Originally Posted by
Gofer Blue
During WW2 your uncle would have been in Italy at the same time as my Dad. Our Dad was with a field ambulance unit in the 78th (“The Battleaxe") Division and came to Italy via North Africa. I have read the war diaries for his unit at the NA in Kew and subsequently retraced his movements all the way through Italy to Austria where he was demobbed. I took photos of all the towns and villages that his unit had stopped at and talked to some of the locals, at least the ones who were old enough to remember the war. We actually stayed one night at the same villa which his unit had commandeered back in 1944 - it's now a B&B!
I was thinking of him yesterday in particular as it was the 80th anniversary of the battle at Monte Cassino. Although he rarely spoke about the war (again I wish I had asked him more about his memories) I discovered after he died that the battle there had had a huge impact on him, because so much so that he had written a poem about it. I didn't know this until going through his papers - he called it "A Lament for Liri Plain". It is very moving.
The war time exploits will form quite a big section of the biography I think, as it brought about a huge change in his life circumstances.
I too have visited some of the military cemeteries in Italy. As you say they are immaculately kept. The one with the biggest impact on me was the Polish cemetery at Cassino. I actually cried when I saw the number of graves there (over 1000) and in particular reading the inscription there:
"We Polish soldiers, For our freedom and yours, Have given our souls to God , Our bodies to the soil of Italy, And our hearts to Poland."
Heartbreaking.
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