Plot reminder: Vincenzo is poised to help his friend Ettore escape from camp 106a

~~~~~

"Are you sure Ettore?" Though the faintest of whispers, my words seemed a thunderous boom against the silence of the night. "It's still not too late to change your mind. "

The pair of us were pressed against the end wall of the final hut - significantly perhaps, I realised, the other side of the altar wall, my work now two-thirds complete. Ahead lay twenty metres of open ground before the treacherous coil of wire.

"I've never been surer of anything," Ettore breathed back. The night a black, cloud-covered one, it was difficult to discern the expression on his soil-caked face. The tone of his voice was however clear: determined, unhesitant. "If I'm going to die," he continued, "I'd rather die a free man than a slave."

"Enough talk of dying Ettore!" I chided, voice raised as loudly as I dared. "This is about life, remember, not about death."

A hand squeezed at my shoulder, my words paraphrased as if in mantra. "Life, not death." Then: "For the love of Christ, let's just get on with this Vincenzo before I burst out crying."

Before both of us did, I thought. But he was right, this was not the moment for prolonged goodbyes. In times of war, we had both learnt, farewells were almost always sudden and fleeting affairs. An unvoiced wish for a peaceful afterlife.

"Count to thirty," I instructed. "If you don't hear the owl hoot, come and join me, quick as you can."

Similarly to previous occasions, as I hunched down before the wire, the night remained silent, unmoved. Thankfully, there was no need to cup my hands together in mimicking signal. Moments later, Ettore was crouched down beside me.

"Unshoulder your knapsack," I told him. This I then hurled over the wire, the thud as it landed discernable enough to provoke a wince, a careful scan of the camp for any sign of movement, switched on lights. Blessedly once more, nothing.

I then pinched thumbs and forefingers to the wire, pulled two strands as far apart as my straining muscles were able.

"Keep your head down Ettore, OK. It's vital you don't look up."

Tentatively, he began to squirm himself through. Soon let out a hiss as the barb snagged into his flesh.

"Keep going Ettore," I encouraged. "You're almost there."

Indeed, only his boots, struggling like a pair of just-landed seabass, now remained camp-side.

"Give me a push Vincenzo. Think I'm stuck."

I swallowed, took a deep breath. I knew better than anyone the sharp sear of pain which would follow.

"Brace yourself... Now!"

The cry of pain was bravely muffled, the bark of a muzzled dog.

"Through?" I asked.

"Through," came the gasped reply.

"Good luck Ettore and God bless." My tears were by now a rising swell requiring the deepest of breaths to keep down. Ettore was the dearest friend I'd ever had. A comforting ever presence during those blackest years of my life.

"Thanks for everything," responded the night. "Finish that altar as beautifully as you can. See you in Lecce when it's all over."

"Pasticciotti and primitivo di Manduria," I promised. Local cakes and wine. But he was gone now, a rapid succession of softly thudding boots fading into the blackness.

His plan - at best describable as vague - was to head west. Irene's hometown of Liverpool perhaps. The ports of Wales. See if he could gain passage to war-neutral Ireland. From there, if the Battle for the Atlantic ever permitted, much further west still. All the way to New York, the grand heady sweep of the United States.

For now, all this remained a distant ambition only, the as-yet-undetectable light at the end of the longest and darkest of tunnels. Those first few days were the most crucial, the ones which would make or break him. Survive them, put enough distance between himself and camp 106a, then maybe, just maybe, he could allow himself to hope.

To this end, the decision had been taken to swap our identity tags. Whilst I doubted the full weight of the British military machine would be employed in hunting him down, no sooner was his absence discovered during morning roll call than official wires would be buzzing all the same. Though he should of course give any appraching figure of authority - either police or military - the widest possible of berths, if stopped he would simply show them his tags, say that due to a chronic manpower shortage he'd been billeted to a nearby factory or farm, something along those lines. Such arrangements were still rare at the time, but not unprecedented. The name Vincenzo D'Ambra wouldn't appear on any absconded lists, after all, and his story might thus be believed. The procurement at the earliest possible opportunity of civilian clothing - swiping them from a backyard clothesline seemed the most expedient way - would meanwhile render such a nerve-wracking confrontation with authorities ever less likely. He would melt into the background like a single English raindrop amongst so many others. Whilst his accent would still give away his nationality, his command of English had been honed via Mr Marston's weekly lessons and lent texts of Wilde and Shaw. A local would most probably take him for an Italian immigrant of many years, one of those not considered 'dangerous' enough for the British government to have forcibly expelled three years earlier.

Other than evading official controls, Ettore's biggest challenge would be money. Acquiring it, saving it, making it last. He would at some point need to find himself gainful employment, at least for a short period, offer his services to some farmer or factory owner desperate and short-handed enough to overlook correct bureaucratic procedure. In the meantime his pockets were weighed by the thirty shillings I'd managed to borrow from Irene. She in turn knew nothing of the purpose of her generous contribution, just that the money would be used 'in the service of God' and that if I ever got the chance I would pay her back. For her own protection, I had kept her in the dark over Ettore's imminent escape plan, and could only hope that right at that moment, hidden as arranged amidst the usual copse of ash trees, the night was black enough to veil from her sight the scurrying figure emerging the other side of the wire, the wind-tossed rustle of the leaves above her head loud enough to cover the sound of his panting.

Thirty shillings represented roughly two weeks' of Irene's wages. For a local person it would be enough to eat adequately for a month or more. Without an official ration book, Ettore would be unable to simply waltz into a grocery shop and buy what he required however. No, any food purchases would most likely have to made off the books, directly from the farmer. Forseeing this problem, Ettore and I had been squirreling away whatever we could, our cigarette rations swapped for extra tokens. Stashed away in the knapsack was a loaf of day-old bread, some cheese, a jar of jam, a tin of Bully Beef, two others of sardines, a thickish slice of cured ham, half a dozen pears and a bar of chocolate. Not much, but for those first few vital days at least, rations weren't something he'd need to worry about.

But dear God, the knapsack!

Perhaps it was the emotional intensity of the moment, perhaps the mind-clouding pain of the barb, but somehow or other he'd forgotten to grab it as he'd wriggled through the other side. I could just make it out - a formless shadow there on the ground, a deeper black against the night's dark canvas.

"Ettore! Ettore!"

But by then his panting had completely faded, the distance between us such that anything less than a full-blooded cry was useless. I knew from Tobruk that I was a faster runner than he; on more than one occasion I'd been forced to slow my step, drag him by the tunic to the nearest cover.

I thus precipitated myself through the wire. Recklessly, without delicacy. Sucked down the white-hot howl of pain.

It was as my hand located the strap of the kitbag that I heard it.

A snatched cry of agony. Muffled yet at the same time blood-curdling.

"Ettore!"

But once more, all I could allow myself was a vain hiss of a whisper.

I burrowed myself stomach-down into the moist soil.

Snatched in my breath.

Listened.

For several long moments the night remained silent, as if itself in shock. Then voices - faint, the words indistinct. I don't know how many of them there were, the blackness of the night ingenerous, revealing little, not even the vaguest of silhouettes. At least three, I think. Perhaps as many as six.

Suddenly, there was a flickering glow of illumination. A match or cigarette lighter. I could make out Ettore's dirt-blackened face on the ground, a second, much paler face crouched over him.

Then blackness again. That same to-and-fro of indistinct voices. And beneath, even fainter, another sound - repetitive, incessant. It took me a minute or more before I realised its chilling source.

A spade was digging at the earth.

I remember the bitter smell of the soil which pressed into my nostrils as I lay there cloaked in the blackness. Remember the silent scream of the night. The savage strain of my muscles against my own powerlessness.

Five minutes. Ten. When the spade finally ceased its dark machinations, when the voices had dissolved once more into the night, l ran with the force of the gods into those trees.

"Irene! Irene, dear Christ, did you see?"

But Irene was not there, only the sway of the branches, the complicit silence of the night.

I fell to my knees and cried. Cried for Ettore. Cried for a love left unfinished, without farewell. Cried for my unborn baby. Cried for everything, the whole indecipherable inferno of the world I'd been born into.

A minute perhaps, little more. Swallowed down that river of tears which remained, saved them for another time. Another year, another decade.

Hauled myself back to my feet and ran.

~~~~~