Italy 1943-45

Shortly after the American 5th Army captured Naples, the Germans deliberately left behind two time bombs. First, a nasty social one: they deliberately emptied the hospitals of women infected with venereal disease, and, as they anticipated, the incidence of venereal disease among the Allied troops skyrocketed.

The Germans also left behind a real time bomb in the Naples post office building to explode several days after they left. I don't recall the number of Italian civilians killed and wounded, but the carnage was tremendous. The civilian hospitals in Naples were overcrowded with the victims of this dastardly act and were in dire need of professional assistance. The colonel volunteered my services to help the civilian physicians in one of these hospitals.

This story is not about the injured or my professional efforts but rather about two pictures I had taken at one of these hospitals during a four-day interval.

The first one shows a British army doctor seated, and the white-coated gentleman with his arm around the British physician was a local Italian doctor. He was always smiling and very grateful for our help.

Of course, he was delighted that he survived the war, appreciated our friendliness, lack of enemy rancor and professional assistance with his present overwhelming clinical burden.

In his limited English, he could not express his gratefulness to the British physician and me often enough.

This second picture was taken several days later. You will recognize the Italian physician with his entire staff of two nurses standing beside him. But behind them is a new face that looks like an American soldier. And it is. It is “Anthony,” one of my first aid men from Headquarters Company.

After I took the picture I asked him, “What the h- are you doing here?” He mumbled and cleared his throat a few times, and said, “Don't you remember Doc, that I was standing there when the colonel asked you to help out at the hospital? So I figured I'd come along and help you too.”

I remember shaking my head in disbelief at his excuse; then I recalled that when the colonel called me into his private office tent to offer my services to the civilian hospital, we were very much alone. I told Anthony to get his ass back to camp or I would get Pezzula to consider him AWOL.

After he left, the British doctor confirmed that he was “Making Time” with one of the nurses. With a broad, understanding smile on his face, the Italian physician gave me the classical well known sexual bent right arm and hand gesture. Nothing more need be said.

Coming back to camp that evening I wondered how I should punish him. Not surprisingly, Pezulla suggested that I give him a promotion.