nice box for it and so I carried it. I carried it on the plane and I carried it to every ceremony that we had.”
He was careful not to name names, but he let me know of his frustrations with the trip’s organizers who, he said, kept brushing off his mission. Every time he tried to find an occasion to return the candle holder, he was told that it was not the right time. He suspected that the real reason for this constant deferral was the trip organizers’ fear that the candle holder would be an embarrassment, drawing attention to how Canadian soldiers had not always acted honourably. Mel felt this fear was unwarranted; in his view, the story of the candle holder was nothing to be ashamed of.
“‘No I can’t,’ uh, ‘No, we, we haven’t got time tonight,’ and uh, ‘No this is not the proper place for it.’ Even at the end, it was taken from me and I was told, ‘Well I’ll just give this to an aide and they can give it to the mayor later.’ They didn’t want, it was almost as though this was something we stole from the church and, you know. That was the attitude that I got. Rather than, anybody could have picked it up or the next tank that come along could have crushed it in the rubble where it was. So. But anyway I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘If you think I’m going back to Edmonton and face a ninety-year-old and tell her I didn’t make this little presentation to the mayor of Ortona and see that it got back to its rightful place,’ I said, ‘another think coming.’ So I grabbed it.”
This struggle happened on the second last day of the trip. There was the wreath-laying ceremony at the monument in Ortona’s civilian cemetery; the mayor and many local people were present; Mel felt this was his last chance. He grabbed the Birks box out of the hands that had taken it and he went to the mayor before anyone could stop him.
“I gave it to the mayor and this was in the cemetery, the civilian cemetery right in Ortona. And there was quite a civilian population around. And when I made the presentation there was a bit of a stir in the crowd you know, because it was something that was coming home to them, you know.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them, I said uh, Regimental Sergeant Major Ranald Bowen picked this up on Christmas Day in the rubble in front of San Tommaso church and he, they feel that uh, this is where, Mrs Bowen feels that this is where it belongs, back in the church.”
That was the end of Mel’s story of the candle holder—and the end of my thoughts about it. It seemed like a charming story about Mel’s sense of duty to his regiment, to his wartime officer, to the officer’s widow, and to the people of Ortona. But it didn’t tell me anything about what Ortona meant for Mel. There was no apparent connection between the candle holder and Mel’s experience of the battle; nor was there a connection to the primary purpose of the trip.
As for that primary purpose—the reconciliation with the Germans—Mel didn’t seem to have much to say. Perhaps that was because he hadn’t experienced much of an encounter. Considering the ratio of Canadian and German veterans (thirty to six—and one of those six, Hugo, had only been able to talk to Sam) it was understandable if conversations hadn’t gone very deep, especially when so much of their time together had been spent in structured, ritual activities. But part of the problem was that I didn’t know how to ask. In any case, after this long slide show and my follow-up questions about the candle holder, I really needed to move on to Mel’s memories of the battle. In our interviews over the days that followed, as Mel shared more and more of his stories, neither of us returned to the topic of the trip.
When I came home from my fieldwork and started to analyze the interviews, I realized that I really didn’t know what, if anything, the trip had done for Mel. It couldn’t have been nothing. Ortona meant so much to him, and he had such strong feelings about the moral problem of killing. But then he’d also told me how he’d already made his own personal return trips to Ortona, so maybe this recent one with Ted’s group had been less emotional for him.
As for meeting the Germans, maybe for Mel it was sufficiently meaningful that he’d gone to meet them, and he’d been a good participant. There was a personal sacrifice involved, as it meant not spending Christmas at home with his wife. And so he’d demonstrated his commitment to what the trip stood for: recognition of the enemy’s humanity, and regret for the violence that was done. Also, as Mel had explained to me, he’d never been sure if he’d actually killed or wounded anyone; it was just the thought of what he might have done that troubled him.
In a way, then, there was symmetry in Mel’s experience of reconciliation as a mainly performative gesture which didn’t leave him with detailed memories of connecting with his former enemies. If that was the case, that wasn’t necessarily less meaningful to Mel, but I could imagine it was the sort of meaning that could be hard to express; and so maybe this was why he’d talked so much more about the candle holder, and the food, and other apparently trivial details in his slide show. These details were simply what was available to him for telling his story about the trip.
That was my guess at the time. There was more that I didn’t know, more that I wished I had asked—but that was true for all of my interviews. Anyway, the focus of my research had moved well beyond the trip. By the time I wrote my dissertation, the trip with the reconciliation dinner was just a bit of background to how I met the veterans, briefly summarized; I had given up trying to interpret it.
But recently—just a few days ago, as I write this now—I was looking at Charles Comfort’s painting. I’d seen Via Dolorosa before but hadn’t paid it close attention. It was only now that I noticed that there are soldiers in the foreground. They’re holding rifles behind a rubble pile and facing up the street. Mel’s words came back to me.
“And I can remember, uh, lying. Here. Lying on a pile of rubble, way back this way, and firing up into here, into the bell tower.”
In the painting, I saw Mel. He was shooting at the church. And I remembered the candle holder.
Of course. The candle holder belonged to San Tommaso—and San Tommaso meant a lot to Mel.
Any church would have given the candle holder meaning, simply by virtue of what churches symbolize: peace, moral community, innocence, redemption. But San Tommaso is not just any church. It is Ortona’s cathedral—the tallest building in town and its most recognizable landmark. Its dome serves as the visual emblem of Ortona, the first feature to appear on the skyline when you approach from a distance. In Mel’s account of his first return to Ortona after the war, with Eva in 1985, he told me how they’d pulled over before reaching the town and got out of the car to look.
“Outskirts of town, just coming into it, you know. The wife and I had rented a car in Amsterdam, of course we drove all the way to Rome and then across over to, and we sat across the valley from, I could still see San Tommaso church, the church from across the valley.”
The church was the first thing he noticed when he returned. He didn’t just look at Ortona; he looked at San Tommaso. Then he and Eva entered the town.
“I didn’t recognize anything in town to begin with. Then we got walkin’ around later on and then I recognized that one, that one wall, that one that I was thinking of, you know.”
That was the wall he’d pointed out to me in the old photograph. (“One of those guys could be me.”) He saw nothing else in town that was memorable—except for San Tommaso.
“But there was very little else. San Tommaso church had been rebuilt.”
“Was the tower still the same?”
“No. No. Huge dome on it now, you know.”
“That tower you were shooting at, that had the bell in it, was that still there?”
“Oh no. No. Maybe the tower is somewhere, I don’t know. Because that was still on the church when it was left standing. But it seems to me that they have taken most of it down, you know.”
Mel’s memory of San Tommaso seemed a bit mistaken. Now, looking back, it occurs to me that this was one of the reasons that I underestimated the church’s significance to Mel. Previously, when telling me his story of lying on the rubble pile and shooting at a bell tower, he’d pointed to a picture in the book we were both looking at. He’d said his target was San Tommaso, but the building in the picture wasn’t the church; it was the municipal building. The municipal building had a small clock tower. Mel was pointing at that.
“’Cause I thought Jesus that’s a good place for a sniper to be, you know. But I guess everybody else thought so too. And I think there was a bell up there, but I’m not sure whether I was ringing it or not. You couldn’t hear. Because, you know, there was firing going on all around you, and coming from the other direction too. So, how are you going to know if there’s a bell being rung?”
He thought there was a bell up there. So he wasn’t sure? In the photograph, it was clearly a clock tower. And then later, when he told me about his return to Ortona with Eva and described looking at San Tommaso, his comment on the dome’s apparent newness also made me question the reliability of his memory. The dome was indeed partly new, but it was a faithful restoration of the one that was half destroyed during the war. Essentially, the same dome had been there at the time of the battle. It was a remarkable feature of the church, remembered by other veterans, featured in wartime photographs, and depicted in Charles Comfort’s paintings. That led me to wonder whether Mel had actually been shooting at the municipal building and had later come to think of it as the church.3
However, even when I had the impression that Mel’s memory was mistaken, I still should have seen the importance of his belief that he’d shot the church. It’s a memory that he mentioned to me on numerous occasions. And now I notice the important place it has in his poem about Ortona.
Back then as you lay on a huge rubble pile
This moment stands out as the most personal of the poem. It’s even a bit uncanny. Up until this point, the poem has been devoid of a first-person perspective. But then, in the two stanzas about San Tommaso, the poet shifts, speaking directly to a “friend” who was there.
Back then as you lay on a huge rubble pile
With your rifle loaded and cocked,
Your sights on the dome of Ortonas church
Overlooking the length of the block
San Tomasso the church, was a sniper up there?
Who could see every move that was made
Better not take any chances my friend
And so the tower was sprayed.
I think of Mel as he was writing the poem. What made him want to speak to himself, as a friend, about that moment? What had happened to him when he was shooting at San Tommaso? And not just shooting at it; he felt like he’d shot it. Because he saw it as a threat—was a sniper up there?
For the most part, he’d told me, all his shooting in Ortona had been at windows.
“Windows.”
“Other windows.”
“Yeah. Well, there’s nobody standing there to take a shot at.”
This was why he wasn’t sure if he’d ever shot anyone.
The church of San Tommaso was the one other target that he knew (or thought he knew) that he’d hit. He wasn’t sure if he’d rung its bell, but he knew he was hitting the church. And unlike windows, this target had a sort of personhood. Figuratively, it had a face. It had a history. It had a name.
The candle holder had belonged to it—and had been taken from it. It’s fair to say that Mel felt he’d been part of the ruination of the church, having harmed it with his rifle. In helping to return its candle holder, he was undoing some of the harm. And while Mel didn’t know if he’d taken anyone’s life in Ortona, and I don’t know if he was religious in this way, I wonder if his thoughts for San Tommaso were also thoughts for the souls he might have harmed with his rifle—including his own.
IN COMING BACK TO write about the Ortona reconciliation trip, I’ve come to discern more of what it meant for Sam and for Mel.
But what about Ted? What did it mean for him?
This is hard to admit. Back when I was starting to do interviews with veterans, it would have made sense to begin with Ted. After all, he was the reason I’d first heard of Ortona. He was the first to talk to me about it. And he was a leader among veterans—chairman of his regimental association, prominent in the remembrance of Ortona. Following the CBC documentary on the Christmas dinner of reconciliation, Ted had gained even more prominence in Canadian war remembrance. Yet, I chose to start with veterans from other regiments. Eventually, I told myself, I would ask Ted for an interview. But not yet.
I could list practical reasons for that decision, but really what it came down to was fear. I didn’t want to include Ted in my research too early, for fear that he would try to control it—just as he’d been so controlling on that trip. At the outset of my fieldwork, I couldn’t know where my questions and interpretations might lead, but I suspected that whatever I did, Ted would have a problem with it. If he were involved, I would always worry about his approval, not wanting to end up in his crosshairs. Ortona was deeply important to him, and I’d seen his sensitivity and quickness to anger. He was well-connected, and I believed that, if he chose, he could make my life difficult. As a PhD student trying to do my first major project while navigating the politics of academia, I didn’t need that added pressure. Just the thought of interviewing Ted was stressful. And so, I decided to defer it. This made sense, I reasoned: first, I’d focus on gathering as much data as I could, and later, when I felt more confident and secure, I’d get back to Ted.
Later never came. I returned from western Canada with more than enough data. I’d done too much. Behind schedule, short of money, beginning to feel the immensity of the task that was still ahead of me, the last thing that I wanted was another interview, let alone an interview with such a challenging participant.
So I gave up all thought of contacting him. However, from time to time, the thought of him returned to haunt me. Whenever I imagined the prospect of finishing my PhD and sharing my work, I anticipated that he would somehow pop up to criticize and shame me, aggrieved by the fact that (in his eyes) I had snubbed him. He might use his moral authority as a leading veteran to publicly find faults with my work. Part of me suspected that my fears were unreasonable, but still I preferred not to face them.
And then it became a moot point. By the time I completed my PhD, I was fed up with Ortona and the whole topic of war. I wasn’t going to share my work anyway. There was no need to think any more, let alone worry, about Ted.
Now I’m back. But in the time that I’ve been gone, Ted—like all the others—has passed away.
When I looked him up and learned of his passing, I also learned that he’d published his memoirs. From an online search, I found there was a copy of it in the library of my old university.
Griffiths, E. R. M.
