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MIRACLE IN THE MUD by Josprel *Name changed to insure privacy The retired aerospace engineering technician who was speaking to me was a committed Christian. His was a life of total surrender to the Lord. If I had not known this, I would have found his war stories incredible. Hearing them, I now could understand his decades of silence on the subject; he assumed no one would believe them. I listened in awe as *Mario Tomasso spoke. During World War II, he had been one of twenty-seven young men from his church called into the armed forces. The church devoted one night each week to special prayer for its servicemen. At late-lasting, well-attended prayer services, fervent intercession was made for their protection and safe return. Mario, like most of the church's servicemen, endured years of intense fighting. His twenty-six months of combat were served with the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division. He fought both at Anzio and Cassino. At Cassino, his battalion suffered casualties of some eighty percent. Mario was one of only one hundred and ninety-eight men not killed or wounded. He told of being overshadowed by an unseen presence throughout the war years. That presence rescued him, at least two times, from imminent death. At Anzio, it saved his entire squad! Resting during a battle on the beachhead, Mario and his buddies had taken refuge in an abandoned house. Mario heard a voice ordering him to get his buddies from their room. The Germans were targeting that side of the house, it warned. None of the others heard the voice and the warning was repeated three times before Mario believed it was real! Moreover, the voice ordered him to leave the room last of all! Finally, he had pushed his squad from the room exclaiming that a shell was going to hit it. At first, the other squad members thought he had lost his mind, but not after that shell hit. It came through the wall of the room seconds after Mario crossed the threshold and exploded exactly where they had been sitting. Not one of them was injured. In Cassino's mountains, though, Mario was without human companionship when the presence rescued him. The experience began with a call from his commanding officer for an Italian speaking volunteer. American units on the first lines were in constant need of ammunition. But German fighter planes were strafing the conventional supply routes, rendering them useless. Only by moving the supplies some nine miles through the mountains could the first lines be replenished. The alternate route - really a narrow footpath - was not maneuverable by motorized vehicles. It was steep and bordered by deep yawning chasms. Only by mule trains was it feasible to continue moving supplies to troops on the lines. Italian partisans agreed to handle the mules for the Americans. An Italian speaking G. I. was needed to serve as a liaison to them. It did not occur to the Americans that the various regions of Italy spoke widely divergent dialects. So when twenty-year-old Mario volunteered his New York version of the Sicilian dialect, he was assigned to the Italians. The partisans did not think that what Mario spoke was even remotely related to Italian and, at first, his efforts made him the butt of their good-natured ribbing. Nonetheless, he was able to establish a workable communication. Each night they worked together to load the mules at the ammunition dumps. Then, trekking through Cassino's mountains, they delivered the loads to the American companies on the line, where it was issued to the troops. The first several mountain crossings went well. Then German fighters homed in on the path. They strafed the teams, adding to such hazards as the possibility of tumbling over the edge of the path into emptiness, or being washed away by the violence of unpredictable mountain rains, or encountering wild animals bent on making a meal of the mules. Remarkably, Mario and the partisans never were injured during these crossings. Though time has dulled the details of most of the mountain crossings, one remains indelibly imprinted in Mario's memory. On that crossing, had it not been for his invisible protector, he never would have returned from the war. The munitions had been safely loaded and taken through mountains without incident. Unloading them had taken longer than usual, so Mario and the partisans decided to wait until morning before starting back to headquarters. At first dawn, the Germans began pounding the American perimeter with heavy artillery. When the barrage lifted, Mario could not locate the partisans. In the confusion of the exploding shells, they had scattered for their lives, leaving Mario to find his way through the mountains. Wending back up to the path, he discovered that during the night, torrential rains had deluged the mountains. Treacherous when dry, rains made Cassino's peaks lethal. Softened by the torrents, mud from the slopes above had oozed across the path into the canyon below. Shrouded in deep muck, the path was a meandering mire. Mario proceeded cautiously, leading his mule. Navigating the muddy path was a struggle. He was glad he had taken the time to firmly lace the leather thongs of his snopaks before starting out. The heavy boots provided dryness for his legs to just above his calves. He appreciated this, but the sucking mud made lifting them an effort. As he battled the muck, several times he considered straddling the mule. The animal seemed sure-footed enough. But with conditions so treacherous, Mario could not bring himself to trust it; he felt safer on foot. Pulling against the mud, the soldier slowly inched his way up the mountain. He was almost at the crest when he saw the obstacle that was to make this crossing remain vivid in his memory. Afterward the crossing, Mario dubbed the obstacle, 'the slit.' The slit was formed when rainwater, cascading from the slopes above, destroyed a section of the path. The torrent washed the earth into an enormous bowl-like hollow that projected from the mountainside a few feet below 'slit.' Several hundred feet in circumference and at least fifty feet deep, the hollow always had been empty during Mario's previous crossings. Now it was a quagmire, brimming with mud from the collapsed section of the path. Now serving as an intrinsic arm of the hollow, the slit fed muck, endowed with the properties of quicksand, into it. Any creature unfortunate enough to tumble into the slit would eventually be drawn into the hollow. More than likely, it would never be seen again. Mario had always depended on the partisans to guide him in his crossings. He knew of no way around the slit. Contemplating the problem, he decided his only option was to hurdle across it. He thought of using the mule to leap across, but concluded that the 'stupid mule' might take a wrong step and land them both in the slit. 'No one would ever find me. My family would never know what happened to me,' Mario mused. He determined to jump without the mule. He estimated that the narrowest point of the slit required a leap of some six feet. Leaving the mule to fend for itself, with a supreme effort, he leaped. He made it; he landed on the other side. But as his feet touched down, they skidded on the muddy surface; Mario lost his balance and tumbled backward into the slit! In total terror, the G. I. found himself sinking in the mud. Landing near the only bush protruding into slit, he was able to gain a one-hand hold on one of its exposed, long roots. Several feet long, the root seemed no thicker than a man's thumb. Hanging on to it, only ankle deep in mud at first, Mario made continuing attempts to prevent himself from sinking deeper. But he feared to pull on his fragile lifeline, thinking that he might uproot the bush and be left without contact to solid ground. His caution served no purpose. Inexorably, the smothering mud climbed his body until it reached his belly. The sinking G. I. knew it was only a matter of time before the slit swallowed him completely making him another unknown battle statistic, one more casualty of the war. He was beyond human help; only God could save him, now. It was then that Mario prayed. He wasn't concerned with the form his prayer took. Nor was it a bashful whisper that he uttered to God. There, in the slit, sinking fast toward eternity, Mario screamed to God for rescue. 'God, you've got to help me out of here; no one else can get me out! If I sink here, I'll be gone forever; my family will never know what happened to me! Lord! Lord! Don't let me die in here! Help me, Lord; take care of me!' The earnestness of that prayer uttered in the mud cannot be doubted. And it was heard! Instantly, an unseen presence ordered 'Pull on the root!' 'But Lord,' Mario argued, 'the whole bush will come out; I won't have anything to hold on to!' Mario knew his prayer was being answered, but he could not bring himself to pull on the root. By now he was down to his armpits in mud and was going deeper. Horrified, he continued his screaming prayer. 'Lord, get me out of here!' 'Pull on that root!' the voice commanded. 'But I can see the roots coming out!' Mario pleaded, 'If I pull any harder the whole bush will come out and I'll be lost!' Still, the voice adamantly demanded that Mario pull on the root. Finally, Mario yielded. 'O. K. Lord, I'm doing what you said. You said it, so here goes.' With these words, he gave a mighty heave on his lifeline, and it held. Steadily, strongly, he pulled against the sucking mud, fighting to counteract it tenacious grip. It required all his strength, but he gradually managed to extricate himself. Yet, so obstinate was the claim of the mud, so powerful its suction, that as Mario pulled, it claimed on of his snopaks. Interring it deep in the mud, it was as though the mountain demanded a bounty in exchange for Mario's life. That long buried boot has been a constant reminder to the veteran of how marvelous his deliverance really was. Ironically, after climbing from the mud to the correct side of the slit, Mario found the mule waiting for him. It had made the leap without difficulty. Together, both returned to headquarters. Today Mario says, 'When was I ordered to pull on that branch the first time, I should have obeyed. But, sometimes, obedience is hard to give. I could see the roots being pulled out. God's way is not always our way, but, I have learned that its the only way.' Mario credits the prayers of his church for safe return of all twenty-seven of the servicemen. In answer to the prayers, God provided protection for them. Throughout the intense battles, not one of them was seriously injured! -30- © Josprel (Joseph Perrello) Josprel@verizon.net
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