Page 54 of The Veteran

It was about twenty yards by thirty. On two sides it was bounded by high walls, twelve feet at least, with one arch, gates drawn open, through which he had entered. On the other two sides the walls were even higher, fifty feet or more, blank but for a few slits, topped with roofs, the outer walls of a massive building centuries old. At the far end of the yard, set into the wall of the huge edifice, was another door. It was made not of planks but entire beams bolted together to withstand attack and it was closed tight shut. The timber was ancient as the city itself, long bleached by sun save for a few dark blotches.

Along one side of the court, from end to end, ran a colonnade or cloister, the leaning roof supported by a row of stone columns and casting deep, cool shade inside. The gardener came back with strips of cloth and a pannikin of water.

He knelt again and firmly strapped with bandages the injured ankle, pouring water into the fabric to soak it and cool the flesh. The American’s wife sighed with relief.

‘Can you make it to the Palio?’ asked the husband.

The wife rose, tested the ankle, winced. It pained her.

‘What do you think?’ asked the tourist of the gardener. He shrugged.

‘The alleys are rough, the crowds dense and very rowdy. Without a ladder or a raised position you will see nothing. But there will be celebrations all evening. You will see the pageantry then, in every street. Or there will be another Palio in August. Can you wait on?’

‘Nope. I’ve got cattle to run. Gotta go home next week.’

‘Ah. Then . . . your wife could walk, but gently.’

‘Can we wait a bit, honey?’ she asked.

The tourist nodded. He glanced round the courtyard.

‘What miracle? I don’t see no shrine.’

‘There is no shrine. There is no saint. Not yet. But one day, I hope.’

‘So what happened here thirty-one years ago this day?’

THE GARDENER’S STORY

‘Were you in the Second World War?’ asked the gardener. ‘Sure. US Navy. Pacific theatre.’ ‘But not here in Italy?’

‘No. My kid brother was. He fought with Mark Clark.’

The gardener nodded, as if staring into the past.

‘All through 1944 the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, from Sicily to the far north and the Austrian border. All that year the German army fought and retreated, fought and retreated. It was a long retreat. At first they were the allies of the Italians, then after the Italian capitulation the occupiers.

‘Here in Tuscany the fighting was very fierce. Field Marshal Kesselring commanded. Facing him were the Americans under General Clark, the British under General Alexander and the Free French under General Juin. By early June the fighting front had reached the northern border of Umbria and the south of Tuscany on this western sector.

‘South of here the terrain is rugged, range after range of steep hills, valleys holding hundreds of rivers and streams. The roads wind along the mountainsides, the only possible passage for vehicles. They are easily mined and can be raked by gunfire from across the valley. Hidden spotters on the peaks of the hills can drop the artillery shells from behind them right onto the enemy with great accuracy. Both sides took heavy casualties.

‘Siena became a big medical centre. The Wehrmacht’s Medical Corps set up several hospitals here and they were always full. Towards the end even they overflowed and several nunneries and monasteries were requisitioned. And still the Allied tide rolled on. Kesselring ordered all wounded well enough to be moved to be sent north. Columns of German ambulances rolled north day and night. But some could not be moved and had to stay. Many died of

their wounds and are buried outside the city. The pressure on space eased for a while; until the last ten days of that month. Then the fighting redoubled, and it was close. In those last ten days a young German surgeon was drafted in here, fresh from college. He had no experience. He had to watch and learn and operate as he went along. Sleep was short, supplies running dry.’

There was a roar across the summer sky as, out of sight, the last of the parading Comparse entered the Piazza del Campo. Each of the rival Contrade was parading once round the giant sand racetrack laid over the cobblestones. An even louder shout greeted the arrival of the carroccio, the ox-drawn cart bearing the lusted-for banner itself, the object of the day’s pageantry, the Palio.

‘The German force in this sector was the Fourteenth Army, commanded by General Lemelsen. On paper it sounded great, but many of the units were exhausted by months of fighting and way under strength. The main contingent in it was General Schlemm’s First Parachute Corps and Schlemm threw everything he had got from the sea to the mountains south of Siena. That was his right wing. On the left, further inland, the tired-out 90th Panzer Grenadier Division tried to hold off General Harmon’s US First Armored.

‘Right in the centre of Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, and facing Siena city, were the Free French of General Juin. He was flanked by his own Third Algerian Infantry and Second Moroccan Infantry. These were the forces held by the Germans in five days of vicious fighting from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth of June. Then the American tanks smacked through the panzers and Siena was outflanked, first on the east, then by the French on the west.

‘Units of the retreating German companies pulled back, bringing their wounded with them. There were grenadiers, panzer men, Luftwaffe Field Division men and paratroopers. On the twenty-ninth of June, south of the city, there was one last and final clash before the Allied breakthrough.

‘It was violent and hand-to-hand. Under cover of darkness the German stretcher-bearers went in and did their best. Hundreds of wounded, both German and Allied, were brought back into Siena. General Lemelsen pleaded with Kesselring for permission to straighten his line, seeing as he was outflanked on both sides and risked being encircled and captured with the entire First Parachute Corps inside Siena. Permission was granted and the paras pulled back into the city. Siena bulged with soldiers. So many were the wounded that this courtyard beneath the walls of the old nunnery was commandeered as a temporary shelter and field hospital for about a hundred of the last-arriving Germans and all the Allied wounded. The newly arrived young surgeon was given sole charge of it. That was on the thirtieth of June 1944.’

‘Here?’ said the American. ‘This was a field hospital?’

‘Yes.’

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