Yesterday

I had no idea what we/I would do with this day. I came out of the far bedroom to a beautiful breakfast that J. Had made for me. He and I talked, as we usually do, about all kinds of things. We decided to walk around and find things to photograph and chat.
We walked down into the town and came upon the children in the smocks crossing the bridge. It was Halloween, so the children had little masks.
We continued to walk down a country road. A car pulled up and it was j and b's friend, D, who happens to be a photographer. She produced a beautiful book of images of a local poets home and all kinds of beautiful details inside.
She told us that she was going to a local town, way up in the hills to photograph a ceremony for a soldier that was shot and killed in the main piazza in the town....so, we grabbed a ride and went up with her.

Here is the story as I understand it. At the end of WW2, what was called The Gothic Line, ran through this part of Germany...on one side the Germans, on the other side, the Allies. This particular area had American soldiers that were so called "Negro" soldiers at the time. I think they were Buffalo Soldiers. They were all put in one battalion and a Souther type white man was the one in charge. He was steeped in southern attitude and felt he could control the group of soldiers. Again, this is all from what I was told. The soldiers hated him so much, that they would boo him everytime the jeep drove by.
Meanwhile, there were a group of Italians that were still fighting on the side of Mussolini. Their mission was to go into the woods and disrupt and destroy all they could of the Allies defenses.
Somehow, they captured the black soldiers. The Italians couldn't believe the amount of food they had, just regular US soldier rations. They were marched up to this village ( it tools a few days from what I understand). The Italians shared their food/ spoils with the US soldiers as they were afraid they would have to carry them as they became weak.

So, they get the soldiers up into this town. They had never seen black people before so it was kind of shocking to the towns folk. They put them in a terraced house...the only one that had a toilet in the whole village. I think they became great friends with the people there, which is always the case in Italy.
The Allies started advancing, some of the Italians defected, there were Brazilians fighting along with the American troops that were flooding into the area. This town is so high up and fortified that the Americans had to shell it, killing many of their own men( negroes). When the allies entered the town, a boy soldier from Brazil was shot and killed in the main square.
His body had gone un identified for 68 years. Now, with DNA, they were able to figure out who he was...and voila, they hold a ceremony for him in the church in front of which he was shot.
They brought his bones back from Salerno to by at the event.