Invictus
Cristiano Parafioriti © 2021
Cover photo
Anna Francica
Layout and editing
Stefania Salerno
CRISTIANO PARAFIORITI
INVICTUS
NOVEL
With an introductory essay by Antonio Baglio
Translated by Giovanna Bongiovanni
TABLE OF CONTENT
AUTHORS NOTE
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
PART I
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
PART II
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
PART III
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
NEMESIS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
(Invictus, William Ernest Henley)
To Don Ture Di Nardo Pileri
to my grandfather Calogero Barone Ccanino
to all veterans
and to those who have never returned
AUTHORS NOTE
Nino Amadore, my friend and esteemed journalist of Il Sole 24 Ore, wrote in one of his articles: Cristiano Parafioriti is the founder of a new literary genre, Sicilian minimalism, where the stories of a country and its people become the stories of the whole world.
I jealously guard this definition in my memory and heart, and the more stories I write, the more I find myself in those words.
My work is born in my small and beloved village, Galati Mamertino, a mountain village perched on the Nebrodi mountains in Sicily. Galati is a melting pot of many other tiny places and many other realities that shine with their own light, each with stories to tell, with their people, with their own myths.
This novel was born from one of these magical corners, San Giorgio, a remote and by now an uninhabited village, of which today only a few abandoned ruins remain.
I believe that some stories come looking for you. Writers often live in a state of almost lethargy, and, suddenly, something awakens them from this sweet wandering. And so it happened that on a hot day in August 2019, Salvatore Di Nardo, the homonymous nephew of the main character of this story, woke me from my peaceful rest.
Salvatore, known as Salvo, has been living in Pisa with his family for years. He, too, is affected by the sicilitudine, a disease that makes us exiled children torn from our roots but always tightly linked to our native land.
I've known him since my days in the marching band when we both lived in the village. We had a good time between concerts, laughter, drinking and lots of friends. It was a lifetime ago.
For an unknown reason, I have always had a good feeling towards him, as if only beautiful things orbited around him. It is an irrational belief that comes out of my unconscious thoughts, so illogical that I feel it crystal clear! I am in this way. I follow instinct and live with passions.
Salvo told me that he wanted to publish on Facebook, through the successful Tuttogalatimamertino page, some videos about his grandfather, the homonymous Salvatore di Nardo (born in 1921), an Alpine in Russia with the Armir during the Second World War.
Nino Serio, the page administrator, raised some concerns as the material was complex and lasted more than three hours! It was a long interview with his grandfather about that tragic adventure, full of documentaries.
I could not stand that this story could end like this! It was the sparkle of that boy that did not give me peace. I suddenly felt within me a big craving to see that material, to know that story that had stayed buried for almost seventy years.
Those videos were like sparks that light a fire. The creative clapper set in motion, making my soul buzz. In me, the uncontrollable urge that I had already felt in my life and that I knew very well: to write.
I called Salvo Di Nardo.
Ill write a novel about it! I told him point-blank.
He, touched, replied, In my heart, that was what I wanted!
This novel is, therefore, based on a true story. Nevertheless, some characters, organizations, and circumstances may be the fruit of the author's imagination or, if they exist, used for narrative purposes.
Almost.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN OF RUSSIA
OF 1941-1943
AND ITS MEMORY
Ive still in my nose the smell of grease on a red-hot machine-gun. Ive still in my ears and even in my brain the crunching of snow under my boots, the coughs and sneezes from Russian lookouts, the sound of dry grass swept by the wind on the banks of the Don. Ive still in my eyes the stars of Cassiopeia which hung above my head every night, and the bunker props above my head every day. And when I think about it all I feel the terror of that January morning when their gun Katiuscia first let off its seventy-two rocket-shells.1
This is the incipit of a famous autobiographical novel, The Sergeant in the snow, written by the Alpine Mario Rigoni Stern, soon destined to become the best-known literary testimony of the disastrous Italian campaign in Russia during the Second World War.
When, in June 1941, Hitler decided to wage war against the Soviet Union, triggering Operation Barbarossa, Mussolini responded by offering his willingness to support the German troops. The establishment of a Corps of Italian expedition to Russia (CSIR) left in mid-July for the eastern front under the orders of General Giovanni Messe.
The following year, combined with new corps in the Armir (Italian Army in Russia), it was deployed on the Don and couldn't resist the Soviet offensive that, between December 1942 and January 1943, would have decimated it. Numbers show the extent of the disaster.
Out of 230,000 Italians who left for the eastern front, one-third of these about 95,000 had lost their lives: dying in combat, dying of hardship and cold, during the retreat or the stages of transfer to the prison camps, sadly known as Davaj marches (from the term used to solicit the passage by the Russian escort soldiers). Without forgetting how many perished during the same imprisonment and the high number of those missing.
An event so fatal and fraught with consequences for thousands of Italian soldiers swallowed up by the Russian steppe, plagued by tough Soviet resistance, as well as by adverse climatic conditions and for their families, often destined to remain unaware of the fate of their relatives, ended up feeding a copious memoir, stimulated by the desire to account for a unique and devastating experience.
It is no coincidence that the Russian campaign as the historian Maria Teresa Giusti, author of a valuable volume on the subject, pointed out ended up as one of the twentieth-century war events with the biggest impact on Italian collective memory2.
A memory that is certainly uncomfortable, on the one hand, if we consider the fact that the war campaign was still an expression of the aggressive policy of Mussolini, but so disruptive due to the suffering and dramatic conditions of the retreat as to reveal the profound disillusionment with the regime. The bitter acknowledgment of the lack of training marked the participation of the Italian soldiers in the enterprise, which was opposed by the undoubted acts of heroism of those who were lucky enough to survive that terrible experience and return home. In this regard, it is interesting to re-read the authoritative testimony of another veteran, Nuto Revelli, among the first to denounce the dramatic conditions of the soldiers on the Russian front in his memorial writings:
Everything was unsuitable for the environment. Even the uniform, so green, made us targets. We had wagons of mountain warfare equipment, from ice crampons to avalanche ropes and rock ropes.
We were Alpine soldiers made for slow warfare, for walking. We had 90 mules for each company and four lorries for the whole battalion. Our weapons consisted of the Model 1891 rifle that had one advantage for its age: it was not muzzle loading. The equipment for the department was the Breda machine gun, which fired when well cleaned and oiled. We couldnt, however, fire too many volleys, lest the barrel turned red, or the gun jammed, or fired on its own. The accompanying weapons Brixia mortars, Breda machine guns, 81 mortars, and 47/32 cannons were, for the most part, outdated and, in any case, not enough. Our only anti-tank weapon the 47/32 cannon could only pierce Italian tanks. Against Russian tanks, there was nothing to do.
Artillery in the divisional area consisted of museum equipment: the 75/13, the 100/17, utterly harmless and safe hand grenades, which did not always explode.
Means of a connection made for mountain warfare, unsuitable for long distances; the old faded flags, the heliographs, were of no use on that undulating terrain. The few radios, heavy and battered, were sometimes less fast than the order carriers.
No mines, no flares, no reticulates, no tracer bullets. And little ammunition, almost depleted.
The equipment was the same as on the Western Front from the battle of June 1940. Uniforms made of the worst wool, shoes of stiff, dry leather that looked like paper. The foot cloths seemed to have been made on purpose to block the blood circulation, favouring heating or freezing.
We were not tanks. We were mountain troops, poorly armed, poorly equipped for mountain warfare. Throwing ourselves into the plains, where armoured warfare was running fast, meant going in blind.3
Historiographical research confirmed it was a disaster. A disaster made worse by the grave shortcomings of the Italian army's war equipment and the laxity with which the military commanders and Mussolini approached the enterprise.
The Duce was sure that the war would be over soon, mainly due to the training and firepower of the German ally. Therefore, he had refrained from mobilising the country for the campaign as had happened during the conquest of Ethiopia. The affair resulted in the worst collapse suffered by the Italian army.
To be fair, you must not overlook the fact that the image of the victimized condition of the Italian soldier, in the transmission of the memory and subsequent representation of the event, would have been overshadowed, concerning the criminal policy of the regime, the cruelty of the Red Army and the harsh weather conditions.
Not to mention the often-cited lack of support from the German ally: the offensive and not defensive nature of the war, the Italian army seen as a full-fledged invader against a country that tried to defend itself strenuously against the occupation policy pursued by the Axis powers.4
Beyond the reasons and responsibilities for the conflict to keep in mind to avoid supporting a distorted and mythical vision memories of that traumatic war campaign had a powerful effect on the survivors minds, leaving us some of the most intense pages about the Italian war, full of strong impressions, pathos, horror, and titanism.
As Maria Teresa Giusti has also pointed out, it is no coincidence that the accounts relating to the military experience in Russia, within the framework of the memories of the Second World War, have been far more than all those dedicated to the other fronts.