A CEMETERY AT VERSA
I was at Versa, as I have already said, from the 2nd to the 10th of
August, to supervise a party working on the hospital. I walked one
evening down the village street, where in the light of the sunset an
Italian military band was playing to a mixed crowd of soldiers and
civilians. Just outside the village I came to the gates of a cemetery,
where six tall cypresses stand like sentinels on guard over the graves
of many hundreds of Italian dead. This was at first a civilian
graveyard, but all the dead have Italian names, except one Kirschner,
and even he was called Giuseppe and has an Italian inscription on his
tombstone. For this is Italia Redenta, in this one little corner of
which a great company of Italian youth have already laid down their
lives. And now the graves, in long straight rows, have filled one newly
added field, and begun to flow across a second, and soon from the Field
Hospitals in the village more dead will come.
Here, as in our war graveyards in France, no religious dogma or
supernatural hope intrudes upon the little wooden crosses. On these, for
the most part, you can read only the bare conventional attributes of
each little handful of dust, which has passed through its quivering
agony into the still sleep of decay,--its name and regiment, its
civilian home, the place and date of its death. A few have more than
this. Here lie the two brothers Bellina in one grave, with a cross at
their head and another, rougher and larger, at their feet, announcing
simply, "I due fratelli," "the two brothers." And here is a tombstone
engraved with an anchor, for one who, very early in the war, was hit
while fording the Isonzo in face of the enemy's fire. "Al Pontiere
Guazzaro Giuseppe che valorosamente sfidando le infide acque dell'
Isonzo cadeva colpito dal piombo nemico. 25 Giugno 1915."[1] And here is
another inscription, typical of that Latin sense of comradeship, which
is more articulate, though not necessarily more profound, than ours.
"Sottotenente Arcangeli Antonio, con commossa memoria," the officers of
his Battery, "il loro orgoglio infinite quì eternano." "In deeply moved
remembrance they here place upon eternal record their infinite pride in
him." It is poor stuff in English, but a vivid and quite natural tribute
in Italian.
[Footnote 1: "To the Sapper Giuseppe Guazzaro, who fell, while bravely
defying the treacherous waters of the Isonzo, struck down by an enemy
bullet, 25th June, 1915."]
Where the sun went down, the sky was a sea of rose red and golden green,
studded with little long islands of dark cloud, and on the edge of this
sea the evening star twinkled like a tiny illumined boat, dancing, a
blaze of light, upon the waves. To left and right the cloudbanks were a
deep purple blue, fast fading into the dim warm grey of an Italian
night. East and north the mountains that bound the plain, silent
witnesses of Italy's great struggle, were hidden in the dusk, and the
cypress sentinels stood up sharp and black against the darkening sky.
The band had ceased to play and one heard only the chirp of
grasshoppers, and across an orchard the soft sound of Italian speech,
and the distant song of two soldiers in the village street. But the warm
air, which just now was throbbing with a military march, seemed to be
throbbing still with an aching longing that happier days may come
swiftly to this land of beauty and pain, so that the sacrifice of all
these dead shall not be wholly waste.
* * * * *
Not many miles away, as the sun was setting, an Austrian shell burst in
a British Battery, and three hours later through the dark under faint
stars an ambulance lorry brought to us the bodies of four British
gunners, whose dust will mingle with Italian dust, under Italian skies,
for ever.