Love and War in the Apennines
Encyclopedia
Love and War in the Apennines is a 1971
1971 in literature
The year 1971 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles wins the UK's first Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.-New books:*Hiroshi Aramata - Teito Monogatari...

 Second World War memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

 (with some changes of names and people and places, and some composite characters) by Eric Newby
Eric Newby
George Eric Newby CBE MC was an English travel author. Newby's best known works include A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Last Grain Race, and Round Ireland in Low Gear.-Life:...

. It was dramatised as the film In Love and War
In Love and War (2001 film)
In Love and War is a Hallmark Channel original movie, directed by John Kent Harrison. It is based on the book Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. It was filmed in Italy and stars Callum Blue and Barbora Bobulova.- Plot :...

.

Plot introduction

After the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces in 1943, the author left the prison camp in which he had been held for a year and evaded the Germans
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...

 by going to ground high in the mountains and forests south of the Po River
Po River
The Po |Ligurian]]: Bodincus or Bodencus) is a river that flows either or – considering the length of the Maira, a right bank tributary – eastward across northern Italy, from a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face...

. In enforced isolation, he was sheltered and protected by an informal and highly courageous network of Italian peasants. Newby writes a powerful account of these idiosyncratic and selfless people and also of their bleak and very basic lifestyle. He undergoes a series of bizarre, funny and often dangerous incidents, and in the process meets Wanda, a local girl who later becomes his wife.

Summary

Newby takes part in a Special Boat Service
Special Boat Service
The Special Boat Service is the special forces unit of the British Royal Navy. Together with the Special Air Service, Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the Special Forces Support Group they form the United Kingdom Special Forces and come under joint control of the same Director Special...

 operation, an attempt to blow up a German airbase by the Bay of Catania
Catania
Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...

, on the east coast of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. This is an ill-conceived effort to destroy some of the Ju 88s that were to be used in the bombing of a convoy bound for Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

. He and his colleagues fail to make their rendezvous with a British submarine and are plucked out of the sea by the crew of a fishing boat.

Newby is eventually imprisoned in a large camp in an orphanage at the village of Fontanellato
Fontanellato
Fontanellato is a small town in the province of Parma, in northern Italy. It lies on the plains of the River Po near the A1 autostrada, about 20 kilometres west of Parma towards Piacenza....

 in the great plain of the Po river. With the Armistizio, the Italians decide to let the English prisoners escape once the news gets around that the Germans are on their way. Because Newby has a broken ankle he has to be abandoned and is hidden in a farmer's hay loft until an Italian doctor takes him to the hospital next to the orphanage. Here he is visited by Wanda, the daughter of a Slovene teacher, who gives him Italian lessons in exchange for English lessons and they fall in love. The Germans discover he is there but Newby escapes and is taken by the formidable doctor to hide in the woods. He is eventually taken to the house of an Italian family but they are afraid of what the Germans might do if his presence becomes known. They tell him to climb up to the house of Signor Zanoni which he does at night in the middle of an appalling storm. Zanoni eventually takes him a farmhouse in the Apennine Mountains
Apennine mountains
The Apennines or Apennine Mountains or Greek oros but just as often used alone as a noun. The ancient Greeks and Romans typically but not always used "mountain" in the singular to mean one or a range; thus, "the Apennine mountain" refers to the entire chain and is translated "the Apennine...

 where he spends some weeks paying for his keep by clearing the fields of stones. One Sunday Newby makes a trek higher up, falls asleep and wakes up to see a German officer looming over him with a pistol on his belt. The officer soon sees through his disguise as an Italian but is too civilised to take him prisoner.

Newby is nearly captured when the Tedeschi raid a ballo at another farm but manages to escape. With things now getting too hot, he makes his way higher up to stay with a shepherd who cures him of fever with a huge woollen vest and juniper-flavoured grappa
Grappa
Grappa is an alcoholic beverage, a fragrant, grape-based pomace brandy of Italian origin that contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume...

. A village meeting decides to build him a "house", over a cave and camouflaged. It is October and for some weeks he is brught food by members of the two village families who know of his whereabouts. Wanda visits him briefly and gives him a package containing maps, a compass and other items to help him get to the coast from where he wants to head south in order to meet the advancing allied forces. On a reconnaissance to the summit of the mountains he becomes lost and is given a bed and food by an old man whom he had met previously. Newby returns to his cave and finds James, an old friend from POW camps, who has been living in the next door valley.

Eventually their presence at the cave is betrayed and they are forced to flee. They are taken to meet some would-be partisans
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...

 and then are betrayed again by a villager and captured by a detachment of Fascist milizia. The book concludes with Newby's return twelve years later (1956) with Wanda, now his wife (they married in the spring of 1946), as they revisit the places and families in the story.
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