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Miracle in the Mud
by
Josprel
(Psalm 91)
*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
About the author:
Josprel's writings appear in print and online. Authoring two
novels, "Beloved Apostate" and "Kanfal," he is a clergyman who
pastored in Attica, N.Y., site of America's bloodiest prison
riot. The warden afterward asked him to conduct Bible studies
for the inmates; Josprel did so for four years.
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