Before midnight, the tide turned. Jubilation spread from the Baths of Caracalla to the Quirinal. Romans in nightshirts and slippers poured into the streets, braying whatever English they knew. “Weekend!” one old man repeatedly shouted. “Weekend!” The Stars and Stripes were raised above Piazza Venezia, and a banner draped the Pantheon: “Welcome to Our Liberators!”
At dawn on June 5, a small convoy rolled through Porta San Giovanni, carrying a detachment of scouts and engineers. As the column advanced down Via delle Quattro Fontane, squads peeled off to secure telegraph offices, power plants, and pumping stations. Sergeant John Vita, however, a reconnaissance photographer from Port Chester, New York, went alone on a special mission. He had promised his immigrant mother to make a speech from Benito Mussolini’s balcony in Palazzo Venezia.
“Vittoria!” Sergeant Vita declaimed, imitating Mussolini’s salute to amused spectators below. “Not for Il Duce but for the Allies!”
The U.S. Fifth Army entered Rome at ten-hundred hours. People gathered at Porta Maggiore to throw confetti at Sherman tanks, covered with the dust of Highway 6. Young women ransacked flower stands on the Spanish Steps to weave garlands for jeeps. Old women showered baby-faced infantrymen with irises and roses.
As Piper Cubs flew over the Vittoriano, General Mark Wayne Clark, who had ignored the orders of his superiors to take Rome, the capital of Italy but a strategically unimportant city, climbed Michelangelo’s cordonata from Piazza d’Aracoeli to the Campidoglio and surveyed his conquest from the Capitoline between the massive statues of Castor and Pollux.
“Vivano gli Americani!” cheered the crowd. “Viva Italia Libera!”
The next morning’s headlines from Normandy upstaged Clark’s triumph. Even so, Pius XII gave an audience at the Vatican to American officers and reporters: some with sidearms, some with cameras, one—“an enormously fat female journalist,” according to Eric Sevareid of CBS—in Kerrybrooke slacks. As flashbulbs exploded, photographers shouted: “Hold it, Pope. Attaboy!”
“Just another changing of the guard,” said Monsignor Enrico Pucci, the Pope’s press secretary. It was the second time in a year and at least the fiftieth time in twenty-seven centuries that Rome had been taken, but it had never fallen before to Americans. Not to mention Italian Americans.
Colonel Charles Poletti, Regional Commissioner of the Allied Military Government, who had served briefly as Governor of New York before becoming a U.S. Civil Affairs officer in Italy, was determined to restore order and faith in democracy. Romans instantly disliked him.
A jovial, talkative man, Poletti provided K rations but little pasta for the starving populace. He also broadcast obnoxious pep talks, suggesting among other things that Romans ought to use more soap than, according to him, they were doing. Someone retaliated with this pasquinade:
Charlie Poletti, Charlie Poletti,
Meno ciarla e più spaghetti.
“Get it?” roared a dogface in the 88th Infantry. “Less talk, more grub!” He was sharing a meal with two buddies at La Matriciana. All came from Bensonhurst but had never met until the war. Waiters called them the Brooklyn Triumvirate. Although their last names were Cesare, Crasso, and Pompeo, these G.I.s knew nothing about Rome. When their platoon first entered the city and skulked past the Coliseum, Pompeo had muttered: “Christ, the Krauts bombed that, too!”
Locals complained. The Fifth Army, camped at Villa Borghese, had turned Rome’s loveliest park into a barracks. The black market, which had flourished under the Nazis, still prospered, but irksome and ineffective regulations and restrictions multiplied. Buildings and vehicles were requisitioned without necessity. American officials were often intransigent or dismissive, while American soldiers, despite their pressed uniforms and a patina of shoe polish and brilliantine, less disciplined than the Germans had been. Within a month, they were infected by Rome’s corrupt, lackadaisical attitude. They indulged in food and wine, fell for girls and boys, and paid for these and other vices with Hershey chocolate bars, Camel cigarettes, and Zippo lighters.
The conquered always conquer their conqueror, said Horace. But unprejudiced Romans admitted that they enjoyed greater freedom of expression and movement under the U.S. occupation; that the fear of oppression, which had formerly overshadowed Rome, had been permanently lifted; and that the occupiers were eager to hand back the government of the city and the county to us Italians as soon as possible.
When the Americans left, Villa Borghese retained the marks of their youthful enthusiasm. The track of the jeeps, the ruts of the trucks and tanks, the trash from refuse pits ruined the paths among the myrtle bushes and scarred the meadows and flower beds. It was years before nannies and toddlers, pensioners and lovers ventured back to the park.
Nevertheless, the Americans also had left an indelible blessing. They had forever reminded us what it truly means to be a Roman, even though few could pronounce the words in Latin: “Parcere subiectis et debellare superbo.” Spare the conquered and subdue the proud.
Pasquino’s secretary is Anthony Di Renzo, professor of writing at Ithaca College. You may reach him at direnzo@ithaca.edu.
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