Outdoors, most of the manhole covers had gone, leaving the streets a danger to traffic. However cars were in short supply – Neapolitans were stripping apart any intact military vehicle they could get their hands on. Shady characters and black marketeers were everywhere. More than once I was approached by a prostitute and was forced to beat a quick retreat!

 

Local legend has it that, without warning one day a cloud rose, taking the shape of a pine-tree as immortally described by Pliny two thousand years earlier. It stayed around Naples while steadily growing larger and more menacing.

 

I remember driving my locomotive through a soft grey snowfall taking me within a few miles of San Sebastiano, the village most at risk of destruction. This was where the lava pushed down the main street, with the remains of buildings including the local church in its wake.

 

As the lava marched on unchallenged, the usual suspects in the form of local saints were galvanised into action. Although San Gennaro (Saint January) was the patron saint of Naples, he was quickly transported to San Sebastiano. The prayed-for liquefaction of his blood three times a year offered protection to the city against misfortune, especially that posed by the looming volcano a few miles away.

 

Once the volcano had settled down, the saint‘s state of mind during the ceremonials in early May became a matter of popular concern and a familiar topic of conversation – even among the numerous atheistic servicemen now in the town. In the end it was judged a ‘below par liquefaction‘, but at least the transformation had eventually taken place. There would be no further problems till the Autumn.

 

Palaces with up to twenty great (though unfurnished) rooms provided accommodation for dozens, even hundreds, below. The destitution was not solely the result of conflict – the bombardment had exacerbated an existing level of crisis. Like in Victorian London a generation earlier, the people seeking refuge had become estranged and dislocated from the countryside from which they had come.

 

One story on the grapevine was that a local called Vito Genovese became a trusted intelligence source for the US Army, even though he was known to have a criminal record and apparently had links to Mussolini. The removal of a dictator had created opportunities for a host of minority groups and germinating political parties (one source reckoned they had identified well over fifty splinter parties like Forza Italia.) I cannot help comparing it to the removal of Saddam Hussein (whose birthplace I had passed earlier in the war) by US and UK forces in Iraq in recent times – leading to the emergence of – albeit more extreme factions which will destabilise the region for generations. Despite all the good intentions of The Allies, the foundation stones of modern Italy were being built on sand rather than solidified volcanic ash.

 

After leaving Naples I returned to my unit at Brindisi, where the local police had a station on the railway platform; at night time they would call in to see if there were any ladies present – there always were of course. They would take them to the station, where sadly they would be raped and sent on their way. The problem for civilians was that there were few passenger trains running, because our priority was to support the fighting forces. On one stint of night duty I looked into the waiting room and there were two smartly dressed girls and two small boys, and I motioned to them to follow me. I was determined the police were not going to abuse them. They came willingly and we went over the tracks under the moonlight and upstairs to my small office, were there were some iron beds (where the Italians would sleep before the war) but no bedclothes. I warned my boys they were not allowed upstairs unless I was there. In the morning I gave them soap to have a wash and my sandwiches. It was not five star treatment but at least they were kept out of harm’s way.