Brian H. Appleton
11-17-2007, 10:57 PM
Long Distance Walk Part 2
In conclusion, I was never invited to spend the night in the home of a total stranger in Italy. As much as I love the Italians they do not share the innocence of the Northern Europeans who are practically born again evangelist Christians compared to the cynical Italians. It is part of the charm of the Italians that they know what to expect from human nature and have a tolerance for human weakness. They never really made good fascists like the Nazis who would rape only if commanded to do so.
I remember a Greek friend of mine telling me how in Samos during the war, the Italian soldiers occupying the island would give them food and clothing and even munitions and used to say “Una Facia Una Razza!” But when the Nazis arrived they soon put a stop to all that and had even ambushed and slaughtered Italians and Greeks in a ravine my friend Ted showed me where Italian air drops were being made at night to secretly assist the Greeks. He said that the stream in the ravine ran red with blood that night.I still remember looking up at the lip of the canyon and seeing a row of tall and silent cypress trees who had born silent witness to this horrible event so many years before.
Ironically when the Americans flew in and bombed a troop ship that the evacuating Germans were loading onto in the harbor of Vathi, his family took in a young German soldier and nursed his wounds and hid him until they found a way for him to escape unnoticed by the Americans one night in a row boat to the Fourni Islands between Samos and the island of Ikaria where the Greeks claim is the spot where Ikarus fell into the Aegean when he flew too close to the sun and melted the wax holding the feathers to his arms.
On last thing I want to say in this matter of different national characters is a story my late friend Luciano Santa Lucia of Siena told me about how he had taken his family on a trip to Norway one summer in his Volks Wagon camper. One day they happened to run across a scene in which the King of Norway whom I think was Olaf at that time came to his second story window to wave at his subjects and all their eyes looked up to him with reverence and love…Luciano said that he couldn’t help thinking that this scene would never have happened in Italy where they had already “mandanno va fan cullo” to the House of Savoia.
Luciano used to say that: “the first African city south of London was Rome.”
That fateful day when Hannibal, the Carthaginian threw a stone at the gates of Rome and walked away not realizing that he could have defeated Rome if he had attacked then…it actually could have become an African city….
Sweet Dreams everyone,
Brian H. Appleton
In conclusion, I was never invited to spend the night in the home of a total stranger in Italy. As much as I love the Italians they do not share the innocence of the Northern Europeans who are practically born again evangelist Christians compared to the cynical Italians. It is part of the charm of the Italians that they know what to expect from human nature and have a tolerance for human weakness. They never really made good fascists like the Nazis who would rape only if commanded to do so.
I remember a Greek friend of mine telling me how in Samos during the war, the Italian soldiers occupying the island would give them food and clothing and even munitions and used to say “Una Facia Una Razza!” But when the Nazis arrived they soon put a stop to all that and had even ambushed and slaughtered Italians and Greeks in a ravine my friend Ted showed me where Italian air drops were being made at night to secretly assist the Greeks. He said that the stream in the ravine ran red with blood that night.I still remember looking up at the lip of the canyon and seeing a row of tall and silent cypress trees who had born silent witness to this horrible event so many years before.
Ironically when the Americans flew in and bombed a troop ship that the evacuating Germans were loading onto in the harbor of Vathi, his family took in a young German soldier and nursed his wounds and hid him until they found a way for him to escape unnoticed by the Americans one night in a row boat to the Fourni Islands between Samos and the island of Ikaria where the Greeks claim is the spot where Ikarus fell into the Aegean when he flew too close to the sun and melted the wax holding the feathers to his arms.
On last thing I want to say in this matter of different national characters is a story my late friend Luciano Santa Lucia of Siena told me about how he had taken his family on a trip to Norway one summer in his Volks Wagon camper. One day they happened to run across a scene in which the King of Norway whom I think was Olaf at that time came to his second story window to wave at his subjects and all their eyes looked up to him with reverence and love…Luciano said that he couldn’t help thinking that this scene would never have happened in Italy where they had already “mandanno va fan cullo” to the House of Savoia.
Luciano used to say that: “the first African city south of London was Rome.”
That fateful day when Hannibal, the Carthaginian threw a stone at the gates of Rome and walked away not realizing that he could have defeated Rome if he had attacked then…it actually could have become an African city….
Sweet Dreams everyone,
Brian H. Appleton