Six Years From Home

By Anthony Farcich

In August of 1939 a nine year old boy, his younger brother, and his mother sailed to Yugoslavia for a purported vacation that would end up lasting six years. Before they reached Yugoslavia, World War II started. They continued on their journey. The American Consulate advised them to return to the United States, but the boy’s mother decided to stay in Yugoslavia. That decision both saved them and nearly killed them several times. The boy’s name was Anthony Farcich. Ahead lay a series of events which could lead a child to neurosis or set him on a course of resolve and determination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Farcich
• Release date: Feb 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301886807

Anthony Farcich

After operating the Tony Farr RV Center in Hayward, California for more than twenty years, he now resides in Castro Valley.

Book preview

Six Years From Home :

A true story of an American boy’s survival

in Croatia, Italy and Egypt during World War II.

Anthony Farcich

Copyright 2013 Anthony Farcich

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Journey - All Aboard

Chapter 2 Some Kind of Miracle

Chapter 3 Boarding School and the Ruler Whack

Chapter 4 Catching Doves

Chapter 5 The Suitcase - "Keep Up or We Will Leave You

Chapter 6 Atrocities Begin, Innocence Lost

Chapter 7 Inside the Palace Walls

Chapter 8 Secret Mission - Secret Note

Chapter 9 Italians Out…Germans In

Chapter 10 First Job as Interpreter

Chapter 11 Escape to Allied Occupied Italy

Chapter 12 Interpreter from Italy to Africa

Chapter 13 Tents and the Sinai Desert

Chapter 14 Brits, Arabs and First Love

Chapter 15 The Last Bomb - Then Home

Chapter 1: The Journey – All Aboard

It had turned out to be a fine August day out over the San Francisco Bay, the wind calm, not a cloud in the sky, but with summer waning I felt the first nip of autumn in the air rushing through my father’s open window. My mother was in the front seat sitting opposite him. I was in the back seat with my younger brother Johnny. Johnny was making the sound of engines as he played with his miniature cars. I glanced over at him. He was a good kid but drove me to distraction at times. I stared back out the window, wishing he wasn’t so restless.

As we headed east on the Bay Bridge in our’37 Buick Sedan, my father reached over and turned on the radio. Benny Goodman’s And the Angels Sing started to play. My mother quickly changed the station. When Begin The Beguine came on, she changed it again. Finally, when there was yet one more love song crooning out of the speakers, she turned off the radio completely. My parents sat apart, staring forward in silence.

When we came alongside the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island my father said, Hey, look boys! Johnny climbed over to my side of the seat. I shoved him away but he ignored me and stuck his head out the window.

Do you see it? my father said.

Yeah! my brother called back. I saw it too. We had visited the fair earlier that summer and everything was exactly as I remembered it. The Temple of the Sun towered into the sky. The equally tall Statue of the Pacifica stood facing it like a giant god. The grounds were filled with thousands of people. It was a remarkable sight to see, especially when you realized that they had created the entire island just to house the exposition.

Then the fair was gone and I looked back over my shoulder. San Francisco was enveloped in a blanket of fog behind us. Up ahead the waters of the bay were a sparkling color blue. The long journey we were about to embark on came back to my thoughts. We were scheduled to board a train in Oakland in half an hour, bound for New York and from there off to Europe on an ocean liner. My mother was taking us back to the old country, but even as a boy of nine, there was something about this trip that did not add up. We had visited the Kingdom of Yugoslavia only two years earlier, which had provided my mother with ample opportunity to show off her two boys to all the relatives. Everyone had gotten to hear about what a wonderful life we had in America. I wasn’t sure why we were hurrying back there now. I was excited about the trip, but questions kept creeping into my thoughts, for which I had no answers.

According to my mother, the reason for our trip was her rheumatism. At least I had heard her telling my father as much in conversation. A doctor had recommended she get away from the damp, foggy weather of San Francisco. But then why not simply move over to Oakland? The weather was a lot warmer and drier on that side of the bay. Going back to the old country seemed like a rather extreme solution to me.

It made me think again about the constant bickering I had heard around the house over the previous few years. Ever since my grandfather had come to live with us from the old country, there had been trouble. When he wasn’t working, he sat at the kitchen table drinking wine and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. One of my father’s brothers had come to live with us too and that was how the two of them spent most of their time at home, sipping wine and talking away in Yugoslavian while my mother scrubbed the floors around their feet.

My grandfather rarely spoke to my mother, other than to command her to bring him this or that to him in the kitchen. He certainly never said a kind word to me. He never so much as had me sit on his lap. Once he gave me a dollar. In all the time he had lived with us, that was the only thing I ever got out of him.

My younger brother Johnny was barely six and seemed completely unaware of this tension and I saw little point in bringing it to his attention. I looked over and saw him still playing restlessly with his miniature cars. He was busy in the moment and not at all concerned with what lay ahead. I looked back out the window, unable to put my own thoughts away.

When we arrived at the train station in Oakland, my father parked off to the side and the four of us started around towards the front of the terminal. The terminal was long and low and had been built to look like the Spanish California of years gone by. An arched portico in front afforded the passengers a shady place to stand while they waited for their train.

There were several tracks running by the terminal and our train was already sitting on one of them. The train was tall and black and brooding with steam against the blue sky.

A porter checked our tickets, took our suitcases and led us off towards the train. My father gathered up my younger brother. I walked along holding my mother’s hand.

Inside our berth, my father played with Johnny while he talked with me. My mother looked on silently. People came and went along the passageway outside. Nearly every one of them glanced in as they went by.

Another train pulled up on the tracks opposite us from the terminal. I stared across at the other passengers. That train was headed south. We were headed north.

There were many people coming and going and many more just milling around under the arched portico. Most everyone was wearing a hat. I saw many fedoras and Panamas. Some of the women wore hats with laced veils over their faces. Only a handful of people were without hats.

I looked over at my father. His fedora was on the seat next to him. He was always wearing one hat or another.

Soon the porter called all aboard. My parents kissed each other on the cheek. Johnny and I both received a big hug and a kiss. My father went outside. The train started to move and he followed along, waving to us from below our window. My mother helped me open the window and I stuck my head outside. My father and I kept waving to each other until he had grown small and disappeared.

When I stuck my head back inside, my mother was rocking my little brother back and forth in her lap. She smiled and brushed at her cheek.

Why don’t we all have a Coca Cola? she said and told me to keep my eye out for the porter. When he appeared I rushed to open the door and all of us ordered a soda. Then my mother changed her mind and ordered a glass of wine instead.

And bring some water, she added.

When our drinks came, my mother poured some water into her wine. She always added a bit of water to her wine.

Soon, we were stopped on the tracks in front of another station. A sign on the brick terminal read Emeryville. Shortly after Emeryville, we stopped at another station. This time the sign on the brick terminal read Richmond.

The train then followed along the bay for half an hour until we came to a stop at Martinez. From there, we crossed the bay and traveled across a vast salt marsh. My brother went back to playing with his miniature cars. I watched the world go by. My mother was also staring out the window. At times I heard her quietly humming songs from the old country. My mother had never learned to speak English all that well.

After most of an hour, we pulled into the station at Davis. The train made a quick stop and half an hour later we had arrived in Sacramento.

None of these other terminals along the way were big and elegant like the one in Oakland had been. We were mostly passing through a rural landscape. The modest urban areas came and went very quickly.

Shortly after leaving Sacramento, the train began its ascent into the mountains and the trip grew ever more magical after that. The train crossed over rivers on long, metal bridges. It snaked high along mountain ridges. It passed in and out of tunnels. Then we saw snowcapped peaks looming far ahead and the scenery went by as if in a fairytale.

Sometime during our ascent, day faded to night and there was little more to see in the darkness. I read my comic books. Johnny played with his miniature cars. My mother stared out into the darkness.

Later, she took us to the dining car for an evening meal then back to our berth. My brother and I wanted to go off and explore the train alone.

No, my mother said. I’m tired. And you stay where I can see you.

I followed Johnny out into the passageway, unhappy with my mother. Sometimes she was great fun. Sometimes she was bossy, and right then she was being bossy. I leaned against the wall next to our berth and watched as Johnny crept up to the door of the next one. Then he was laughing and hurrying back.

There’s a girl in there and she made a face at me.

Don’t make trouble.

I’m not making trouble. Come on; let’s go make faces at her.

He crept back down the passageway and waved for me to come but I heard my mother calling.

Come on. Mom’s calling.

Johnny made a stupid face through the glass and came running back.

What are you two up to? my mother said as he rushed in before me.

Nothing, I said.

I was making faces at this stupid girl.

You know you’re supposed to keep an eye on your brother, Anthony. Then she said to my brother. Come on you. Let’s get into your pajamas.

My mother helped Johnny get undressed and put him in the bunk above her bed. I changed into my own pajamas and climbed into the bunk on the opposite wall.

The light went out and I lay awake in the darkness, unable to turn off my thoughts about my mother and her rheumatism. That was the purported reason for our trip, but I kept hearing my parents argue in the night and knew somehow that it was the real reason for our journey.

Sometimes the arguing had been over my grandfather and uncle. Sometimes it had been over money. My father made plenty of it. He had worked his way up through the Del Monte Creamery Company, then with Borden’s when Del Monte was bought out. And, like any honorable son from the old country, he had sent a bit of his pay check back to the family every month, but my mother resented this. She thought they should be saving to buy a house and a new refrigerator and for their children’s education.

As the train went click clacking down the tracks, I also remembered the big trunk my mother had shipped off to Yugoslavia a few weeks back. We had two large suitcases with us now, which seemed entirely adequate for three people embarking on a brief journey but my mother had shipped the trunk off ahead of us and I could not help but wonder what that meant. We were about to sail out across the great, wide ocean and somehow it seemed like we were never coming back.

Long into the night, my mind went back and forth about the two things; the wonderful journey ahead, and all the upheaval now fading behind us.

We stopped several times at different stations in the night and when I awakened in the morning the train was running along elevated tracks next to the Great Salt Lake. The water was greenish and white capped below the breakwater and went off as far as I could see to the west.

More snowcapped mountains loomed off to the east and sometime after lunch the train began to climb up into those foothills. Up and down we climbed, but always higher, and as night fell the train was snaking along beneath lofty, snowcapped peaks once again.

When we awakened the next morning, the world was flat with blue sky and green farmland marching off towards the distant horizon in all directions. All that day, the terrain barely changed but as night fell we saw a cluster of lights on the horizon and sometime very late we pulled into the station at Chicago. A great, arched terminal stood above us. Baggage cars came and went like miniature trains. Thousands of people rushed this way and that.

When we left the terminal a short while later, the high, nearby buildings seemed to be perched above the tracks as if on stilts.

All that night, we saw the lights of cities across the dark plains and fires burning in the bowels of steel plants along the lakes and other industries. By morning, we were traveling up through gentle hill country. We crossed more mountains, but not like the majestic mountains we had seen out west. In comparison these were lofty hills covered with birch and maple trees.

That final day we came down from the north along the Hudson River and the city slowly grew up out of the woodland. Then we were pulling into Grand Central Station.

Several of my mother’s friends from the old country had come to pick us up and we drove from the station across a river and to their home in Hoboken. My mother stayed up late talking and reminiscing with them. There were bottles of colorful liquid on the table and sometimes they laughed and sometimes the conversation was somber.

My brother and I went to bed listening to their ongoing conversation. They spoke mostly in the old language, which my brother understood, but it did not seem as if their words were bothering him, as they did me.

After three days we were driven back to the harbor docks in New York. The S.S. Vulcania loomed above us. The ship was black up to her deck, then white above a red accent line, except for a single black smokestack. My mother had booked a cabin on the port side of the second deck and after stowing our luggage we went out on the deck and waved with the other passengers as the ship backed away from the dock. Tugboats steered us out into the harbor. We passed the Statue of Liberty and within half an hour all of New York City was far off and distant. Then we were out at sea with nothing but the blue sky and sea around us like a circle.

The days passed quickly for my brother and me. My mother seemed depressed and distracted and mostly sat watching people play shuffleboard in the sun from her deck chair. For us, though, there was always something else to see and explore, so after sitting restlessly for a spell, we would drag her off to peek inside the captain’s bridge or anywhere else on the ship that intrigued us. Then we would be back to sitting on the deck chairs and doing nothing in the sun.

Chapter 2: Some Kind of Miracle

As the ship passed through the straits of Gibraltar, an announcement came over the captain’s horn. Hitler had invaded Poland. Words of concern were now expressed among all the passengers. The look was on their faces.

By the time we docked in Trieste three days later, England and France had declared war on Germany. An advisory from the American embassy was announced before we left the ship. It was best for all American citizens to turn around and go back home. The American government had no way of ensuring our safety in this distant land, and especially not in a theater of war.

Johnny and I looked at our mother as we