Alberto Ferrari and the bombing of Naples

Sottocapo (Leading Seaman) Alberto Arcene (pen name of Alberto Ferrari, from Padua) describes in his memoirs (“L’ultima torpediniera per Tunisi”) the situation in Naples in the early summer of 1943:

 

“…one morning they summoned me to the orderly room: I had been assigned to the Naples submarine chaser flotilla. (…) The first submarine chaser was ready – the first of the flotilla. (…) After a disastrous voyage, I reached Naples in the evening. I showed up at the anti-submarine personnel’s barracks near the harbour station, where I saw only a sentry and the petty officer of the watch. The others were in the nearby tunnel, used as an air raid shelter. The petty officer advised me to go with them. It was better to sleep in the tunnel, the bombers came every night. “What kind of music, you’ll hear!” I reached the tunnel and I clumped with civilians and sailors, in a disgusting medley. There were people who had been living in there for months. What a stench! A heterogeneous mixture of smells of food and intimacy, unwashed people, sweat, cooker smoke, piss, roasted fish. Never seen so much filth. Poor Naples, mangled, brutalized, look what they did to you! (…) Next morning, I went again to the anti-submarine personnel’s barracks, filled with so much nausea that I did not drink that little coffee which the chief yeoman had benevolently offered me. I asked him for information about how and where should I settle in and what would be my task. He silently led me outside, beyond the small gate, and pointed to a wreck. “Look, that is your submarine chaser. Last night!” He suggested me to leave, to go back to La Spezia. “Go back to a safer place while you can, it is hell here. Leave! I’ll prepare your documents; there’s a train leaving from Mergellina at noon. Take it””.

The harbour of Naples littered with wrecks in September 1943 (Naval History and Heritage Command)


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