Carlo Piero Guercio Character Analysis

We were new and beautiful, we loved each other more than brothers, that's for sure. What spoiled it always was that none of us knew why we were in Albania, none of us had an easy conscience about this rebuilding of the Roman Empire.

I know that the Duce has made it clear that the Greek campaign was a resounding victory for Italy. But he was not there. He does not know what happened. He does not know that the ultimate truth is that history ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it.

(We lost the war and were saved only when the Germans invaded from Bulgaria and opened a second front that the Greeks had no resources to defend. We fought and froze and died for the sake of an empire that has no purpose...)

Weber was still a virgin, his father was a Lutheran pastor, and he had grown up in the Austrian mountains, capable of hating Jews and gypsies only because he had never met one.

We have lost one-third of our merchant marine because He forgot to order them home before declaring war, we have been persuaded that halving the size of a division means that we have double the number of divisions, we have been made to invade Greece from the north in the rainy season, without winter clothing...All of our Albanian soldiers immediately deserted, and we only know what is happening to us by listening to the BBC.

"I should have brought her up stupid," said the doctor at last. "When women acquire powers of deduction there's no knowing where trouble can end."

No one could recognize anybody else, and Italian and Greek peered into one another's faces, denationalized by coughing, by grime, and by mutual amazement.

"I don't have your advantages, Günter."

"Advantages?"

"Yes. I don't have the advantage of thinking that other races are inferior to mine. I don't feel entitled, that's all."

"I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw."

He did not know it, but he buried Carlo in the soil of Odysseus' time, as though he had belonged there from the first.

We were new and beautiful, we loved each other more than brothers, that's for sure. What spoiled it always was that none of us knew why we were in Albania, none of us had an easy conscience about this rebuilding of the Roman Empire.

I know that the Duce has made it clear that the Greek campaign was a resounding victory for Italy. But he was not there. He does not know what happened. He does not know that the ultimate truth is that history ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it.

(We lost the war and were saved only when the Germans invaded from Bulgaria and opened a second front that the Greeks had no resources to defend. We fought and froze and died for the sake of an empire that has no purpose...)

Weber was still a virgin, his father was a Lutheran pastor, and he had grown up in the Austrian mountains, capable of hating Jews and gypsies only because he had never met one.

We have lost one-third of our merchant marine because He forgot to order them home before declaring war, we have been persuaded that halving the size of a division means that we have double the number of divisions, we have been made to invade Greece from the north in the rainy season, without winter clothing...All of our Albanian soldiers immediately deserted, and we only know what is happening to us by listening to the BBC.

"I should have brought her up stupid," said the doctor at last. "When women acquire powers of deduction there's no knowing where trouble can end."

No one could recognize anybody else, and Italian and Greek peered into one another's faces, denationalized by coughing, by grime, and by mutual amazement.

"I don't have your advantages, Günter."

"Advantages?"

"Yes. I don't have the advantage of thinking that other races are inferior to mine. I don't feel entitled, that's all."

"I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw."

He did not know it, but he buried Carlo in the soil of Odysseus' time, as though he had belonged there from the first.