tomtermite's Full Review: Iris Origo - War in Val D'Orcia 1943-1944: A Diary
As I have been searching for anything and everything written about the U. S. Fifth Army's 88th Division fighting in Italy in 1944 and 1945, I came across Iris Origo's published diary. My personal research was to help me follow in my father's footsteps, via written accounts, as he fought with the infantry in the Apennines just north of Florence.
Origo's travails took place in what would be an hour's drive south of Florence, but she was in the path of the retreating Nazis and the invading Allies. Her revelations of the atrocities that follow the bloody paths of war rate as some of the best prose on World War II.
Iris Origo was born in America, raised in England, and eventually married an Italian. They bought a huge farm in Tuscany, about five miles from Montepulicano. La Foce was their farmstead. Even in the 1940s, the Italian land-ownership system was quasi-feudal. The landowner took care of the peasants who did the labor, splitting the proceeds from the crops. The Origos were among the high-class land owners.
It was in this environment that they felt the squeeze after Italy dropped out of the war, and the Allies were moving into Italy, from the bottom of the boot northward. American Liberator bombers concentrated on the cities, but occasionally dropped their loads in the rural areas. Some fighter planes strafed roads, not differentiating between citizens and military. The Origos had no place to hide. They were raising a family as well as caring for the people on their farm.
Iris and her husband Antonio "adopted" children who came from the bombed-out cities of Turin and Genoa. Their selfless goal was to provide safety for these children in their rural pocket of Tuscany. As the war progressed, they kept taking in more children. They provided schooling, fed them, clothed them, made them a home away from the destruction where many of their mothers and fathers survived or died.
The war came to La Foce as the Germans retreated. Iris' story is one climax after another. They lost communication with the outside world, helped escaped Allied POWs, made deals with partisans, played serious question-and-answer games with brutal German soldiers, and managed to survive until the front past them by.
When German soldiers take over the Origo home, the Origos, their children and all their farm laborers exist alongside them for a few days, eventually taking refuge in their big cellar. On a moment's notice, as the area is bombarded with Allied shells, the Germans demand the cellar for themselves, order the adults and children to get out. The Origos are forced to march to safety, but there was no safe place to go. They chose Montepulciano, six miles along mountainous roads that have been loaded with land mines. Artillery shells explode nearby as they march bravely onward
The older children carried their own jackets and some food. The babies were carried by adults. The march is not without incident but the group,including 28 youngsters, completes the dangerous trek with no casualties. En route they pass dead German soliders sprawling on the ground. They manage to talk their way past road blockades. Over hill and dale they move on.
Iris ends her diary on July 5, 1944, when Montepulciano is freed by the Allies. Her last paragraph wraps up the experience: "The Fascist and German menaces are receding. The day will come when at last the boys will return to their ploughs, and the dusty clay-hills of the Val d'Orcia will again blossom like the rose. Destruction and death has visited us, but now--there is hope in the air."
This is no historical report on major battles. It's a personal story that adds a new element to war--the hardships suffered by individuals who are caught in harm's way. There were extreme food shortages. Being on a farm, they could survive better than the city people, but the Germans confiscated food, even took cows and chickens. They also plundered personal items, took anything they desired.
The War in Val d'Orcia is a poignant first-person report on surviving an ordeal that most people cannot imagine. Before the war, Iris Origo was one of the privileged few, an educated woman with upperclass connections. During the war she was, quite simply, a hero.
Many of her Tuscan neighbors were brutally killed, a few of them hanged in public. There were rapes, including one of an 80-year-old woman. It was an ordeal. Reading Origo's story is shocking and revealing.
Where has the book been? Copyrighted in 1947, it was first published in Italian. It was not published in the United States until 1984. The American edition came with a brilliant introduction by British scholar Denis Mack Smith. He sums up the adventure in a few pages that add to the total volume.
On my initial reading, I could not put the book down. I mailed it to my sister in the East, and she reported it was one of the finest stories she had ever read. She sent it back to me for a second reading, which I did more thoroughly, even following some of the battle movements with my detailed maps of Tuscany.
This is recommended reading for anyone with even a casual interest in the travesty of war.
Since reading this moving book, I have been motivated to go to Tuscany where I have reserved a hotel room for three nights outside the walled town of Montepulciano. I can hike the roads, tour the beautiful restored gardens of La Foce, perhaps even talk with Benedetta, daughter of Iris, who was a four-year-old when the family was displaced.
The beauty of Tuscany has returned. I will not see battle-scarred buildings, falling stone walls, craters in roads. I will see the lovely Tuscan countryside that tourists enjoy so much. But I will remember the late Iris Origo and the brave Italians who fought their little battles within the big war.
The book shows up occasionally on eBay at low bid prices. That is where I got my paperback copy.
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