An Italian Chapel in the North Sea
Listen
now, and I’ll tell you a story
that
begins with disaster and ends in glory.
Scapa
Flow, a large basin in the Orkney Islands,
north
of Scotland, provides anchorage and harbour,
sheltered
by surrounding islands.
It
was a primary base for the British navy,
and
was considered secure from attack.
But
on 14 October, 1939, a U-boat,
helped
by an exceptionally high tide
and
a bold commander,
made
its way through a shallow strait
into
Scapa Flow, and torpedoed
HMS
Royal Oak at harbour, with great loss of life.
The
British immediately started filling
the
straits and sounds between
small
islands with hundreds of thousands
of
tons of rock. These “Churchill Barriers”
blocked
entry to Scapa Flow from the east.
And
then –
in
1942, about five hundred young men
from
Italy, by way of North Africa,
ended
up in Orkney on Lamb Holm, a small,
previously
uninhabited, island in the North Sea.
POW
Camp 60 was their home
for
the duration of the war.
Their
mission was to cover the Barriers
with
concrete to create a causeway
linking
the islands.
They
gradually settled into camp life.
They
had work to do, food to eat –
and
they weren’t getting shot at.
For
entertainment, they put on plays
and
an opera, always with artistic scenery.
They
played great football.
They
made a concrete billiard table with concrete balls,
and
a concrete bowling alley.
Still, the routine was tedious, and any news
about
Italy that got through was distressing.
They
needed respite from war, bad news,
boredom
and isolation. Group leaders,
the
camp commandant, and the chaplain,
appraised
their resources and made a plan.
Some
of the men were gifted masons who
could
work wonders with concrete.
There
were artists, sculptors, and other
craftsmen
with a variety of valuable skills.
Given
two empty Nissen huts and an endless
supply
of concrete, these guys built
an
amazingly beautiful chapel.
The
corrugated interior was smoothed
and
painted. The altar and altar rail were
made
of concrete, gracefully detailed.
The
baptismal font was concrete, formed
around
an old automobile muffler.
Blacksmiths
turned scrap iron into
intricate
scrollwork. Chandeliers
were
made of corned beef tins.
On
wall and ceiling, a dedicated artist
painted
an exquisite mural.
To
hide the shape of their humble hut,
they
built a façade of concrete,
with
towers, crosses and a belfry.
When
the war ended, they went home,
except
the artist, who stayed
to
finish the mural, and caught up later.
And
then –
fifty
years later they held a reunion.
Many
of the Italians returned to Orkney,
bringing
their families. They drove across
the
causeway they had built
and
heard Mass in their chapel, which stands
as
a symbol of hope and reconciliation.
Out
of war came a place of peace and devotion
on
a tiny island in that vast ocean.
Robina Rader is a retired reference
librarian. She has moved many times, living in places as distant and
diverse as New Jersey and Okinawa. She now lives in State College,
Pennsylvania, where she draws on her experiences and the world around her to
write poetry and short fiction in the stimulating environment of a university
town.
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