Norman Lewis arrived in Naples as an Intelligence Officer attached to the American Fifth Army By 1944 the citys inhabitants were so destitute that all the tropical fish in the aquarium had been devoured, and numbers of respectable women had been driven to prostitution The mafia gradually became so indispensable to the occupying forces that it succeeded in regaining its former power Despite the cruelty and suffering he encountered, Lewis writes in the diary, A year among Italians has converted me to such an admiration for their humanity and culture that were I given the chance to be born again, Italy would be the country of my choice