The Rage Of The Reviled. Guido Pagliarino

Dr. Soprano. The Prefect had reported to the Chief Commissioner that armed conflict had begun in several areas of Naples and had told him the news that the American armed 5th and the 6th Corps as well as the British 10th were attacking the Germans in the direction of Naples and Avellino and the German units in the field were beginning to fall back, bypassing the Neapolitan city, to consolidate their lines further north. He had concluded by leaving the Commissioner in Chief free to decide which concrete orders to give his men, but with the constraint of not forcing them to fight the Germans.

      Dr. Pelluso had not obeyed completely: after saying goodbye to the Prefect, he had indeed commanded his deputies to give their subordinates the simple invitation, not the order, to join the population against the Germans, but he had added decisively: "Tell everyone that I personally am on the insurgents’ side; however anyone, for mere hypothesis, who does not want to follow me will not be in any trouble; he will though have to hand over his gun and remain clonsigned to Police Headquarters in the holding cells."

      Carmelo Pelluso was not an anti-fascist of the first hour: like many others, including Deputy Commissioner Vittorio D'Aiazzo, he had carried the Fascist Party card until July 25, mandatory in reality for public officials. He had, however, already joined the Action Party at the end of that month and had not changed sides after the German occupation and the very recent return of Mussolini to the Government of the part of Italy not occupied by the Allied armies. On the contrary, he was now actively collaborating with the leaders of the anti-fascist parties of the Single Revolutionary Front and, first and foremost, with one of its leading exponents, who was also his personal friend, the azionista²⁶ Professor Adolfo Omodeo. On September 1, the latter had been appointed as rector of the University of Naples Federico II by the Badoglio Government. From there he fueled the rebellion against Nazi-fascism among the intellectuals, together with the liberal Benedetto Croce.

      The policemen loyal to Mussolini, a commissioner and a dozen agents, graduates and non-commissioned officers had been disarmed and, under the direct control of the chief commissioner, had been locked up, respectfully but under armed escort, in the holding cells. Pelluso had inquired if there were already other prisoners in those rooms and had been told that the only one in a holding cell was a certain, real or presumed, Gennaro Esposito, suspected of the murder of a prostitute named Rosa Demaggi. The commissioner in chief had looked very disappointed.

      In those same minutes, Vittorio D'Aiazzo was leaving the barracks from the driveway, at the command of an old, obsolete armored vehicle belonging to Police Headquarters. He considered himself a Christian demoliberal in pectore even though, after tossing away the Fascist card on July 25, he had not joined either the Catholic party or the Liberal party and, unlike the chief commissioner Pelluso, had not made contact with men of the newborn Resistance. On the other hand, that was how it was for the great majority of those Italians who would then fight Nazi-fascism, for over a year and a half, until the end of the war.

      Brigadier Marino Bordin had climbed aboard the armored car with Vittorio D'Aiazzo even though, like him, he was tired out from the sleepless night. He was a courageous but rough man and, despite not having political ideas, he harbored deep animosity for the Germans because of their contemptuous arrogance towards the Italians. Two police officers had also boarded the armored vehicle, Tertini and Pontiani, and the ordinary marshal Aroldo Bennato, head mechanic of the police headquarters repair shop, who had placed himself at the wheel. All three were fresh after a night of rest, and had just come on duty.

      The armored car, or to be precise the machine gun armoured car as it was catalogued, was a tool from the First World War, an Ansaldo Lancia IZ equipped with three 7.92 mm heavy Maxim machine guns. Only this armored car and two similar to it had not been confiscated from Police Headquarters by the occupants, having been judged no longer of any use because obsolete, unlike the most modern armored cars 611 FIAT 1934/35 and AB FIAT 1940/43 that the Teutonic tank drivers had willingly added to their armored vehicles. The Ansaldo Lancia IZ was a model which was slow and hard to maneuver. But it had considerable firepower, and in fact, when it came into service at the end of the First World War, it had made immediate destruction among the Austrians; moreover, contrary to what the Germans must have thought, the three twin armored cars had been kept in perfect efficiency thanks to periodic reviews by the workshop manager and his mechanics and, for the machine guns, by the gunsmiths.

      With the five policemen on board, the armored vehicle had noisily entered Via Medina, emitting smoke, about seventy yards behind the Germans who were still intent on firing Garand rifles on the rioters, while the patriots’ BAR machine gun was now silent with its operator slumped face-down over it, dead. The number of attackers still alive had been reduced to less than half, since the Germans had a so-called Hitler's saw, a tremendous 7.92 mm MG 42 machine gun, the best in the world for performance and lightness. In fact, even today in the 2000s, the model is supplied to NATO²⁷ ; and for every ten bullets inserted into the tapes by the Teutonic machine gunners, one was an armor-piercing type, capable of breaching the crumbling walls and piles of rubble of the two bombed houses, from the cover of which the patriots were firing. Some Germans too were dead on the ground, a small part of their platoon.

      Vittorio D'Aiazzo had ordered the warrant officer to stop the vehicle and the police officers to get behind the two machine guns, as he himself got behind the third. The trio had armed, aimed at the enemy grenadiers and, at their superior’s order, had opened fire non-stop despite the risk of jamming the weapons. The three improvised machine gunners had eliminated the enemy platoon, whose men had not had been in time to turn their armor-piercing bullets against the Italian armored MG, though they could have had the better against the slender coverage of the Italian vehicle. Above all, they had not been able to launch an anti-tank bomb with a Panzerfaust, with which they were equipped.

      After the massacre of Teutonics, the armored car had slowly resumed its passage, winding its way past the dead and the enemy vehicles; due to insufficient space it had pushed a small truck out of the way. About forty yards away the surviving patriots, only six people, none of whom had been hit, had emerged from the rubble and had come out into the open to meet the armored vehicle. There were five men and a small slender woman who looked no more than eighteen, on her face an expression of contempt.

      When the armored arrived about ten paces from the small group, Vittorio had given the order to stop. He got out with three of his men, leaving the wrrant officerl on board at the radio. The policemen and partisans had taken care of the Italians on the ground, sixteen of them, none of whom gave signs of life. Six of them were in appalling condition, four almost sawn in half by bullets from the MG, the fifth was missing the face, replaced by a bloody cavity, the sixth deprived of the skull cap so that you could see his brain and cerebral matter which had come out of his nose had set on his mouth and chin.

      The girl had been beside the latter during the fight, and had told D'Aiazzo that the man's brain had pulsed for a while after suffering those devastating blows; impassive, she had concluded the gruesome report saying: "I don’t know if he was still conscious, because he was immobile, but I think so."

      "I really hope not!" the Deputy Commissioner had replied rudely, annoyed not so much by the macabre description, but by the coldness that the young woman had shown.

      One of the Italians killed had a small bag made of jute slung across his chest which held a US Motorola Handie-Talkie SCR536 one-way radio, light but not powerful; still showing no feeling, the girl had taken it from the deceased and had put it on her shoulder. She had then examined the corpses of the Germans one by one, very carefully, and when she had finished the inspection, her face had darkened.

      Vittorio had ordered the removal of the deadly MG machine gun from the tripod with its ribbons of bullets, and had explained that once it had been taken off the support, that weapon could perform very well as a submachine gun, because it was not very heavy, just a few dozen pounds, and the bipod folded under the barrel could be lifted up. The girl had appropriated it, putting down her Garand rifle, saying that she knew how to use it. She had put two ribbons of MG bullets across her body bandolier-style and the machine gun on her right shoulder, her hand on the barrel to keep it balanced.

      D'Aiazzo had grabbed the dangerous Panzerfaust and asked: "Do any of you know how to use this thing?" He had had a yes from one of the six who, although