Malden, Massachusetts

b. 1924

Trust

Private Louie Nigro picked the soldier up, out of the red snow.  He carried him, with the help of other POWs, for six days as they were marched east in the freezing cold.   

At the end of that journey, Frank Molinari woke up next to a warm stove in some kind of hall.  There were POWs sprawled everywhere and, weirdly, a Christmas tree across the room.  Louie was feeding him a hot liquid.  The older man asked the kid one more time. “What happened, Moe?”  Frank shook his head, and Louie pledged never to ask again.  

“The only one I could trust was Louie,” says Frank.  “He watched over me like he was my father.”

At Stalag 4B, the POWs were stripped for delousing.  Frank refused, but Louie gently helped him take his clothes off, peeling the fabric from the caked blood and over the tender, purple bruises.  Stay close, advised Louie, do what I say.  He made sure to rip off Frank's corporal stripes, because the Germans were separating corporals from privates.  Soon they were put to work clearing rubble from bombed-out homes and factories in a nearby town.  Louis gave the boy his warm coat. 

“I ain't gonna make it,” said Frank.  “We're both gonna make it,” said Louie.  Keep moving, he told him, that's the trick.

Winter deepened.  Frank and Louie were sent to a satellite camp near the Czech border, where they broke stones for a railroad bed and doubled up in bunks to share body heat.  Days started with 4 a.m. roll call.  “Always counting us,” remembers Frank, “counting us forever.”  On Sundays they received potato soup with dill, which was supposed to shrink your stomach.  Some men stole bread from their brothers, and the guards got their kicks holding kangaroo courts and staging fights between accuser and accused. 

Once Frank swore at a guard and was put in a tin box in the cold for 24 hours.  He returned hating everyone, except Louie.  He shrunk to 100 pounds.  Keep moving, said Louie, that's the trick, and he described the beautiful vision of his wife cooking at the stove. “When we get home, you're coming to my house,” he announced.  “Meredith is making ravioli.”