Old Soldier

Prologue

Following the surrender of Italy in October 1943, Italian citizens were trapped between the advances of Allied forces from the south, and German forces from the north. On 12 August 1944, 560 local villagers and refugees were massacred by the 16th SS Panzergranadiers. They were predominantly old men, women and children. No officer was ever held to account for the crime.

Barney’s Death

Barney opened his eyes and registered his daughter’s elfin features and the light touch of her fingertips tracing his eyebrows. He was vaguely aware of the tortuous gurgling sounds of his breathing and the smell of his own inexorable death. He allowed his consciousness to recede to the desert war of North Africa, and an Italian soldier he knew as, Roberto.

Roberto called, ‘Do not be concerned with the death that lies before you. Look at your surroundings if you must, but you have already receded from the faces that you loved.’

Barney registered Roberto’s face. ‘Come, mio soldato. We do not have much time you and I.’

Barney followed Roberto through the hospital and into cobble-stone streets, with marble houses, surrounded by a ring of rugged peaks. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘This is Sant’Anna. It is my village.’

Barney saw emaciated old men, with bony fingers and sunken eyes, dressed in threadbare shirts and trousers held up by rope. Women with skeletal figures and exhausted faces watched their children with distended abdomens and bare feet. ‘They are starving,’ Barney said.

Roberto shrugged. ‘Their livestock are gone. There are not even rabbits. See how the children dig for worms and searching the forest for wild carrots and berries.’

Barney felt his breathing become more laboured. He heard a familiar voice calling to him with comforting words and felt Robert grasp his arm and say ‘She calls to you and cries.’

‘Who is it that cries?’ Barney asked.

‘It is your daughter,’ Roberto replied, and Barney nodded.

‘Watch now, mio soldato.’

Several German trucks enter the village. Men leapt out and set up machine guns. Barney approached a soldier sitting with three of his comrades, eating cheese and bread. He squatted in front of the man and examined his clean, youthful face.

‘What is your name?’ Barney asked.

‘He is Murdoch. He is an apprentice baker in Cologne,’ Roberto responded. 'The two men behind the machine guns are brothers from Dusseldorf. Before the war they made toys.'

Sixty old men and women, two carrying babies were filed into the compound in front of the church. A priest approached an officer and pleaded the lives of the people. The officer shot the priest through the head. The brothers from Dusseldorf open fired and dispensed death. Barney watched the blood pool across the cobblestones.

Murdoch rose to his feet and strap on a metal container, and pick up a flame-thrower. Two boys came running from the side of the church and were incinerated, their arms flailing the air, and their heads cast backwards in silent pleas.

Barney watched as soldiers laughing as they smoked cigarettes, outside a courtyard where scores of men, women and children were trapped. The men ditched their cigarettes and threw grenades into the courtyard, massacring them all.

Six men were stripped and suspended by their feet and their abdomens sliced open with bayonets. A pregnant woman, her hands in front of her in supplication, was held as her belly was sliced open and the foetus removed and cast to the ground.

Barney wandered the village as the massacre continued. He stopped at a row of bullet holes less than a metre high and with crumpled tiny bodies below. A starving dog ran down the street with a limp infant in its mouth.

Barney turned at Roberto’s call and stood next to him. He pointed at the charred remains of a woman cradling three children. ‘Who are they?’ Barney asked.

‘They are my wife and children, mio soldato.’ Barney stood blinking.

Everywhere Barney turned, screams, cries and pleas erupted, and fell silent. Hundreds of bodies were piled in front of Chiesa di Sant’ Anna and pews were taken from inside the church and added to the pile. Murdoch stepped forward and produced a conflagration, that purified the atrocity. All buildings collapsed in fire, and the air filled with human pungency.

Barney turned to Roberto. ‘Where are the men? Why does no-one defend them?’

‘Mio soldato, I would give my life for them but mine was already given to you. Others too, or captured.’

Barney felt his lungs fill with fluid, and the movement of his chest cease. Roberto called, ‘You are ready. Come.’

Barney followed Roberto to the deserts sands of North Africa. He caressed his rifle and began to crawl as Roberto, spoke to him. ‘I saw your face flickering as flares streaked the sky and watched you focus on the blackness that enshrouded me. You heard nothing but the cacophony of artillery bursts and gained comfort from the ominous dark outline of tanks moving in your peripheral vision. You sought the earth, that sandy earth that was your mother who succoured you, and you embraced her tightly. Around you, the black images of men crawled like poisonous grubs. An artillery explosion lit your flattened shape, bursting your eardrums so that the hell-scape receded to a muffle, overladen with a tormenting high-pitched tone. Your helmet was peppered with earth, blinding and choking you. You saw soundless screams emitted from distorted flare enshrined faces, frozen in Butoh mimicry. I saw them too and it frightened me.’

Barney’s consciousness crawled towards Roberto’s voice. ‘Look at me, as I looked at you that night. I was terrified of you. But you advanced upon me heedless of my silent pleas.’

Roberto's face and voice swirled before him. ‘It is time now, just as it was mine. I saw you join the black shapes rising from the earth before me and I waited with dread for your embrace. My mouth fell agape at the glint of steel as you loomed above me and I felt your bayonet pierce my chest, driving it through my back. You locked my eyes and took my outstretched hand.’

Barney stood in the swirling time and space, to the distant sobs of his daughter and the grasp of Roberto’s hand; the two locking eyes, the two embracing death.