Tale of a Pig

The Eighth Army trudged into Gessapolina, a hilltop hamlet on Italy's Adriatic flank. War had wrecked the terraced cluster of dwellings, scattered their brick walls, shattered their oaken rafters. Through the debris, toward Allied soldiers gathered at the municipal piazza hurried five Italians. One of them paused to wash his hands in the piazza's muddy fountain. Another cried out:

"Mister officer, mister officer! Look! Two Germans dead!"

Dog Tags, Two. The speaker thrust out a brown German field cap, its peak splashed with blood, its swastika and flying eagle half-covered with mud. "Due Tedeschi morti!" he repeated, then said in English: "We catch them coming to kill my pig. No pig for them--sons of bitch! See, we have what you call dog tags, two."

The man at the fountain was the speaker's son, like him small, wiry, sharp-eyed and swathed in a black cape with a ragged fur collar. The son reached into a pocket and brought out the dog tags--thin oval bits of metal in leather cases. The five men were proud of the trophies. Their story tumbled out in pidgin Eng lish learned 15 years ago when they worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Partisans, Five. At the farm of Antonio ("Tony, they call me in the United States") the trap had been laid. Two German paratroopers had stolen Tony's chickens for Christmas. They would be back for Tony's pig for New Year's. Tony, his son and their friends waited. From ambush they fired an Italian rifle and an Italian machine gun. They tossed the bodies into a quickly dug grave and scrambled up a steep path to Gessapolina. There they had the protection of British patrols.

"I feel so mucha better now," said Tony. "We kill to savea the pig but we kill for this, too." His hand pointed to streets where houses lay tumbled by mines and dynamite, where wooden window shutters rattled against shaky walls. A bitter wind, climbing wildly up the slopes to the rock on which the village stood, set a church bell tolling fitfully. Shawled women poked in the rubble for their pots & pans.

Three weeks before, the Germans had ordered the 4,000 villagers out of town. Then the Germans proceeded to blow the place to bits. The destruction was savage, efficient. Only the piazza fountain, a gift from villagers who had emigrated to the U.S. seemed to have escaped.

When the five men were asked: "Are you Partisans?" they did not seem to understand. Then one smiled, said, "Si, signor, Partisans." But he seemed vague about the word. They were peasants. They had killed to save a pig and because they hated the Germans. Tony said: "In America, they don't do sucha things. Now we help and sometimes we can kill Germans. Okay, huh?!'

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