Dear Readers,
Libya is in the news these days, as Col. Muammar Khadafy vows to regain the power he seized forty-two years ago. Libya had been under Italian rule from 1912 to 1944. After World War II Libya was ruled by Britain and France. Libya became an independent constitutional monarchy in early 1952 but in September 1969 a junta led by Col. Muammar Khadafy (al-Quaddafi) seized power.
During WW II the Italian Army sustained great losses in North Africa. Over 250,000 men were either killed or taken prisoner by the Allies and much of the action in North Africa took place in Libya.
One Italian prisoner of war (p.o.w.), captured in Libya who arrived in mid 1941 with the 1st Motorized (Trento) Division, recalled in Louis E. Keefer’s book “Prisoner of War in America” that “When the end came in North Africa, I was never really captured. I just turned myself in. We heard over radio-Rome that the North African campaign was finished. We stayed hidden for a few days, until we saw the British searching for tanks and other motorized vehicles. Cape Bon was only sixty kilometers from the island of Pantelleria, but there was no such thing as escape, because the sky was filled with those damned P-38s. You know, the Italians had been fighting in North Africa since 1912, when they captured Libya from the Turks. After that, Arabs born there were Italian citizens.
Mussolini even built some new towns for them, as he did for our own immigrants, but they were nomads and wouldn’t live in them. During the fighting we never could trust them. When we were taken by the British, we got to keep our sidearms just to defend ourselves from them”.
Another P.O.W. recalled: “Of the 180 men in my motor pool, only 10 made it back to Tripoli, capital of Libya. Months later, we were captured. By then we had no equipment at all. We’d left our rifles and pistols at an Italian farm in Libya because the settlers pleaded with us, “Please leave us your guns so we’ll at least have a chance to defend ourselves against the Arabs”. I don’t think we’d be mistreated if we were captured, so I wasn’t scared to go unarmed. When it came, we were sitting around the bottom of a depression inside some Carthaginian ruins, just cooking macaroni. We could see the port and were watching an aerial dogfight when some Australians came up, most of them drunk. “Italians kaput, kaput”, they kept saying. Lucky for us we had no guns or they might have shot us”.
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Libya was first settled by Berbers and was ruled in succession by Carthage, Rome, the Vandals and the Ottomans. Italy ruled from 1912. Britain and France after WW II and since 1969 Khadafy.
Libya and Egypt fought several air and land battles along their border in 1977. Chad also charged Libya with military occupation of its uranium-rich northern region in 1977. Libyan troops were driven from their last major stronghold by Chad forces in 1987. In the 1980s, Libya was accused of aiding terrorists and violent revolutionary groups. The U.S. charged Khadafy with ordering the April 5, 1986, bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, the U.S. sent warplanes to attack what it called “terrorist-related targets” in Libya.
Libyan agents were accused of planting bombs that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and UTA Flight 772 over Niger, killing 170 people in 1989. The UN imposed sanctions (1992) for Libya’s failure to cooperate in the Lockerbie and UTA cases. Libya agreed in 2003 to renounce terrorism and settle compensation causes for the families of the bombing victims. The UN lifted sanctions, Sept. 12, 2003. Talks with the U.S. and UK led to Libya’s announcement that it would stop developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles. The U.S. ended most economic sanctions Apr. 23, 2004, and restored full diplomatic relations May 15, 2006.
Further signs of improved ties with the West included a visit to the Harbor city of Benghazi Aug. 30, 2008, by Italian Prime Min. Silvio Berlusconi, who pledged $5 billion aid projects as reparations for Italy’s 32 years of colonial rule, which some say was more oil related.
In 2009, his 40th year as Libyan leader Khadafy was elected to a one-year term as head of the African Union. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for his role in the Lockerbie bombing, was freed by Scottish authorities on humanitarian grounds, 2009. British officials differed as to whether a recent UK-Libya oil deal had an impact on the decision to release the ailing Megrahi, who received a jubilant welcome in Libya.
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From North Africa to Russian front. Lili Marleen, a German song (2001), was the favorite romantic song of Italian soldiers who served in World War II. “Mamma” was a top song favorite, home and nostalgia category. It is hard to believe a nation of poets and composers were not able to come up with a song comparable in beauty and feeling to the German’s.
There were Italian songs with comparable lyrics, but unfortunately they were not as popular as the German Lili Marleen, said Alfredo Rizzon, a former P.O.W. in an article he wrote for the quarterly Volontà, a periodical of special interest to Italian “non cooperatori” POWs, sent to me by my late ninety year old Varese pen-pal, Ricciotti Bornia, author of “America Dolce e Amara” (recalling his POW experience in America) and “Frammenti e Immagini di storia Varesina”.
Alfredo recalled that the words of a rather sentimental song made the time spent in gray- green uniform more pleasant. The German composer Norbert Schultze, author of the unforgettable song “Lili Marleen”, celebrated his 90th birthday in 2001. The lyrics of the poem were written by Hans Leip, another German, in 1915. In 1938, Schultze composed the music for the poem “Lili Marleen” that immediately became very popu- lar among the soldiers and was translated in several languages.
The song started its round of popularity at Radio Belgrade in Yugoslavia in 1940, at that time occupied by the Germans. In 1941 it had reached German soldiers that were humming the Lili Marleen tune at all the fighting fronts. Rapidly it expanded to all areas and countries occupied by the Third Reich. Soldiers learned its lyrics and started singing the song in the language with which they were most familiar.
Rizzon was at the North Africa front line, when the song was aired there first in mid 1941. Rizzon reminisces that he was at Ft. Dei Sabri on the outskirts of Bengasi. The anti-aircraft batteries of his outfit were getting ready to counterattack the British air-raids. As usual the RAF would bombard all night, incessantly, both the city and harbor of Bengasi, Libya.
While we waited for the hell to break loose we listened to the radio for war bulletins about the advance of the German troops in the heart of Russia. But during a brief intermission we heard the melodious notes of a sweet and harmonious song that immediately captured our interest. Every night we all waited for that mysterious song to bring us back home with our thoughts and dreams.
Every night through that sentimental song singer Lane Andersen expressed the desire of a young German soldier to be close to Lili Marleen, his girl whom he wished to hug and kiss once more as he had done in peace time”. The sentimental lyrics of the song, of course, applied not only to German soldiers but to millions of young men of all nationalities compelled by the war to be far away from their beloved girls.
Hitler, for obvious reasons, dis-liked that song. But for years Lili Marleen represented the sweetest dream of all young men, even of those who didn’t come back...
