BEHIND THE LINES ACT OF FAITH

Gino Caprara wiped the sweat from his brow and pushed his old bicycle through the gates of the camp on the tiny, sparsely inhabited Orkney island of Lamb Holm that had been his prison and his home for the past two and a half years. His fellow prisoners—all of them, like Caprara, Italian soldiers captured in the early years of World War II—ran out to meet him. They were eager to find out what success he’d had selling their wares to local islanders.

To make a bit of pocket money, the Italian POWs had crafted things from scrounged materials and then pedaled across a causeway to the mainland to sell them to the locals—brass cigarette lighters, aluminum cigarette cases decorated with sailing ships and beautiful women, wooden roll-top cigarette boxes in the shape of cars, and rings, pendants, and assorted pieces of jewelry.

The POWs were to build what would become known as the Churchill Barriers.

Inside the camp another prisoner was overseeing the construction of something much, much larger. Domenico Chiocchetti, an artist by trade, smiled and took a step back from his work, admiring the serene face