Love and War in the Apennines

Now that is what good wrting is all about. Such a limpid style; it flows along like a mountain stream. Newby relates his wartime experiences, from Operation Whynot in Sicily when he was captured, to his escape from an "orphanage" (prison camp) in northern Italy where he met Wanda who taught him some Italian, hiding out in the mountains and helped by the villagers who brought him food and built a hut for him. I was swept away by his story and even shed tears at the end.

This is one of those times when I wish you could give a book 3.67 stars...very interesting description of life in Italian mountain villages during WWII, the villagers' relationship with Newby--an escaped English war prisoner, and Newby's thoughts about war, soldiering, etc. etc. Written about 30 years after the war, it still feels very immediate. The immediacy is what makes it so affecting. There are places, though, where the descriptions went a bit overboard--I quite enjoyed War in the Apennines, Love in the Apennines was less enthralling--who'd have guessed?

Newby was a commando who was sent ashore from a submarine to attempt to destroy German aircraft on a German airfield in Sicily. The effort was for naught & while swimming back to the sub, he and four of his 5 companions were picked up by Sicilian fishermen. He ended up in an Italian prison camp. When the Italians pulled out of the war, Newby & the other prisoners fled the camp before the Germans took over. The memoir covers the period he was on the run from the Germans & the Italian Fascist militia constantly on the move from one hiding place to another all aided by Italian families who faced death for doing so. He fell in love with one of his rescuers and married her after the war but that is covered in another book entitled "Something show more Wholesale". Much of the time Newby was hiding in primitive facilities in cold, wet weather and his descriptions of his discomfort come off the page to the point that I felt the chill. His warm feelings for the poor, uneducated people who did everything to keep him free & alive appear to be the main reason he has written this volume. show less

I devoured this book in just 24 hours and enjoyed every page. Eric Newby was captured in Italy after an abortive SAS style raid and spent several years as a prisoner of war – ironically he found his life partner in a little village in the mountains where the brave Italian villagers sheltered him and many, many other allied troops. Not a story that I have heard much about before – and nor had the author, so, as he explains, he wrote this book. He seems to have written several more about his subsequent world-wanderings.

I shall be buying and reading them too now – have found another author to read and to enjoy.

I don't read a lot of memoirs but this was very enjoyable. Reading about the struggles of an escaped Prisoner of War who benefitted from the generosity of the local people was very heartwarming. It's an aspect of the war I'm not very familiar with, but nonetheless threatening.

I've liked Newby before, but in this the writing was surprisingly bad. (Just one example: ten "and"s and two pages into a sentence, maybe it is time to start a new one?) The story is also not exceptional. Still, Newby is honest. The story picks up when he gets into dialog, and there are several humorous anecdotes, including meeting a German soldier hunting butterflies in the mountains.

> "Do not be afraid," he went on. "I will not tell anyone that I have met you, I have no intention of spoiling such a splendid day either for you or for myself. They are too rare." … None of them had ever heard of butterfly hunting, or laid eyes on a butterfly hunter, so that when he asked a man and his wife who were on their way to attend mass in the show more village, for by this time there was no one else in sight to ask in his painstaking Italian what was the best way to the top of the mountain, they thought he must be a lunatic to want to go fishing on the top of a mountain which was over four and a half thousand feet high. show less

Superb story of Newby's WW2 experience as an escaped POW in Italy. He is hidden by the local villagers, and meets his future wife. Newby is a master of the genre....a fantastic travel writer.