Although I was not aware of it at the time, the seeds of my interest in the Sicilian Mafia, ‘La Piovra’, the Octopus, as it is sometimes named in Italy, were sown many years ago, on the last day of June 1940, to be precise, as I sat on a quay at the port of Liverpool with thousands of other prisoners awaiting embarkation on one of the two prison ships at anchor there, the Arandora Star and the Ettrick.

   I met Pasquale Nardo on that day in 1940 as we sat cross-legged on the quay, where we had been squatting for hours together with thousands of other prisoners awaiting embarkation on one of the two prison ships at anchor there. It is no part of this story to describe the series of vicissitudes that had brought us side by side on that pier together with thousands of Germans and Italians—that story has been told elsewhere. Suffice it to say that we struck up an immediate friendship.

   Pasquale was a short, stocky and powerfully built youth in his very early twenties, with short curly dark brown hair and a face that reminded me of a smaller Gilbert Roland, a film star of the day. As we sat and waited, he told me about his capture a few weeks before, a few miles off the coast at Trapani, a fishing port on the west coast of Sicily. On the day of Mussolini’s declaration of war he and his three companions were going about their business of catching fish, and as their little fishing smack emerged from a dense fog bank they rammed the side of a British submarine which had just surfaced. Presumably to keep his position secret, the British captain promptly took them on board as prisoners and sank their craft. They were put ashore at Malta, then were transferred to a ship bound for Liverpool, where they were decanted into a group of prisoners destined for an internment camp on the St Lawrence river in Canada. The captain of the submarine must have been a very humane man, for he could just as easily have sunk the four without trace along with their craft.

   Pasquale spoke Italian with a thick Sicilian accent, which I, with my Tuscan brand of Italian, at first found difficult to understand. He was amazed at the fact that I could speak both English and Italian. He plied me with questions. Where was I from? Why could I speak English so fluently? I had lived all my life in a place called Scotland? Where was this place? Was it near America? He had an uncle in America, he said. Why was I a prisoner like himself? What kind of work did I do in this place? What were the people there like? These conversations continued for the next 14 days in the cramped hold of the Ettrick, the ship that was taking us to what was to be our home for the next three years, and during those 14 days a bond of friendship was formed between the two of us, the one a Scots-Italian from Glasgow and the other a Sicilian fisherman.

If a divine hand had set out deliberately to create in microcosm the bewildering array of different racial strains, cultures and dialects that made up the Italy of the first half of the twentieth century, it could have done no better than the British government had achieved accidentally in the setting up of internment Camp Son St Helene’s Island in Montreal in June 1940, at the time of Mussolini’s declaration of war on Britain. Imprisoned there in the old fortress, erected by Champlain in 1611 as a protection against the English and the native Indians, were 402 Italians, 250 of them resident throughout the UK, 148 of them merchant seamen taken from ships docked at British ports and Pasquale with his three fellow fishermen, all of them arrested on the day that Mussolini declared war on Britain and France.

   The Italy of Mussolini’s time had been a nation for only 50 years, and the economic, cultural and linguistic divisions between the people who inhabited the Italian peninsula and who now called themselves Italians were deep and well-nigh irreconcilable. A factory worker in Turin or Milan was no more akin to a Sicilian peasant than he was to a North African Arab. A Tuscan or a Venetian had nothing in common with a Neapolitan or a Calabrese, and to a Sardinian all of the above were as foreign as a visitor from Russia might have been. These differences presented difficulties to any government trying to form a new nation from the hotchpotch of states which had made up the Italian peninsula before unification in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and much effort had gone into attempts to create a homogeneous Italian state. Those efforts had not been completely successful even towards the end of the twentieth century, and to this day great differences still remain between the cultures and way of life of the north and the south of Italy.

One of the measures taken by successive governments in an attempt to bring about change was that of deliberately mixing together the populations of the regions at every possible opportunity, so as to make the new ‘Italians’ more aware of one another’s habits and customs, and to create a homogeneous mix in the whole of the peninsula. Army conscripts from the north were sent to do their military service in Calabria or Sicily, and those from the south would find themselves in Lombardy or Tuscany for the period of their training. The crews of merchant ships too contained a compulsory mix of ‘ethnic’ groups from all over Italy, and this mix was evident in the make-up of the crews of the ships who found themselves prisoners on St Helene’s Island, all of whom had been recruited from the four corners of Italy. These seamen now found themselves sharing a few square yards of prison compound with yet another ‘ethnic’ group, this time made up of Italians who for years had made their home in different parts of the United Kingdom, and who in speech and habit were more akin to their captors than they were to their fellow prisoners.

   A few months into the life of the camp, Pasquale decided to put his full trust in me. Mail had begun to arrive for the prisoners through the good offices of the International Red Cross, and the little Sicilian had received a letter from his father in Trapani, written on the old man’s behalf by the local priest, for his father could not read or write. Pasquale too was illiterate, in common with 50% of southern Italians, that being the incidence of illiteracy in that part of Italy in those days. Who could he get to read the letter to him? The other illiterate sailors from the merchant ships, and they were many, as a matter of course went to their officers to have their mail from home read out, but Pasquale had no faith in these officers. Most were northerners, and all were Fascisti. He had a deep hatred of the Fascisti, he told me. Too many of his friends had been arrested by them and sent to prison or into exile on the Lipari Islands of fearsome repute. So he approached me and asked me to read his letter, and sat attentively as he listened to the words of his father as set down by the village priest and read to him by his new friend from Scotland. I wrote an answer as Pasquale dictated, and was deeply touched by the simple words of love and affection from a son to his father. To read and write a man’s intimate mail with a parent is to see into that man’s soul, and so I, as a mark of my appreciation of the trust that Pasquale had put in me, would occasionally read out parts of my own intimate family letters to my new Sicilian friend.

   But I did much more. I had been bilingual from birth, so I had as good a command of spoken Italian as I had of English, and despite my own comparative lack of schooling I was able slowly and painstakingly to teach Pasquale to read and then to write, using whatever Italian books were available in the camp from the International Red Cross. A lot can be done even with basic materials as long as there is unlimited time, and unlimited time is exactly what we had during those long days and nights of captivity. A few hours each day were spent with heads bent over reading books and writing paper, and at the end of the first year of captivity Pasquale was capable of writing his own letters to his father in Trapani and of reading the priest’s replies. New and limitless horizons had been opened up to him. The little Sicilian read everything he could get his hands on, and thanks to the generosity of the Red Cross there was no lack of material to choose from. His interest in and understanding of the new world that had opened up for him were boundless.

   Then in the late summer of 1943, together with two fellow internees, I found myself in a situation of some danger with a group of the merchant seamen in the camp. I, together with 39 other civilians, was awaiting repatriation to the UK following our release by the Home Office in London. The war with Italy had ended with the removal of Mussolini from power and with the capitulation of the Italian Army. Italy was being torn apart by what in essence was a civil war. Mussolini had been rescued from his hotel prison on the Gran Sasso mountain by the famous German commander of paratroopers, Otto Skorzeny, and had formed a new Fascist state, the ‘Government of Salo’, to continue fighting on the side of the Nazis. The new Italian government which had deposed him had joined forces with the Allies to fight against the Germans, and as a consequence we internees from the U.K. were no longer enemy aliens, we were now allies of the British. While we were waiting for space to be found for us on a convoy for the Atlantic crossing back to the UK, a group of seamen with Fascist leanings who refused to accept Italy’s capitulation had been busy digging a tunnel from a recreation hut in the centre of the camp to the outside of the barbed wire perimeter fence. From experience of escapes in the past, we were only too well aware of how the authorities would react in the event of a mass escape. A quarantine would very likely be imposed on the camp until the escaped prisoners had been recaptured and the matter investigated, our departure could well be delayed, the convoy missed, and God alone knew how much time would pass before space could be found for us on another one.

   A direct betrayal of the tunnel to the authorities was absolutely ruled out, for the idea of informing on persons who had been fellow prisoners for three years went against the grain, no matter what the circumstances. So, one night soon after, I, with two other prisoners, Joe Guidi from Glasgow and Louie Tontini from London, crept into the recreation hut, found the trapdoor entrance to the tunnel in the place where Pasquale had told me it would be, and crawled into the excavation. The tunnel had been very skillfully dug out, was about two feet high and broad enough for a man to wriggle his way forward. Some wooden props sustained the roof, and at the point where it ran under the service road as it crossed the compound, the props had been spaced very close together to compensate for any extra overhead weight. We quickly stripped these props away, leaving the section of tunnel under the road completely unsupported, and returned as quietly as we could to our bunks to await developments.

Early next morning a heavily laden service lorry entered the camp, and as it passed over the point where the props had been removed, the earth under it collapsed and the vehicle came to a halt with its front wheels embedded in the hole beneath. The tunnel escape had been successfully aborted, much to the satisfaction of the military, who, apart from depriving the camp of its weekly portable cinema show as punishment, took no further action in the matter. The would-be escapers were furious. It was obvious that their tunnel had been tampered with, and the finger of suspicion came to point at the three of us.

   Down through the camp grapevine came the threat. We were going to be dealt with. This was no idle menace. There had been several stabbings in the camp, none of them fatal, but serious enough to have required the hospitalization of the victims in a Montreal hospital. Although the assailants had never been identified, it was common knowledge that they belonged to a hard core of Fascist activists in the merchant seamen group. These were the same ones who had been building the tunnel, and they were now threatening vengeance on those who had exposed their plot. It was then that little Pasquale Nardo approached me.

‘I am told that you and your two friends are in great danger, Peppe. You have been good to me in these past years and you are the best friend I have here. I want you to meet with me and Captain Bonorino and some others tonight.’

   Captain Bonorino was the captain of one of the merchant ships, a quiet, serious Genoese with no political leanings, and much respected by all factions in the camp. That evening a small group assembled in the recreation hut. This consisted of myself and my two friends, Joe Guidi and Louie Tontini, Captain Bonorino, Pasquale, and seven seamen. The latter were all from the Calabria region, and all had been involved in the digging of the tunnel. They had been summoned to the meeting by Pasquale by means of a note pinned to the Camp notice board and signed by the sketch of a crudely drawn Black Hand with a dagger in the background. The little Sicilian stood and looked fixedly at the group for a long moment, and as he did so a metamorphosis seemed to take place. His normally pleasant face had taken on a hard appearance and seemed set in stone, with the eyes dark and full of menace. He began to speak, slowly and theatrically, his words punctuated by gesturing hands, in a thick Sicilian-accented Italian.

   ‘I am a friend of friends in Trapani, and Peppe and his friends here are now my friends. The war is lost and finished and we all want to go home in peace to our families. No harm has been done to anyone here, no one has been named and so no one has been betrayed. No one has been robbed, no one has been hurt, no one has lost honour and so no one has any cause for vendetta. It is you who would injure those here who want only to go home to their families and to you I say this. If any harm comes to any of these three by anyone in this camp, harm also comes to me and through me to my friends and to my family in Trapani, and I would be sworn to seek vengeance for him. If I cannot find vengeance then my friends and family in Trapani will, and if vengeance cannot be done to you it will be done to your families. I say this to you with the Captain as witness. È ora di farla finita con queste scemate.’ [‘It’s time to call a halt to this nonsense.’]

   He stood for a moment, then approached and stood in front of each of the seven in turn, fixing them with a questioning glance. None of them spoke, but they looked at one another, gesticulating. Then each of them stepped in front of Pasquale, nodded to him and turned, shook Bonorino by the hand, took no notice of me nor of my two friends, and left. Pasquale turned to me.

   ‘There is no need for you to be afraid of anything now. Nobody will dare to touch you, for they know that they will certainly pay for it one day if they do and they have acknowledged that fact to me, and the Captain here is the witness.’

   I looked at my friend in amazement.

   ‘There are things I cannot tell even to you, Peppe, for I am sworn to omerta, but if you come to Trapani some day I will introduce you to my friends, for you are now my friend and they will be yours.’

   Three weeks later, and without further incident, I shook the dust of the prison compound from my feet for the last time, took leave of the many friends made there over the last three years and gave a specially warm embrace to Pasquale Nardo, the Mafia fisherman from Trapani.

I used to think a lot about this incident in the years after the war, and brought to bear upon it the mass of information I had subsequently acquired over the years about the phenomenon of the Sicilian Mafia and of the psychology and motivation of people like my friend Pasquale Nardo. This is a quote from a book on the Mafia phenomenon, L’Italia Domanda by Enzo Biagi, a contemporary Italian writer:

‘The Mafia started out centuries ago as a system of reciprocal protection and defence against invaders and corrupt and venal authorities in their midst, but over the years slowly degenerated into a system of crime, delinquency and self-interest. There is now no law in Sicily, there is only the need for survival, and all the actions of an individual are motivated by this instinct. A good deed will be remembered and repaid, a slight or an insult will never be forgotten, and a friendship will never be betrayed. Make a friend of a Sicilian and you have one for life, make an enemy of one and your life could well be forfeit.’

I had made a friend of Pasquale and he had repaid me in the only way he knew how, by instilling the fear of death and retribution into those who would have harmed his friend. But then I thought further. What if the tunnel builders had themselves been of the Mafia? What then would have been our fate? Then I realized the impossibility of such a conjecture. A Mafioso will carry out an act if there is a matter of honour or of family vendetta attached to it, or if a profit of some kind is to be made from such an act. The digging of the tunnel was pointless. It served no purpose other than that of nuisance value. There was no question of honour attached to it. There was no profit to be made from it. Therefore no one of the Mafia would have been associated with it.

   I saw Pasquale Nardo, the little Mafioso from Trapani, three times after the end of the war, during holiday visits to Naples. The first time was in 1955, then again in 1974, then once more in 1998, just before he died at the age of eighty. He had not remained in his native Trapani after the war, for his entire family had been killed during an Allied air raid and the quarter in which he lived had been destroyed by Allied bombing. Instead he went to Naples, where he had acquired a small fishing boat and had set up a seemingly prosperous fruit and vegetable business. Trapani and its connections seemed to be far behind him, in another world. He did not like to talk of the old days. ‘Erano tempi brutti’, they were bad times, he said. ‘Meglio dimenticarli’, best to forget them.

   He had married, with two sons. The eldest had become a lawyer and gone north to Milan, the youngest was a clerk in the Naples Town Hall. His Neapolitan wife Gianna was a devout churchgoer and never missed a Sunday Mass. There she always lit two candles at the altar, one for herself and her family, and one for the unknown English submarine captain who had sunk Pasquale’s fishing boat all those years ago and had spared her husband’s life.

   My association with Pasquale Nardo had aroused in me an interest in the phenomenon of the Mafia, and over the years I have tried to make a study of ‘La Piovra’, the Octopus, as some call it. The following chapters are the result of that interest.