Goodbye to Italia

Discovery of my father’s WW2 diaries

It was an emotional moment when my mum handed me my father’s bedraggled diaries that he had written whilst incarcerated in the Zonderwater (South Africa), Prisoner of War camp during WW2. I’d been badgering my mum to provide more information about pappa, as the story I was writing about my Italian parents in Italy and Africa, was very one-sided. Needless to say, the diary discovery blew me away. It also meant that it took far longer to complete the manuscript. I had to work through my father’s ineligible scrawls. Not only was colloquial Italian used but different shades of ink or stubby pencil scratching made it hard to interpret. I chose to write GOODBYE TO Italia in alternating chapters: my mother as a young child, and her war experiences and my father, a young army officer. The excerpt I have chosen from the book, is from when my father was captured in 1941.