Another book by the amazing James McBride (my fourth). I had intended to choose a more light-hearted book, but I found myself reading a war story with lots of death and betrayal. But it was a James McBride book, so it had kindness and yes, a miracle too.
His Acknowledgements tell us that when he was nine McBride heard stories from his stepfather and his brothers about their times during World War II as soldiers in Europe. Though it was cold and miserable, they spoke with pride about how the Italians and the French loved them. Thirty years later, McBride began the research to write this book about the Buffalo Soldiers, as they were called by the Native American troops because their hair reminded them of the buffalo hair. According to McBride in 1944 the war in central Italy was fought by Gurkhas, Italians, Brazilians, British, Africans, Russians, and American Negroes. The book tells us about the questions the Buffalo Soldiers had about fighting and dying for a country that so mistreated them.
The book focuses on four soldiers who get separated from their regiment when three of them followed the fourth who was protecting a young injured Italian boy. The fourth was Sam Train, a gentle giant of a man, a chocolate giant from the point of view of the child. When they were in Florence Sam had seen the head of statue and picked it up like other soldiers who took items as souvenirs. He began to believe it was the head that made him invisible during battles. The four (and the child) were isolated in a small village near St. Anna church where German SS soldiers had recently massacred over 500 people. They were in sporadic radio communication with their regiment as everyone in the area waited for the expected attack by an impossibly large contingent of Germans.
The book begins with Hector, one of the four soldiers, as an old man working in the post office shooting a man who appears at his window to buy stamps. At the end of the book, we learn that the head of the statue was found in his apartment and he was miraculously spirited out of the country for his justified killing of the man who had betrayed the villagers and his fellow partisans. More than one miracle was involved.
James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna, Riverhead books, 2002, 271 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available in the public library.