The Private Journals of Isaiah Watts
Volume III
By:
Nicholas Hall
(© 2022 by the author)
The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's
consent. Comments are appreciated at...
nhall@tickiestories.us
Forward and Author’s Note
This is Volume three of three volumes of the story, “The Private Journals of Isaiah Watts;” a homo-erotic fiction romance. Written to entertain and is the product of the author’s imagination and creativity. It is, as mentioned, a romance novel following several young boys, in particular, Isaiah Watts and Giovanni Fiorella Russo into their maturity.
If you haven’t taken the opportunity to read “Overview and Disclaimer” in Volume One or Chapter One in Volume Two I would urge you to do so before reading this, Volume Three. If you have read the above noted sections, perhaps you might want to read it again. The “Overview and Disclaimer” and “Chapter One” in Volume Two are integral parts of this entire story and sets the stage and parameters.
The fictitious and unnamed narrator in “Overview” and “Chapter One” in Volume Two, approaches and invites the reader act as a researcher, while cautioning readers, should they venture to read the “Journals” in their unabridged, raw state, might be disturbed by the content and should realize there is no historical data available or peer review verifying the validity of the places or personages, other than what is purported to be in the documents.
The narrator further warns readers some of the acts, deeds, or activities could be considered illegal and contrary to what polite society considers decent.
Given that, I would be remiss not pointing out I have taken poetic license to take a few historically documented events and embellished them greatly, using them only as a basis for placement or reference in order to provide an entertaining plot and provide some modicum of satisfaction of enjoyment to the reader.
The impetus for the creation of the story stems from discoveries I made when doing research for another unrelated project. That particular project was a non-fiction manuscript I was preparing for another source.
While doing so, I came across the mentioning of two memorials concerning those who lost their lives, among the millions, in World War II. To say this war and the destruction it wrought on military and civilians was horrendous doesn’t really place it in perspective. Millions of innocents were slaughtered on the basis of their religion, their ethnicity, their belief systems, their sexual orientation, nationality, or physical differences or disability. The “Holocaust,” as the liquidation/genocide of some six million of the Jewish Faith is now known, was real and terrible! There is no comparison to the slaughter wrought by the Nazi/Fascists regimes. The Nazi Horde and their minions didn’t stop with limiting the horror of genocide however! There were other large groups also liquidated! One group often not mentioned were the Romani or Roma- the Gypsy! For example, on August 2, 1944, three thousand Roma were killed at Auschwitz!
The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) headed by William Donovan, launched an operation, code name “Ginny” in Italy to destroy some railroad tunnels and disrupt rail transportation of German war materials in March of 1944. Operation Ginny was commanded by 1st Lt. Vincent Russo, an Italian-American Officer in the U.S. Army. Unfortunately, the fifteen gallant men were captured and executed four days after they landed behind enemy lines. One of the protagonists of this story is Gio Russo, no relation or was there an attempt to model Gio after the real hero of WWII. Russo is not an uncommon Italian surname, hence I used it.
There is a memorial for those brave soldiers in Piazza della Liberta, Ameglia in Italy. In 2004, the American OSS Society and the Comune of Ameglia, placed a commemorative plaque at Punta Bianca and erected a formal monument at Bocca di Magra.
Secondly, in 2012, under pressure from Romani Germans demanding acknowledgement of the genocide of their people by the Nazi horde and their allies killing an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 European Roma, a memorial to Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism was placed in Berlin’s Tiergarten commemorating those lives lost. It should be noted, the Roma or Romani or Gypsy people have been persecuted, even unto death, over the centuries and it still continues to this day. When opportunities are denied a people, they will find and use any method to survive and care for their families!
It is not or should it be construed there is any attempt to disparage, discount, or demean the terrible fate and deaths which occurred or the suffering either. Instead, I asked myself what might have happened if someone of like name, heritage, ethnicity, was romantically involved with someone of like ethnicity, or of like surname or relation to those who lost their lives in Operation Ginny, the liquidation of the Roma, or in heedless killing of civilians decided to avenge them- an eye for an eye or paraphrasing “The Untouchables,” a movie of much later date, “you send one of mine to the hospital, I’ll send ten of yours to the morgue.”
Thus, I invented Isaiah Watts, a Roma lad, and Giovanni Fiorella Russo, a lad with Italian and German heritage, a “gaje” (non-Gypsy) who falls in love, a love like no others, with the Gypsy, Isaiah. Gio, as the story unfolds becomes the “Sword of Gideon,” the “Avenging Angel” seeking, once he learned of it, to revenge the killing of his grandfather’s cousin Leo, in Italy by the Nazi’s. Discovering, as he moved to do so, the terrible acts committed on the Roma and, acting as a result of the intense love he felt for the handsome crippled Roma young man now living at Ravenwood, decided to return “an eye for an eye” on those who would attempt to destroy the heritage and personages of his lover’s ethnicity.
I would remind readers; this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental or used in a fictional content.
This Volume is Gio’s story of War and his return to Ravenwood.
I invite you to read and, hopefully enjoy, “The Private Journals of Isaiah Watts” Volume Three.
Nick Hall
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To be continued...
Posted: 07/01/2022