Ortona Read Free Page A

His father left Ortona to seek a better income for the family by emigrating to the United States. Thereafter, Americo’s only contact with his father was through letters and the presents sent regularly from Hershey, New Jersey, where his father worked in the famous chocolate factory. Before he left for the United States, Americo’s father built a small four-unit apartment building for his wife Angela and the three children. The family lived in one apartment and drew income from the other three. Between the rental income and the money sent from America, Angela Casanova was able to provide well for her three children: Mario, the oldest; Maria, two years younger; and little Americo, who was six years younger yet. The apartment was in the town’s new section to the immediate south of the old part of the town and close to Santa Maria di Costantinopoli.
    Having an absent father did not make Americo unique in Ortona. Many of the men of the community were away. Ortona, being a port town, drew men to the sea — most as fishermen, but also many who left to crew the ocean freighters. There was little for a man to do for a living in Ortona in the 1930s if he did not fish the sea or till the surrounding soil. Unemployment was high and so the men left, some going north to the factories, others being pressed by the military intoservice, and a few, such as Americo’s father, travelling overseas to America with the hope of eventually returning with enough money to set up a business or, sometimes, of bringing the family over to join them in a new land.
    The fishermen and their families clustered in the oldest section of Ortona, the warren of narrow streets and passages adjacent to San Tomasso and set back from the esplanade. In the morning, the men descended the stairs from Ortona to the harbour where their boats were docked alongside the long northern mole. Here their nets were hung on large racks close to the shoreline. Sometimes Americo would look out at the water to where the small boats dotted the horizon, nets out, and wish his father were out there, soon to come home. But then he would look at all the fine things that decorated their home, the furnishings from America, and remember that this was made possible only by a father who worked in a chocolate factory in the United States.
    As Americo grew older, tensions in Ortona also grew. Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, was calling ever more men to the services and then the war started. This one was bigger than the one fought in Abyssinia or the undeclared incursion of the army divisions into Spain to assist General Francisco Franco in crushing the godless Republic. As the war spread and finally the Americans joined against Italy, the flow of money and presents from America slowed and then ceased altogether. But there was still the apartment rental and the family lived comfortably enough, even with the growing food shortages that plagued all of Italy as the nation’s fortunes worsened with each passing month. 2

    Antonio Di Cesare, a couple of years older than Americo Casanova, was not so lucky. In 1942, his father had been one of the thousands of conscripted soldiers who surrendered in Africa to the British Eighth Army when Tunisia fell. Antonio’s father was sent to a prison camp in South Africa, his meagre soldier’s pay stopped coming as Italy fell into chaos, and Antonio’s mother and the boy became entirely dependent on assistance provided to the families of prisoners by the International Red Cross. They lived in a little house 400 yards from the southern outskirts of Ortona in a community markedon no map but known locally as Porta Caldari. Able to grow some vegetables, the small family eked out a difficult life that might have bordered on starvation had it not been for the generosity of their extended family and neighbours. This was particularly true after the Italian government surrendered and the German army moved immediately to occupy most of Italy.