Page 58 of The Veteran

The lots had been drawn for the placing of the ten horses behind the thick rope that serves as a starting line. Each jockey, brilliantly garbed in the colours of his Contrada, had his round steel cap on, crop in hand, reins held tight. The horses skittered in anticipation as they entered their slots behind the rope. The starter or mossiere glanced up at the Magistrato for the nod to drop the rope when the last horse was in place. The roar of the crowd sounded like a lion on the veld.

‘She came back? The third night?’

‘The third and the last. We worked as a sort of team. I spoke sometimes, in German of course, but she clearly did not understand. She smiled but said nothing, not even in Italian. We never touched. She tended the wounded men. I fetched more water and changed a few dressings. The Surgeon-General had left me fresh supplies, whatever he could spare for what he saw as a lost cause. By dawn they were gone.

‘I noticed something else that third night that I had not seen earlier. She was a pretty girl but by the light of the moon I saw that she had a big black stain on the back of each hand, about the size of a dollar piece. I thought nothing of it, until years later. Just before dawn I turned again, and she was gone.’

‘You never saw her again?’

‘No. Never. Just after sunrise I saw flags begin to flutter from all those high windows over there. Not the eagle of the Reich, not any more. The Sienese had patched and stitched together the flags of the Allies, especially the tricolour of France. They broke out all over the city. About seven o’clock I heard footsteps coming up the alley outside. I was frightened. Remember, I had never seen an Allied soldier with a gun before, but Hitler’s propaganda had taught us they were all murderers.

‘After a few minutes five soldiers appeared in the arch. They were dark and swarthy, uniforms so stained with earth and sweat I could hardly work out which unit they came from. Then I saw the Cross of Lorraine. It was the French. Except they were Algerians.

‘They shouted some words at me but I did not understand. Either French or Arabic. I smiled and shrugged. I was wearing my bloody smock over my Wehrmacht shirt and trousers, but beneath the smock they must have seen my boots. Distinctive. Wehrmacht boots. They had taken heavy casualties south of Siena, and here I was, the enemy. They came into the yard, shouted and waved their rifles under my nose. I thought they were going to shoot me. Then one of the Algerian wounded called softly from that corner. The soldiers went over and listened while he whispered to them. When they came back their mood had changed. They produced a truly horrible cigarette and forced me to smoke it as a sign of friendship.

‘By nine o’clock the French were flooding through the city, assailed on every side by ecstatic Italians, the girls smothering them with kisses, and I stayed here with my friendly captors.

‘Then a French major appeared. He spoke a little English; so did I. I explained that I was a German surgeon, left behind with my charges, some of whom were French and most were Allies. He charged among the men on the ground, realized there were twenty of his fellow countrymen, apart from British and American Allies, and ran out into the alley shouting for help. Within an hour all the wounded had been taken to the by now almost empty main hospital, where only a few unmovable Germans remained. I went with them.

‘I was held in the matron’s room at gunpoint while a French colonel-surgeon examined them all, one by one. By this time they were on clean white sheets and relays of Italian nurses sponged them clean and spoon-fed them whatever nourishing foods they could take.

‘In the afternoon the colonel-surgeon came to the room. He was accompanied by a French general, name of De Monsabert, who spoke English. “My colleague tells me that half of these men should be dead,” he said. “What have you done to them?” I explained that I had done nothing but my best with the equipment and drugs that I had.

‘They conferred in French. Then the general said, “We have to keep the records for the next of kin. Where are the dog tags of the ones who died – all nationalities?” I explained that there were no dog tags. Not a man brought into that courtyard had died.

‘They talked again, the surgeon often shrugging his shoulders. Then the general said, “Will you give me your parole, and stay here to work with my colleague? There is much to be done.” Of course I did. Where would I run? My country’s army was retreating faster than I could walk. If I got away into the countryside the partisans would kill me. Then, from lack of food and sleep, I just passed out right on the floor.

‘After a bath, twenty hours of sleep and a meal, I was ready to work again. All the French wounded recovered by the French in the previous ten days had gone south to Perugia, Assisi, even Rome. Those in the Siena hospital were almost all from this courtyard.

‘There were bones to be reset and plastered, sutures to be reopened and internal damage to be properly repaired. Yet wounds that ought to have gone septic and killed their owners were amazingly clean. Torn arteries seemed to have sealed themselves; haemorrhages had ceased to bleed. That colonel was an ace from Lyons; he operated and I acted as his assistant. We operated without a break for a night and a day and no man died.

‘The tide of war rolled north. I was allowed to live with the French officers. General Juin visited the hospital and thanked me for what I had done for the French. After that I was assigned simply to look after the fifty Germans. After a month we were all evacuated south to Rome. None of the Germans would ever fight again, so repatriation was arranged through the Red Cross.’

‘They went home?’ asked the American.

‘They all went home,’ said the surgeon. ‘The US Army Medical Corps took over their boys and shipped them out of Ostia back to the States when they were ready. The Virginians went home to the Shenandoah and the Texans to the Lone Star State. The boy from Austin who had cried for his mother went back to Texas, his innards still inside him, his stomach wall healed up.

‘The French took theirs and brought them home after the liberation of France. The British took theirs and took me with them. General Alexander was touring the hospital in Rome and heard about this courtyard in Siena. He said if I would extend my parole I could work in a military hospital in Britain with German wounded until the war ended. So I did. Germany had lost anyway. By the autumn of 1944 we all knew that. Peace came with the final surrender in May 1945 and I was allowed home to my native but shattered Hamburg.’

‘Then what are you doing here thirty-one years later?’ asked the American tourist.

The screams from the Piazza del Campo were clearly heard. One horse was down, leg broken, jockey unconscious as the remaining nine raced on. Despite the sand covering, there are bone-jarring cobbles beneath, the pace is frenzied and terrible crashes are frequent.

The faded man raised his shoulders and shrugged. He looked slowly around.

‘What happened in this courtyard in those three days was, I believe, a miracle. But it was nothing to do with me. I was a younger and eager surgeon, but not that good. It was about the girl.’

‘There will be other Palios,’ said the tourist. ‘Tell me about the girl.’

‘Very well. I was sent back to Germany in the autumn of 1945. Hamburg was under British occupation. I worked at first in their main hospital and then the Hamburg General. By 1949 we had our own non-Nazi republic again and I moved to a private clinic. It prospered, I became a partner. I married a local girl, we had two children. Life became better, Germany prospered. I left and founded a small clinic of my own. I treated the new wealthy and became wealthy myself. But I never forgot this courtyard and I never forgot the girl in the nun’s habit.

‘In 1965 my marriage ended after fifteen years. The children were in their teens; they were distressed but they understood. I had my own money, I had my freedom. In 1968 I decided to come back here and find her. Just to say thank you.’

‘So you found her again?’

‘In a way. Twenty-four years had gone by. I presumed she was in her late forties, like myself. I supposed she was still a nun, or, if for any reason she had left the order, a middle-aged married woman with children of her own. So I came that summer of ’68 and took a room at the Villa Patrizia and began my search.

‘First I went to all the nunneries I could find. There were three, all different orders. I hired an interpreter and visited them all. I spoke to the Mothers Superior. Two had been there during the war, the third had come later. They shook their heads when I described the novice nun I was seeking. All summoned the oldest sister in the convent, but they knew of no such novice, then or ever.

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