1944

Lieutenant Richard Blow, (far right), Naval Air Station, Bunker Hill, Indiana. He’s grown a moustache, his caps is rakishly tilted right, his jaw square and set. But he stands in the back of the ranks, end of the row, unobtrusive, just another guy; a small cog in a giant, well-oiled machine that at this point in the war has trained and graduated over 3,000 pilots in basic flying. The millionaire enlistee has become a common soldier. Gone is the villa, the servants, the butler, the gardener, the silk sheets and personal privacy. Gone from his life are wife, sons, paint brushes, art gallery soirees. In a few months, his chess piece will be moved forward to the bloody Pacific theater. As he sweats at attention on an airport tarmac in the Indiana summer heat, some 5,000 miles away the British Eight Army is driving Germans from Florence, Italy, taking over Richard Blow’s Villa Piazza Calda. The sweeping view across the Arno valley that captivated Richard is perfect for wartime reconnaissance and observation. Germans shell the Villa but do minimal damage. Before they retreat, the Nazis round up 250 Jews in Florence and send them to the death camps. Marya, now safe in America, will not be one of them.