On April 21st, I moved out of Florence heading up the center of Italy toward Bologna. Along that road were blown-out bridges, crippled tanks, and destroyed villages. It seemed that everywhere I looked, piles of rubble marked the passing of the God of War.
On the 22nd, I heard that the army had entered the city of Bologna in the Po Valley. As a part of my job I headed that way through rubble-strewn roads, bombed-out bridges, about every kind of destruction that one could imagine. It was the Fifth Army that had the honor of going into Bologna, but as a matter of fact this town had been more or less marked for the Eighth Army to take over and administer.
I entered Bologna in late evening and found the town blacked out, but generally intact. A part of the city had been placed off-limits for bombing. The retreat of the Germans from the area meant that it was not badly damaged by artillery fire.
Bologna has some famous towers, they are brick rather than the white marble of the Pisa Tower, but they are almost as famous. It is also the city which housed the first known hippodrome where medical students could sit and watch surgery going on down in the pit. One of the orders to the military government group was to see that this was not subjected to destruction and to protect it if at all possible. Unfortunately, a plane bombing the railroad yards several yards away from the hippodrome had either dropped his bomb too late or else it had skidded and hit the side of the building damaging it somewhat. However, it did not destroy the essential characteristics of this historic medical monument.
By this time there had been formed in Northern Italy, a so-called National Liberation Front, financed by the Russians. It consisted of all of the people who were secretly opposed to the Mussolini regime but who had been afraid and unable to surface. It was well organized and a real force throughout the Po Valley and cooperated with the allied armies. These rank and file partisans were largely young people, boys and girls. Now that the Germans had left they strutted about in great numbers, literally covered with hand grenades, dynamite and tommy-guns. They shot up their enemies at random and pretty well ran wild.
There was not very much the occupying army could do. Fifth Army had entered the city. General Clark had moved to the city hall to proclaim the city captured and under the rule of the Military Government. The Fifth Army then moved on leaving the Military Government to keep things quiet if possible. Guns fired all night as the partisans and their enemies fought it out in the street. When daylight came there was always a parade of funerals and a great ceremony of burying the dead that had been killed the night before.
The most gruesome incident of my many experiences in that war came on the day after I arrived in Bologna and had taken up a small office on the second floor in the city hall. A mob of partisans sought out the Questra, or police judge, who had sentenced many of the Bologna citizens to death during the Mussolini era and dragged him through the streets to the square in front of the city hall.
Any doubt as to their intention was immediately dissipated. They flayed him with sticks, pelted him with stones, and dragged him to the side of the building where the mob bashed his head against the brick wall right below my window. Finally, after the mob had exhausted itself, the limp body of the Questra dropped to the ground. The onlookers waited a while and then drifted away. The local police who had been either slow in coming, or had watched from a distance, moved in and removed the body.
The Military Government staff simply had to look on at this groteque scene, primarily because there were too few of us to do anything against a mob of several hundred frenzied people carrying everything from sticks and canes to tommy guns and hand grenades. Second, our military had not really taken over control of the city, and on top of that they had not yet designated somebody to be the Mayor and set up a municipal organization through which the Military Government could function.
It may sound easy to take over a city of 500,000 or more with a military order, but carrying out that order requires either a vast allied organization of literally hundreds and hundreds of soldiers or, luckily, a local organization of native citizens to form some semblance of a government through which the allied military might operate.
Shortly after this execution in the public square, the families of the many victims who had been condemned to death by this judge, began bringing pictures of fathers and sons who had been shot in this very square against this same brick wall. They pasted their pictures around the blood-spattered spot on the wall where the Questra's head had been beaten to a pulp. Some 300 pictures of young and old meen were pasted on the wall. While my stay in Bologna was not too long, something less than one week -- the pictures remained there as long as I was in the city.
Later there was designated a Mayor of the city; a Communist leader by the name of Luguno, who was the Communist representative in the National Liberation Front. He at once began organizing the city to function in the best manner it possibly could under conditions at that time. Mr. Luguno was a Communist and saw that all of his enemies were eliminated. He turned out to be a remarkably able administrator and, as I later discovered, was elected Mayor of Bologna after the war and served as Mayor of that city for more than 20 years.
Luguno's first job was to try to disarm and to get the guerrillas and freedom fighters that had been instrumental in cleaning out the Fascists and in keeping the Germans on the run in that area, to turn in their arms. This took some doing, for they had the taste of power. With a few grenades strapped around their waists and a tommy gun slung over their shoulder, a overseas cap and the red scarf of Garibaldi around their neck, they were aware that the people ran for cover when they were around.
Luguno, however, attempted immediately to round these fellows up and get them to give up their arms. He used some pretty interesting psychology. He organized a big parade for celebrating the freedom of the city from the Germans and the designation of the new government by the Allied Military. This parade ran through the principle streets and wound up at the city hall. As the parade ended, each of the guerrilla fighters in the parade walked over to the truck and threw his arms and his ammunition into that truck. The parade drew out more than 4,000 Partisans carrying everything from grenades to dynamite. Seven truckloads of this material were carted away.
Since Bologna had been declared an open city by both the Allies and the Germans, things returned to normal as far as electricity and the normal funcitoning of traffic, hotel elevators, and the goings-on in a city of this size. My billet was a relatively old but well-kept hotel in the heart of Bologna. On the evening of the 29th as I went up the elevator to my room, the elevator boy said "Mussolini Finite", which meant "Mussolini Finished."
I took it more or less as a rumor, but that night on the BBC nightly broadcast came the official word that Mussolini and his mistress had been executed by the Partisans in a Shell filling station on the outskirts of Milan. As a final indignity, the once pompous dictotor was hanged, along with his mistress, by the heels in front of this station. Hanging by the heels is the most undignified way of punishment in the Italian cultural system.
It was in Bologna that I found my long-time friend and part-time associate, Lieutenant Colonel Elmer Holmgreen, whom I had last met on Anzio. He was moving with the Fifth Army field forces and temporarily taking over some of the agricultural problems, if one could classify them as that, in the city of Bologna. As it turned out, these were numerous and rather unusual.
With Bologna an open city during the winter and in anticipation of the eventual drive of the Allied Armies into the Po Valley, the people in the countryside had poured into Bologna for safety and for the protection of their livestock. There were literally thousands of farm families in the city and they had brought with them their chickens, pigs, cows, and horses, if they had any. Some of them even brought in their small threshing machinery and stored it there during the winter. We actually found cows on the second floors of apartment buildings. There were two or three dairies in daily operation, each numbering twenty to thirty cows in the basements of various buildings throughout the city. In addition, there were chickens on roof tops, chickens in apartments, and sheep and pigs in little back yards.
The minute the armies swept forward through Bologna and were close to crossing the Po River, all of these people wanted to get out of Bologna and get back to their farms and villages. This presented a serious problem, not only for the people themselves but for the armies. Every road in every direction was clogged with military traffic; thousands of soldiers, trucks, artillery and all the equipment of a modern army moving almost like a great train across the countryside.
We rather helpless agricultural officers were trying to keep as many as possible from returning just at this time, but there was literally no stopping them. The only thing we could do was to warn them to stay off the highways with their livestock, children, and families because they might be killed in the military traffic. As a result they cut straight across the country, any way they could. It was indeed a remarkable fact that these thousands, (some said as many as 28,000 farm families had crowded into Bologna that winter) moved out of that city with their horses, pigs, chickens, sheep, cows, threshing machines, plows, and whatever they had, back to the countryside and to their villages. They did not present any problem for the military. In so far as I know none of them was hurt in their trek.
Getting farmers out of the city was only half of the problem. During the winter the dairy cows, the sheep, and chickens had produced an enormous pile of plain old manure. Under some sort of city regulation or general agreement this had been hauled in wheelbarrows, or carried in baskets, to a large square almost in the very center of the city. Eventually there was a solid city block, once a rather palatial square, covered two to eight feet deep in horse manure, cow manure, straw, and all the bedding material accumulated during the winter.
Our army medical people saw this as a tremendous sanitary problem and ordered the manure to be moved and burned. It was up to the agricultural staff to implement this order. The army agreed to supply the gasoline to pour on this giant mass of stuff so that it would burn, but burning it in the city was rather dangerous. This meant that it had to be picked up and hauled out of the city and then burned according to the medical orders of that day. The army again came forward and said they would supply the trucks, but the city of Bologna would have to supply the Italian labor to load the trucks.
At this point I began to think what a great waste it was to haul away tons and tons of good manure and burn it. So I interceded once again with the army and got permission for the manure to be hauled out of town and dumped on the side of the fields. The Italian farmers could then pick it up in their carts, baskets, and wheelbarrows and spread it. Thus, was another ticklish situation resolved to the satisfaction of all.
Bologna is the center of a world-renowned bee culture. Honey bees from the Bologna area are shipped throughout the world and are said to have qualities which are superior to honey bees in any other place. They are especially adaptable to cross-breeding with other kinds of lesser-strength bees. Bees were traditionally brought into the city during the winter and fed sugar to be kept alive. It was now the beginning of May. Flowers were blooming in the Apennines; poppies were beginning to bloom in the wheat fields of the Po Valley. These bees were getting very restless and troublesome to the keepers. So one day a rather large delegation of the bee culturalists advised through a translator that their bees were starving and they had to be moved out and into the fields around Bologna so they could eat. They were also getting very restless and would soon being swarming. We gave them the necessary permit to move their hives.
It was only a day or two later when another bee incident popped up. A couple of rather spic-and-span British officers came in with their brass buttons shining; the very personification of eminently correct staff officers from general headquarters. Immediately, we expected the familiar squawk that something was happening in the rural area, needing the prompt attention of the agricultural staff. I was mistaken this time, however. The young Major, who I learned later was Aide to a British General, saluted and said "The General presents his compliments, sir, and he would like a special favor from you."
The story that unfolded was a bit unusual. The General was a bee enthusiast, and he kept bees in England as a hobby. He had long known of and had long exchanged queen bees and other items of the bee business with the people in the Bologna area. He wondered if we could arrange for him to get a queen bee of a particular kind produced in that area to ship to his home in England. We immediately got in touch with our bee people whom we had helped the day before. They graciously selected a high-quality queen bee and in less than twelve hours this been was on its way to the General's home and his bee business outside London.
The armies had by now crossed the Po River and were approaching the Southern Alps. I began to fold up my official duties with Bologna and with other members of the military government staff and moved into a mobile field unit to follow closely the advancing Allied army. For this we moved in trucks and lived in the traditional pup tents. From time to time we camped in some pasture or any place that was convenient. An incident occurred one evening, very typical of the times, and typical of the relationship or lack of relationship between the army and the civilian population.
On the evening of May 1, our first big move into the field, we selected a fine timothy and red clover pasture outside of a little village in the Po Valley to pitch our tents, set up our camp and made headquarters there for a few days. Typically as in many other Italian villages, this acreage was a communal hay field for this village. The villagers moved out of the village at evening and with their scythes cut the luscious hay to carry into the village for their milk cattle and occasionally other livestock.
When our big trucks and equipment rolled onto this field, villagers were horrified that we were going to destroy their livestock feed. They came out somewhat angry and tried to tell us in a way as polite as people could that we were destroying their meadows and that they hoped we would either buy their hay or move on to another spot. After considerable discussion, it was decided by our particular boss that we would let them come in and harvest their grass around our camp, so that we would not tramp it down and destroy it.
They came in the late sunset evening with their scythes and began mowing the grass. Being a farm boy and somewhat admiring the razor sharp scythes these fellows were using I volunteered to cut some of the grass myself. I picked up the scythe and in the way of the farmer I edged the scythe with my thumb to see how sharp it was and then began slowly to swing this razor-sharp scythe through the green and luscious timothy hay and green clover, much to the surprise of our Italian onlookers. At once I developed a kind of communication and friendship. Before the evening was over they were bringing us highly spiffed red wine which they called a sort of Italian champagne. They day was saved and we struck up a friendship which left generally good relations until we moved on a day or two later.
On May 2nd, while we were in this camp, rumors began to fly that Hitler was dead, and that Donetz was taking over in Germany. Simultaneous with the spread of these rumors, Italians in our village told us that the German Armies in North Italy and Western Austria had surrendered. I wrote that day, "Thank God, for that. Running the Brenner Pass would have been no fun!"
The Brenner Pass was a famous passageway; a narrow bottle-neck between Austria and Italy. In order to invade Austria from the south our armies would have had to move up through that narrow heavily armed passage. But since the Germans had surrendered in Northern Italy and the Austrians had surrendered on their side, it began to look like peace was coming to this part of the world.
From about May 3rd until the 8th we were jumping all over most of Northern Italy as one town after another fell. The problem was getting civilian life back into some sort of order; looking after food problems, and the general mop-up after an army has passed on. Some of the so-called slave labor, the Italians who had been in labor camps of Austria and northern Italy, were beginning to stream south. There was also a migration of an enormous number of ladies of pleasure who had either followed the German Army or had been used by the German Army in its occupation. They were streaming back in the Po Valley and further south. In addition to this influx, German prisoners were beginning to be herded back to prison camps in south Italy. Partisans were running wild in many of the cities. One would see them here and there in little groups, with their Garibaldi scarves, a Mussolini-type fascist hat, or a sort of a doughboy hat as their particular symbol. They were always loaded down with hand grenades and tommy guns.
People in nearly every city were out in the streets and acting joyful. At least peace, if not happiness, had at last come their way. The armies, in most instances in the Po Valley, had circled the cities and there had not been much street fighting in the Po Valley towns. As we went from city to city -- Modena, Verona, Reggio, Bologna and other places -- my Italian driver and I were a great curiosity. We were more or less greeted as heroes or liberators and became a little embarrassed at all of the attention. Finally we decided that we would just act like liberators, and so we would drive down the main street waving and saluting as the crowds cheered.
People in Northern Italy, the so-called Lombards, are blond Italians. Many of the blond and buxom Italian gals that threw flowers at us as we drove down the street had a hand grenade in their other hand.
We were constantly on the move in these days, sleeping in the fields, having our rations cooked by friendly old ladies in the villages. The constant concern was the news on the radio every night which told of the developments in Europe. On the evening and night of May 8, I noticed that world events, once the tide turns, move at a tremendous tempo. The radio screamed reports that one million troops had surrendered -- mainly in Holland and Denmark. Another large group had surrendered to Patton and Patch in Southern Germany. Today the final blow: all land, sea, and air forces in Germany surrendered at a minute to midnight. Of the Churchill announcement at 3:00 this afternoon, I wrote shortly thereafter: "He met the situation with the same courage and clear ringing voice that we heard five years ago when he gave his first speech as War Prime Minister. I can hardly realize the long trail of trial and woe through which the world has passed. It would indeed seem that time for rejoicing if it were not for the fact that Japan is staring us in the face."
On May 9th the guns of Europe were silent. This was something the whole world was waiting for. In our notes of that day we said "now comes the most difficult task of all, how to make peace; a peace that will stick hard enough to keep France, Britain, and the United States together, let alone Russia. Russia no doubt desires peace as fervently as any other power but Russia wants peace on her terms. We distrust the Russian way of doing things. Russia distrusts us, we must remember that this is the first time Russia has had a front seat at a peace table and she expects to be heard."
Indeed I do not claim to be a prophet, but those notes written thirty years ago somehow foretold some of the difficulty and some of the long roads we have come with Russia from that day on May 9, 1945 through the summit in May 1972. There is still a long road ahead.
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