For a couple weeks now, I’ve been fascinated with these little flowers that have been popping up–very short, maybe just clearing the ground by a couple inches, and with a crisp combination of white, purple, and yellow. They’re very pretty; that’s part of the allure, of course. I’m also struck, though, by where they grow: smack dab in the middle of footpaths, where all other competition has been eliminated. The downside of that, obviously enough, is that those footpaths have been cleared for a reason; feet, and the jackasses like me swinging them around, have trampled other plants into submission. There’s this short window, between winter and spring, when these flowers can proliferate, as the trail is mostly clear, largely untouched. But that time will end; the walkers and bikers will return, and for every one of these lovely little flowers that survive, two dozen will be demolished.
Despite that, though, I have no doubt. They’ll be back again next year, breaking ground on another attempt. Life reasserts itself.
Spring arrived in Puglia this weekend. It’s impossible not to feel the turning of the page. Leaving Alberobello, I needed to freestyle my way back to the coast and the Via Francigena Sud, but those 20km worked out great. At least half the walk was spent on dirt tracks and footpaths, including a rocky descent from the hills back to the coastal flats, but clouds had rolled in overnight, so it was cool and comfortable, the easiest of conditions for walking. Once I reached Monopoli, though, the world erupted with life. Families strolled up and down the promenade; for the first time on this walk, it seemed like every souvenir shop and outdoor cafe had reopened, doing brisk business. The scene was even more dramatic in the next town, Polignano a Mare. The two form a breathtaking pair, but the latter–rising high atop a sheer cliff overlooking the Adriatic, with a small beach far below–will long stick in my memory. Temperatures hadn’t climbed much beyond 60 on this Saturday, but that was enough for these long-cloistered Italians to sunbathe, if still a little more clothing was involved than the norm.
Originally, I had planned to overnight in Monopoli, and perhaps I should have stuck to that. But conditions were such that I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to remove my pack, didn’t want to get off my feet. It’s an odd thing to consider; both Monopoli and Polignano were so vibrant that I was inspired to keep on walking through them and beyond, but the act of departure wasn’t a statement of disinterest, but rather the consequence of a catalyst. I couldn’t stop at that point, even if I wanted to.
Instead, I carry on along the coast, reveling in the beautiful day. After a couple hours, though, the Campsite Hunt kicked in. It’s a delicate balance. You don’t want to stop too soon; that’s a waste of daylight, and in a stealth camping situation it necessitates some covert maneuvering. Given that it’s not light until 5:30am, a 4:30pm stop can result in a very long stretch of lounging around, which gets a little old for me. Of course, the flipside is also true; you don’t want to get caught in the dark without a good campsite lined up. For me, there are three main goals: dry top, clean bottom, and secure. Ideally, there would be some sort of cover overhead to keep dew off the bivy; even better, I’d be rolling out on something dry and tidy. Sure, it’s an idyllic vision, rolling out beneath a sprawling olive tree, but the consequences of that would be a thick coating of wet clay on my bivy. There are things you can be ok with when you’re taking your tent home after a weekend in the woods that are much more challenging when you’re repacking, day after day. Pavement is my friend. Secure can mean a lot of things; I’m not concerned about people harassing me, but a little quiet goes a long way in staving off the micro-awakenings over the course of a night. In any case, two out of three is generally the best I can hope for.
On this night, I arrive at an oasis, perfectly timed, just on the edge of dusk. Some kind soul built a tropical-style thatched roof over a small patch of sand. Most of this coastline is rocky; even the sandy bits are often strewn with garbage. This was pristine. A small bench and a firepit were nice touches as well, even if I didn’t employ the latter. I don’t necessarily love unrolling on sand; that stuff gets everywhere. But this was thin enough to be manageable, so we’ll score this 2.5/3. I fell asleep listening to the waves lapping the shore, and awoke to discover the greatest miracle of all–my toes weren’t ice cubes. Spring, indeed, had arrived.
The following morning, a luminous Sunday, was the dawning of the fishmongers. All along the coast, fishermen were out in force, gathering a bounty, and their efforts were on immediate display in the series of pescherie, or seafood shops, lining the way. Especially popular, it seemed, was pulpo, octopus, which I’ve seen available in many sandwich shops across Puglia. The walk, admittedly, wasn’t my favorite stretch of the journey thus far. It’s hard to complain when you’re walking directly along the coast pretty much the entire time, but if the Adriatic was always to my right, a road with consistent traffic was parallel to my left, and the views were fairly consistent. Nonetheless, all through the morning I felt a growing surge of adrenaline as Bari, in visible in the distance from my campsite, and growing more distinct throughout the walk, came ever more into focus. Even more than yesterday, locals were out in force, jogging and biking and fishing, liberated by the sunshine and growing warmth. Today was a commencement, a convocation, a celebration of having made it through another dreary winter. Only three weeks ago, I was in Bari on a Sunday, and I found it vacant, cold, practically in hibernation. To call it a different city today would be understating matters; this was an absolute metamorphosis. Life reasserts itself.
Forget three weeks ago; eighty-two years ago I would have seen a very different scene. In a remarkable story, which I first encountered in this Smithsonian Magazine article, and is explored in greater detail in Jennet Conant’s The Great Secret, I learned of how Bari became the only European city in World War II to experience chemical warfare, though that certainly wasn’t by design.
On the morning of December 2, 1943, the residents of Bari had every reason to feel relieved. While the Italian peninsula had suffered significantly over the course of the war, and such suffering was far from over for many, as Allied troops pushed northward against recalcitrant Nazi forces, Bari had emerged almost completely unscathed. And at this point, having become a hub for Allied forces in their operations, it seemed as secure as anywhere, with relatively abundant resources. Instead, though, that placed a new target on the city, and that night a fleet of German Junkers swept in, unleashing bombs around the harbor and old town. The effect was catastrophic; within moments, the harbor was transformed into, as Time Magazine put it, a “fiery panorama,” the whole thing coated in burning oil. In the moment, the consequences seemed explicable enough; a burst pipeline sent thousands of gallons of fuel into the port–yes, literally adding fuel to the fire–thus contributing to the conflagration. Quickly dubbed “a little Pearl Harbor,” the immediate consequences included the sinking of 17 Allied ships, the destruction of thousands of tons of cargo, and the deaths of more than 1000 Allied soldiers alongside hundreds of Italian civilians. If that were the extent of it, the attack would certainly merit a brief inclusion in the histories of the war, but perhaps not much more.
However, that was certainly not the extent of it.
It wasn’t that men died in the attack; that was bad enough, but it wasn’t the most worrying part. It was how they were dying–quickly, of inexplicable causes, in unprecedented ways. Before long, concerns began circulating among the medical staff that the Germans hadn’t limited themselves to traditional bombs but instead, in their desperation, had crossed the line to chemical weapons.
The investigation that followed fell on the shoulders of Lt. Col. Stewart Alexander, though few would know anything about it for another thirty years because of the immediate cover-up that followed. The stakes were exceptionally high; the Allies had already declared that if Germany employed chemical weapons that they would receive a response in kind; escalation to a much grizzlier, far more horrifying war was in sight.
The escalation of symptoms was dramatic. First, survivors felt apathetic, even reporting that they were “rather well.” Suddenly, their skin became inflamed with angry blisters, “as big as balloons and heavy with fluid.” Vomiting followed. By the next day, their eyes were swollen shut. Two days later, the deaths accelerated; doctors reported that “Individuals that appeared in rather good condition in a matter of minutes would become moribund and die.”
Alexander quickly recognized that these were not the consequences of traditional weapons. He had studied chemical weapons and was well familiar with the impact of mustard gas and its related variations. Perhaps, those had been delivered by Nazi weapons. Perhaps, though… he knew the Allies had been stockpiling chemical weapons, just in case retaliation proved to be necessary. Could they have been stored in the port of Bari, aboard one of the Allied ships? His inquiries were stonewalled; time and again, he received insistence that no such chemical weapons existed. The consequences were high; it was simple math. If chemical weapons were responsible for the unusual injuries incurred in the bombing, and the Allies hadn’t brought them into the port, then the blame must fall on the Germans. Finally, Alexander was able to discover indisputable evidence, thanks to a diver’s efforts, of fractured gas shells beneath the harbor floor, all of which were clearly American in origin. As it turns out, an American ship–the John Harvey–had been stationed in Bari temporarily, en route to Foggia, when it fell under Nazi fire on that fateful day.
In any case, the cover-up kicked in almost immediately, though the discovery allowed for better treatment for the survivors, likely saving some lives in the process. Had that been the extent of it, again, this story would merit inclusion in historical accounts, highlighting one of those pivotal “what if,” sliding doors moments, when matters could have taken a turn for the worse. But there’s another twist still to come.
In his study of the impact of mustard gas, Alexander had been fascinated by its selective destruction of white blood cells. The problem he had faced before the war was that it was impossible to test this on human subjects. The silver lining of this horrific catastrophe was that he suddenly had data, abundant data, on the health consequences of such poisons on the human body. While Alexander ultimately retired from the military and went into private practice, another medical expert, Cornelius P. Rhoads–whose Wikipedia overview is a journey–glommed onto the Bari report and sought to leverage its discoveries, resulting in a top-secret Yale University trial that demonstrated how tiny doses of nitrogen mustard, inserted intravenously, could effectively treat tumors. Today, that process is known as chemotherapy. When would we have discovered this ubiquitous, invaluable treatment if not for such a brutal disaster? Even in the face of tragedy, life reasserts itself.
And life, the full measure of it, is blossoming across Bari on this Sunday. I can barely make it into the center through the throngs of people–playing soccer on the beach, pushing strollers along the promenade, drinking espresso in piazza cafes. My destination, though, is indoors. The Basilica San Nicolas. Bari’s duomo is nice, no question, and well worth a visit, but the essential religious site is the basilica, home to the relics of the city’s patron saint, and a pilgrimage shrine for Orthodox Christians–to the point that the crypt features an Orthodox altar on the left side and a Catholic altar on the right. The small chapel is filled with Greek Orthodox women, all wearing headscarves.
This is not my first visit to the resting place of Old Saint Nick. Indeed, I visited his original tomb in Myra, Turkey many years ago, when walking the Lycian Way. However, that tomb is empty today. Centuries ago, a group of Bari raiders claimed the big bones for their city; Venetian raiders followed and scavenged the small bones. Poor Myra has been left with an empty stone box.
Nicholas was among the earliest Christian figures around which a cult emerged, spreading throughout modern-day Turkey in the sixth century. In his life, he had narrowly survived persecution under Diocletian, though Constantine’s pardon allowed his return to apostolic duty over the years that followed. In his afterlife, he was transformed into a saint who acted on behalf of many; the list of groups to which he functions as patron is unusually long: archers, children, coopers, fishermen, glassmakers, lawyers, marriageable girls, merchants, perfumers, pharmacists, prisoners, prostitutes, sailors, schoolchildren, and victims of miscarriages of justice. If you can find the through-line connecting those different categories, you have a better eye than I do, though it certainly encompasses a wide range of vulnerable groups.
Ultimately, though, most of us remember Saint Nicholas today not because of any of that, but rather because of the tradition–still celebrated in Bari today–of his practice of bringing gifts to children every year, on the night of December 5 (not 25, sorry). Even in the dead of winter, a little something to look forward to, a spark of joy. Life reasserts itself.
