There is a fierce March wind blowing from the east northeast, between “Grecale” and “Levante” as described on the beautiful chart of Italian wind names. The promised snow never materialized here but you can see its line through the mist that shrouds the coastal Apuan Alp range between Barga and the Tirreno-Ligurian sea. There will be snow in the Apennines behind Barga as well.
The story of The Buffalo Soldiers is fairly well known. James McBride wrote the novel entitled Miracle at Saint Anna, which is a fictionalized tale of two cities, Barga and Saint Anna di Stazzema. Unfortunately this combination of the two very separate and distinct real events has been promoted in several books, and Spike Lee made a movie of James McBride’s novel. The real stories are much more tragic and each worthy of its own recitation. The real story of the Buffalo Soldiers at Sommocolonia near Barga in December 1944 was discovered and has been described in the new book entitled Braided in Fire, by Solace Wales which will be available in June 2020.
The chapel at the house has its feast day Mass celebration on Corpus Domini, or Corpus Cristi Sunday usually near the end of May, the primarily Catholic holy day which honors the real, as opposed to symbolic, Eucarist.
We could arrange 12 chairs in the chapel and the rest of the congregation remained standing just outside the door, reciting the prayers and responses which they all knew by heart. The original tradition of the Mass there, years before, had always been to have a merenda either on the property or sometimes down by the river. The principle of the merenda is that of a picnic, where each family brings enough for themselves including, table cloths, paper plates, utensils and glasses. The reality was a feast where each family brought enough food for all to enjoy.
The serene Mass over and all congregated to enjoy a sumptuous buffet on trestle tables on our graveled courtyard.
There was a very tall gentleman in his late seventies who enjoyed talking and told me some of the stories of his adolescence during the war. He lived in a village above my house and, as with all the residents of these mountains, knew all the properties like the back of his hand, and walked down to see what was happening. He told me there was a small American encampment at the farmhouse just below my house and soldiers who were using my cantina as barracks. They were very friendly and well behaved, he said, and would joke with the local children and hand out chocolate and chewing gum.
The teenager, who would eventually become the tailor of Barga, heard the news that the Germans were nearby in these mountains and, with his father who had lived and worked in Glasgow and spoke English well, took the news to the soldiers at my property and the one below. It was then planned that the outpost would decamp to headquarters at Camaiore. As he told it, he and others led the soldiers on foot westward through the Apuan Alps to Camaiore where they met up with the American forces training units there.
The American and allied forces influence during World War Two is still in the collective memory. There are other fascinating stories of the children and grandchildren of the war years. When we first moved here we spoke to a woman in Barga who recounted the story, that as a child, of having walked out to my property during the war to take shelter from the bombing with the family there. And, Don Cola, as an 11 year old, and family, with their belongings in a wheel barrow, walked down to the town of Mologno in the valley.
I have a copy of the certificate awarded to the owner of my house “as a token of gratitude for and appreciation of the help given to the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen of the British Commonwealth of Nations which enabled them to escape from or evade capture by the enemy.” signed by H. R. Alexander, Field-Marshal, Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theatre.
I’m going to brave the wind and go out to the house as soon as I’ve printed yet another more detailed version of the self-declaration of movement.
The statistics of those infected, which I cautiously read each evening, while still better than before, have taken another slight jump, though those recovering consistently improve. We just need to hang in here.
The winds of change. There will be stories to tell.
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