‘In the dawn I heard him crying, calling for his mother. I gave him until noon, but he did not die. After dawn the heat increased even though the sun could not shine directly over those roofs. But I knew when it did, this place would become an inferno. I had the operating table moved under the cloister to the shade, but for the men outside there was little hope. What the blood loss and trauma had not done, the sun would do.
‘Those under the cloister roof were the lucky ones. There were three Tommies there, all from Nottingham. One asked me for a cigarette. My English was very poor then, but that word is international. I told him that with lungs torn by shrapnel a cigarette, which he called a gasper, was the last thing he needed. He laughed and told me when General Alexander arrived, he at least would give him one. Crazy English humour. But brave too. They knew they were never going home, but could make silly jokes.
‘With the stretcher-bearers back from the battle zone I commandeered three more. They were exhausted and truculent but thank God the old German discipline prevailed. They took over and my original three orderlies just curled up in a corner and passed out.’
‘And the day went by?’ said the tourist.
‘The day went by. I ordered my new men to raid all the surrounding houses here for string, cords, ropes and more bedsheets. We strung the cords across the yard and draped the sheets over them with clothes pegs to create a bit of shade. And still the temperature rose. Water was the key. The suffering men croaked for water and my orderlies ran a bucket chain from the well to the yard, handing out cups as fast as they could. The Germans said “Danke”, the French whispered “Merci” and the dozen Brits said “Ta, mate”.
‘I prayed for a cooling breeze or the setting of the sun. No breeze but after twelve hours of hell the sun set and the temperature dropped. In the mid-afternoon a young captain from Lemelsen’s staff had come in by chance. He stopped, stared, crossed himself, muttered “Du Lieber Gott,” and ran. I chased after him, bawling that I needed some help here. He called over his shoulder, “I’ll do what I can.” I never saw him again.
‘But maybe he did something. An hour later the Surgeon-General of the Fourteenth Army sent a handcart with medications. Field dressings, morphine, sulpha. Just as well. After sundown the last fresh casualties arrived, all German this time; about a score of them to bring the final number to around two hundred and twenty. And in the darkness, she came back.’
‘The girl? The strange girl?’
‘Yes. She just appeared, as the night before. Beyond the city walls the artillery seemed to have stopped at last. I presumed the Allies were preparing for their final, shattering push, the destruction of Siena, and I prayed we might be spared but knew it was hopeless. So it was quiet in the yard at last, apart from the groans and cries, the occasional scream, of men in pain.
‘I heard the swish of her gown near me as I worked
on a panzer grenadier from Stuttgart who had lost half his jaw. I turned and there she was, soaking a towel in the fresh-water butt. She smiled and began to move among the men on the ground, kneeling beside them, wiping their foreheads and gently touching their wounds. I called to her to leave the dressings alone, but she just went on.’
‘She was the same girl?’ asked the American.
‘The same girl. None other. But this time I noticed something that I had not seen the previous night. It was not a shift that she was wearing but a sort of habit, as for a novice nun. Then I realized she must have come from one of the several convents in Siena. And there was a design on the front of the habit, dark grey on pale grey. It was of the cross of Christ but with a difference. One arm of the cross was broken and hung down at forty-five degrees.’
From the great piazza a new roar rolled across the roofs. The standard-bearers had finished their displays and the ten horses, sequestered until then in the courtyard of the Podesta, were being led out onto the sand. They had bridles but no saddles, for this is a bareback race. In front of the judges’ stand the hoisting of the actual Palio for whose ownership they would run brought a further giant cheer.
In the courtyard the tourist’s wife rose and tested her injured ankle.
‘I think I can walk slowly on this,’ she said.
‘A few moments more, honey,’ said her husband, ‘then I swear we’ll go and join the fun. And that second night?’
‘I operated on the last twenty, the last of the Germans, then with my new equipment went back to try to make a better job of some from the night before. I had morphine, now. Antibiotics. Those most in pain I could at least help to die in peace.’
‘And some did?’
‘No. They hovered on the brink of death, but no man died. Not that night. All night the young nun walked among them, saying not a word, smiling, swabbing their faces with fresh cool water from the well, touching their wounds. They thanked her, tried to reach out and touch her; but she smiled and eased away and moved on.
‘For twenty-four hours I had been chewing Benzedrine to keep awake but in the small hours, with nothing more I could do and my supplies gone, the orderlies asleep over there by that wall, my smock, hands and face smeared with blood of other young men, I sat at the operating table where once a Sienese family had taken their meals, put my head in my hands and passed out. I was shaken awake by one of the orderlies as the sun rose. He had been scavenging, brought back a billy full of real Italian coffee, hoarded somewhere since the start of the war. It was the best cup of coffee I have ever had in my life.’
‘And the girl, the young nun?’
‘She was gone.’
‘And the men?’
‘I quickly did a tour of the whole courtyard, looking down at each. Still alive.’
‘You must have been pleased.’
‘More. Stupefied. It was not possible. My equipment was too little, the conditions too basic, the wounds too terrible and my skill too small.’
‘This was July second, right? Liberation Day?’
‘Right.’
‘So the Allies threw in their final attack?’