San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘WWII AT OUR FRONT DOOR’
“WWII at Our Front Door” is a true story written by Maria Gargano Jackson Mauck, who lives in El Cajon. In 1935, the year she was born, Mauck’s family moves from Italy to Libya, where her dad is stationed as a marshal major in Mussolini’s army. As World War II breaks, they repatriate to Florence, an “open city” (supposedly protected from wartime aggression). Mauck remembers, vividly, living as a child under the fascist regime and the unrelenting bombing of the city. She recounts, in first person, the gripping horrors of the war and how her family managed to survive. Mauck, now retired, taught ESL and ninthgrade English at Sweetwater High School in National City. Florence, Italy | Spring 1943
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et’s leave the kids home. There are Nazi-fascist snipers everywhere. The radio has been warning people all morning.” “No,” insists my mother. “If we die, we die together. We must go. We don’t have a drop of water left.”
My sister, Ina, and I are carrying two empty coffee cans each, with wires across the tops as handles. My cans are much smaller than hers. She is two years older, much bigger, and can carry bigger cans. Uncle Frank and my mother, with my younger brother in her arms, follow closely, carrying an assortment of empty containers and bottles.
We leave the apartment building where we were staying on via Oriani in Florence, Italy. We make a left and then a right on via Massaia. There are unkempt fields in some sections of via Massaia. We walk through the fields until we reach two farmers’ wells about 100 feet apart from one another.
“Let’s stop here. The group is much smaller,” says my mother.
Lots of people are standing around the wells, especially the second one further away, where lots of children are playing and running around. Finally, our turn comes, with Mom and Uncle Frank standing opposite me and Ina, on the other side of the well. We fill all the bottles and containers when a sudden, loud whizz sound flies by my face, between me and mom. I extend my hand toward that whistling thing, as if to grab it, when a second, louder whizz flies by.
“What … was that?” I giggle.
“Don’t do that!” my mother screams.
At that instant we hear an explosion of loud, frightened shouts. People are yelling. Piercing screams and cries are coming from the group at the second well. A woman has fallen to the ground. Men and women are kneeling around her. Someone is crying hysterically.
“Let’s go! Now!” Dear, Dear God … Dear, Dear God, Mom is praying quietly over and over, as we hurry back home.
“Mom?” I ask, trying not to spill the water from my cans as I run after her, “Mom? What happened? Mom?”
We make a left onto via Oriani and up to the second floor of our apartment building.
“Mom, what happened?” I ask quietly. “Don’t you ever understand anything?” Ina shouts at me angrily. “A woman’s been shot by a Nazi-fascist sniper! And she’s dead!”
We have lived in Florence for 2 years since 1941 and on via Oriani for the last few months. My family is among the refugees the Italian government has ordered to repatriate from overseas at the start of WWII. Dad, a Marshal Major in Mussolini’s army, remained in Tripoli. I liked it there. It was happy, and we didn’t have snipers.