HAVE YOU read much about the Allies’ assault on Anzio during the Second World War? Can you remember many details of the campaign, or of the carnage? Don’t you find that it can help if someone pinpoints one key grid reference which serves to cajole your memory into focus? It’s like being directed to a constellation in what had looked like a haphazard scattering of stars in the night sky, and being able, thereafter, always to identify that constellation, much the way you can always recognise the hidden image in an optical illusion if you’ve deciphered it once.
In the concluding episode of Whicker’s War (Channel 4), Alan Whicker had reached Anzio, where, he recalled, the Allies suffered nearly 100,000 casualties, the Germans about 40,000.
Then he related a quiet story about just one of those Allied casualties — no name — which marked Anzio indelibly on the map of your mind: “British and American medical services struggled to cope with the desperate flood of gravely wounded and dying men in field hospitals. They worked on the defiant principle that there is no such thing as a corpse until the funeral.
“One gravely injured young officer had been lying all day on a stretcher waiting for treatment and, as a doctor hurried by, asked quietly if his injuries could be treated. The doctor saw instantly that there was no hope for him, so said, gently, ‘I’m afraid we’re not quite ready for you yet’. The young officer nodded. ‘I quite understand’, he said, and closed his eyes. In wartime brilliant fragments of courage and nobility passed by unnoticed. So
RIP young brother officer. You had 60 years of life taken from you in the misery that was Anzio.”
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And the oddest part of it? Man’s ability to find himself in a windowless dungeon and still locate the slenderest crack in the mortar that allows in light on his misery. As his friends fell around him, as each new skirmish threatened to end his own life as randomly as it had those of his fellow-soldiers, Whicker recalled how they had thrown parties during lulls in the fighting; parties with wine, and whisky, and American nurses. After the Allies liberated Rome, Whicker found himself staying in a plush hotel, above the Spanish Steps: “We were living in the heart of the Eternal City, and life was just as perfect as it could be.”
The word Anzio will now always trigger, for me, the image of that young officer telling the doctor, “I quite understand”, and closing his eyes. Today you’d see a man make more fuss if he felt he hadn’t been served an adequate dusting of cocoa powder on his cappuccino. In last week’s opening episode of the new series of The Sopranos (Channel 4), a waiter lost his life just because he had queried the meagreness of the tip Christopher left him on a $1,000 bill.
Last week we also caught a tantalising glimpse of Steve Buscemi. He appeared in a TV news bulletin about a posse of big-name Mafia hoods who were up for release. Last night Buscemi, who plays Tony Blundetto, returned in person to the bosom of his family to find that the bosom of his cousin, Tony Soprano, had swelled generously in the 15 years he had spent behind bars.
Buscemi is one of those ingredients you know is going to make any dish taste better. He has a mildly alarming face which looks like nobody else’s you’ve ever seen; but, at the same time, it’s a face that you wouldn’t particularly notice in a crowd. He offers it as a blank canvas for directors to mould into the image of a comic goofball, or of a sinister thug.
His appearance here might be dismissed as the sort of cameo by a Hollywood name that is courted by shows on their last legs, were it not for the fact that The Sopranos is very far from losing its footing, and that Buscemi has already been involved with The Sopranos as a director.
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Tony Soprano’s emotions can change faster, and more furiously, than the weather on a Scottish picnic. So did it surprise you at all when his initial warm embrace of his cousin at his “Welcome Home” party quickly gave way to anger when Blundetto began making jibes about Tony’s girth in front of Paulie, Christopher and the boys from the Bada Bing club? No, me neither.
But Tony’s surprise at his cousin’s lack of respect was soon eclipsed by the shock of hearing that, rather than return to the family business, Blundetto wants to complete the massage training he began while in jail, with the aim of becoming a licensed massage therapist.
A what? That’s right, Tony Blundetto wants to go straight — regular salary, no looking over his shoulder, no worrying about who’s tapping his phone calls — which, to Tony Soprano, is as bizarre as hearing a man say he’d like to assault his own genitals with a staplegun.
So where are we? Let’s see: Tony Blundetto’s homecoming hasn’t been as sweet as Tony Soprano had anticipated. Adriana is singing like a canary. An associate has been meeting Tony while miked up for the Feds. Tony can’t seem to seduce Dr Melfi into bed. Carmela is still putting the squeeze on Tony: oh, and last week Carmela had a big bear prowling around her back yard; this week she was watching Citizen Kane reach his wealthy, but lonely and heartbroken, end with her female film club (are you getting the message here?). Tony is looking rattled. Everywhere, matters seem to be spinning out of control, or else heading for a showdown. Oh joy!