8 September the day Italy died

"Odyssey? It is a myth about the nostalgia of returning home, a longing to return home suffered during the long years of "naja" by Italian soldiers taken to fight away from their families, by their worries about how they will return home after the war, by the fear that assaulted them in their dreams and overcome them with the thought of never being able to return, because of strange obstacles that arise on their journey. It is the story of September 8, the Odyssey, the story of many others September 8: the pain and the dread to go home on makeshift vehicles, along countries full of enemies. "
(Italo Calvino)


- Silvano ... Silvano ... - hissed the comrade from above, to warn him of the gunshots.

From below Silvano beckoned him that he had understood.
Gunshots were heard in the distance. On the other side of the barracks, in front of the dormitories there was a colonel with a gun in his hand and two soldiers dead at his feet, to whom he had fired because they had tried to desert.
The German Colonel fired at anyone who attempted to get out.
The Germans had occupied the whole barracks, that night. There was no way out, apparently. But Silvano and two other recruits with a corporal from Treviso had decided to cut the sheets of their cots and to climb down into the courtyard behind the barracks, without a possibility of escaping except for the grate of a manhole, which led directly into the sewers.
They had decided to try that escape route through the manhole. It was the only possibility. If that attempt would succeed they could escape. If it was bound to fail, they would be killed ruthlessly. It went well, instead. The sewerage in the subsoil was large, but full of shit. The smell was unbearable. The clothes were full of shit. They walked in the middle of shit, bent on their legs for a long time. Difficult to say for how long. To Silvano it seemed a long, infinite time, but that underground channel had to come out to some bloody somewhere. They did not know where but they knew were sure that somewhere would come out. Perhaps an hour passed, perhaps less, difficult to calculate in that sea of ​​shit and suffocating heat, but finally they came out in the open country, in the open air and they could breathe. They came out suspiciously, looking around with fear. There was no one. The sun was high. They did not know the time. They walked towards the first farmhouse they met. On the farmyard there were people working outside who came ahead to meet them.


When he arrived at Montorio Veronese, he had seen in the distance the castle that was beautifully carved against the blue sky. He had looked at that sky as he would have looked at any other unexpected appearance.
He felt like a lump in his throat as he entered the barracks, he knew that he would have left those barracks the day he would be sent to the front to fight with the Germanic ally. He could not imagine that in a few days the fate of Italy would be subverted and the German ally would become the enemy and the enemy the ally.
He could not know that in one day a destiny would be drawn that would have weighed on Italy for decades to follow.