In mid September 1944 rumors were flying about what was to become of the Food, Agricultural, and Forestry Division of the Allied Commission. Several of the specialists on the staff already had been assigned to active army units moving with the troops up the main body of Italy, hopefully to "occupy the Po Valley". I had asked for a transfer to the Balkan theatre but nothing had happened. Colonel Hartman was asking for reassignment home and possibly a role in the Pacific theatre.
At this time I was still, by formal assignment, head of the Food and Agricultural Division of the Allied Commission, but was tentatively on field assignment with the Fifteenth Army Group, then commanded by the distinguished Canadian, General Alexander. This took me on frequent forays across the girth of Italy behind the Fifth and Eighth Army lines. My notes of September 20th indicate that I was on such a trip visiting central Italy, Perugia, Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Livorno on the East side; and over on to Rimini and a host of other towns and villages.
After this foray I returned to Rome on September 27th for a high policy conference in which some detailed plans were laid and our agricultural advice was sought in connection with the planned assault on the Po Valley, set for sometime in the spring. The Po Valley is laced with a series of irrigation canals and the subject was whether these canals were deep enough to make tank traps against us once the Germans blew the bridges; also what kind of equipment, if any, would be needed to get our track vehicles across them.
During the summer I had contacted some of the North Italian engineers and agriculturalists who had come south at the time of the Allied invasion. As a result I had a pretty fair picture of just what was in store once our armies hit the Po Valley flood plain. As it turned out, the army engineers devised a sort of a Bailey Bridge which was bolted on top of an old and worn out tank. These tanks were run into the irrigation ditches, and the bridge lashed to the top unfolded, and the other vehicles simply drove over this buried tank on the newly and quickly erected bridge.
Another item which we worked hard on was a psychological warfare project which urged farmers to shock their grain but not thresh it. This was really more effective than we had hoped. It had its bad points, however, due to the fact that our armies did not actually get into the Po Valley until late Spring in 1945. The wheat that had been left in shocks in the fields was badly sprouted and rotten, thus we lost much of what was a good crop.
While in this so-called high-policy conference orders came that I was to be formally assigned to the mobile forces of the 15th Army Group, and attached to Fifth Army headquarters for housing and rations. I was to report to Fifth Army Headquarters in Florence in early October.
Wanting some idea of what was behind us and the condition in which we were leaving South Italy and Sicily, I took off again on a hurried survey to the East Coast and then to Sicily for a look. The Italian harvest was well under way, and in many instances in Sicily was already over. Except for torn buildings, temporary bridges and other relics of battle, things were moving again in Sicily, hopes were rising, and even the Sicilian Mafia was having its troubles making the black market the bonanza it had been just one year before.
Returning to Rome with a rather encouraging report on how things were going in the South, I quickly began tying up loose ends to shove off to my new assignment, now scheduled for October 6th.
In the late afternoon of that day, with Pompo, a new Italian driver familiar with the Lombardy dialects of North Italy, we took off, hoping to reach Siena for an overnight stop and then arrive in Florence on the seventh. On the way an incident all to typical of the time took place in the provincial town of Viterbo where we stopped to warm our rations at a sort of family restaurant in a blasted-out villa. We parked our jeep out front where we thought we could see it at all times. Perhaps it was the spam cooked in savory olive oil and Viterbo wine or maybe carelessness; anyway, we did not watch closely enough, and when we went out to the jeep my entire assortment of luggage, containing my dress uniforms, personal effects, exposed color film, camera and all were gone. We immediately went to the police but with much gesturing and shrugging of the shoulders they doubted they could find the culprit. I posted a heavy reward for the return of the camera and the film, forgetting the uniforms which I would have scant use for in a field tent and we pushed on into the night for Siena arriving there about eleven in the evening.
Siena is one of the old medieval towns, fortress-like and build around a relatively large, oval center palazzo. Great houses or castles were on all sides, some of them converted to modern tourist hotels, others replete with great arches, towering columns and dark alleys of ancient times.
This center oval in the town is the scene of one of the really unique events of Europe during the summer tourist season. The outer perimiter is used as a a race track and here bareback riders mounted on mules vie with each other in races around the oval while the sidewalks, crowded with screaming Italians and tourists, look on and cheer the winner. This is just about as wild and as innocent amusement as Portuguese bull fights in the Azores. Men nor animals are rarely hurt, but considerable destruction to shop windows, clothing of bystanders and chairs and benches, result as the animals sometimes get out of hand.
Around noon we took off on the road north and crossed the plains of Tuscany. This is the big landlord and estate country ... great estates operating just as they have been operating for over a hundred years. Families on the land are cared for and under a sort of a patron system hardly existing any place else in the world except possibly in parts of Spain. This is a colorful country and the peasants and workers on the great estates marching with their hoes on shoulders, singing and going to and fro among the grape arbors are right out of a picture book.
From late January until almost the middle of February I was out across the fronts trying to get some seed wheat for the farmers south of Florence to plant in the spring. Italy traditionally got a good variety of seed wheat from Greece and they also had some blends of wheat which were produced in Southern Italy around Bari; the source for most of the seed wheat used north of Rome. However, this wheat was not available simply because it had all been eaten. Farmers in the Tuscany Plain and all around that area were screaming for seed. We finally secured permission to release some Canadian red wheat, which Canada had sent over for food. This wheat grew exceedingly well and while it had a different taste, and in fact was a different kind of wheat from the traditional Italian varieties, it did grow and did produce a good crop.
After our effort to get wheat seed for the Tuscans, I visited Lucca Province on a hurried call and tended another one of the small crises which come along in the business of Military Governnment. The Lucca area north of Pisa was famous for its olive oil. This Lucca oil is in great demand world-wide for its flavor and use on salads. The Italians normally sold this oil, every quart of it, in the foreign markets and bought Algerian oil or some other cheaper product and blended it with Italian oil. Italians used this blend; but American importers wanted the Lucca oil badly. However, since Lucca was still in the military zone, nothing could move without Military Government approval. I did succeed in jarring loose several tons of this oil and it headed toward Paris, the United States, and the palates of gourmets who identify good olive oil almost as a wine connoisseur identifies good wine.
While on another trip I received a delegation of farmers who wanted potato seed that they normally planted in the spring for an early summer crop that was grown principally around Naples and further south. How to get seed potatoes from the south with the army controlling every single railroad car, every single locomotive, and every single truck that moved was the job.
Immediately, I began a campaign to get a few cars for seed potatoes on specific military trains coming up from the south. War materiel was moving, getting ready for the big drive over the Apennines and into the Po Valley. There was one hitch: these cars had to be shunted out onto the siding, had to be unloaded almost instantly and put back into the military train and headed south again. This turn-around business was exceedingly difficult since farmers had very little transport to move the potato seed out. There was no storage. What we had to do was virtually unload the potatoes on the ground and the farmers had to come in and carry them away on their backs, in baskets on their heads, on mule pack, or, occasionally, by cart. The automobile equipment which normally hauls such things was not available to them.
In late February, I made a trip to the Eighth Army front and again visited Ravenna. The first time I was in that ancient city, which was once the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire, I was directly behind an advancing British army and in the battle zone while the army fought its way up toward the base of the Po Valley. My mission here was to see what progress farmers had made in getting their land back into production. Since some of the land in this area had to have water pumped out of it, it was imperative that someday, somehow, the pumps which had been blown up by the retreating Germans could be quickly repaired to pump off the water so that crops could be planted.
The agricultural officers dispatched to the Eighth Army were quite ingenious gearing jeep engines to small Italian pumps. They pumped out patches of land from time to time while the huge canal pumps were being repaired.
Again I visted the famous cathedral out from Ravenna which was once actually on the seashore, but now somewhat inland since the winding river had built up a great amount of land between the city of Ravenna, the cathedral, and the seashore. My purpose was to see the world-famous mosaics which were put up there by Theodosia, the wife of the Roman emperor Constantine. She had been a famous Courtesan, with quite a racy reputation in the Roman Empire before becoming the wife of Constantine. She became interested in the arts and sponsored some of the great artistic accomplishments of the Eastern Empire. These were famous in style and nature. On the afternoon I looked at these mosaics, they seemed almost lifelike, especially the eyes. How an artist can take pieces of marble and glass and create the image of a sheep in mosaic that almost speaks to you is one of the great mysteries. Here I was, a lonely soldier from America, gazing on artistic achievement 1500 years old. It was something awe-inspiring and a great memory to this day.
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