Grappa

Grappa is a landscape of combat and belonging in Richard Cantwell’s recollections, and the place he chooses when asked where he would like to be buried. Its significance rests on the conjunction of those two images: ground marked by fighting, and a living mountain country of summer grass, cattle, and seasonal work.

Wartime Identity and Belonging

Cantwell calls himself a Grappa boy, placing the mountain among the places that shaped his identity. He links that belonging to a harsh life in the mountains, saying that living there could be worse than fighting anywhere else. His account of soldiers sharing gonococci brought from Schio in a matchbox conveys the desperation of men seeking a way to leave an intolerable posting. Grappa thus belongs to a wider landscape of hardship and military experience, not to an uncomplicated pastoral memory.

High Ground and the Memory of Fighting

When asked where he would like to be buried, Cantwell makes a quick decision: in the hills, on any high ground where his side had beaten the enemy. His companion suggests Grappa, and Cantwell specifies a shell-pocked slope, provided cattle could graze over him in summer. The imagined grave joins military memory to the land itself: the ground bears the marks of battle, but remains part of a working countryside rather than a monument set apart from ordinary life.

Seasonal Landscape and Imagined Rest

Cantwell’s answer extends beyond the battlefield. He describes summer pasture, cattle brought down when the season changes, and foxes trapped in autumn by girls from high mountain houses that withstand winter snow. The houses feed from hay stacked on poles. These details make Grappa a lived-in, seasonal place, with human labor and animal life continuing around the damaged slopes. His wish is not simply to be buried on ground associated with victory; it is to rest within the country he knows, where the cycle of pasture, descent, and winter survival carries on.