“Uncle, this is my friend, my commander,” Tony explained. “He is really Italian, too, but I call him Dick Donnelly. Uncle—I’ll tell you right away who he really is. Ricardo Donnelli!”
“You—you are really Ricardo Donnelli?” the old man exclaimed. “Here in our little town of Maletta?”
Dick smiled and nodded. “But I’m really just a soldier in the American Army now,” he said. “We should get away from the villa before we talk. Can we go back up the hill?”
“Yes, back up the hill,” the old man said, starting off at once. “It is steep but we can go up there and talk safely. Not far. We cannot be seen up here from the villa.”
Dick and Tony followed him up the slope to a little clump of trees.
“This used to be a pleasant place to sit on a sunny afternoon,” the old man said. “See—there is a long flat rock to sit upon. Now, I do not come here often, because all I can see are the hated Germans!”
Then he began to pour out a stream of questions to Tony—about his mother and father, how long he had been in the Army, when he had come to Italy, how far away the American troops were. Then suddenly he stopped.
“You said I could help the Americans,” he said. “Tell me what I can do. I shall do anything you ask. And there are many others here who will help. We have not been idle.”
“I imagine not,” Dick said. “In America we don’t hear much about the underground activities in Italy, but we know you have been fighting in every way possible.”
“Especially now that there is some hope,” Tomaso said. “For so long, for so many many years, we were held under the thumb of that bellowing jackass, Mussolini, with his cruel blackshirt terrorists. And the world did not seem to care. But now—now we know we will be free men again, and we fight once more.”