CHIAVARI, Italy – This is
Memorial Day weekend and just like the United States, America’s fallen heroes
will be honored in Italy too. The only difference is that they will be honored
by the very people they were liberating when they sacrificed their lives for
the sake of their freedom. The ceremonies will take place at the two American military
cemeteries in Italy, one in Anzio and the other in Florence.
The idea of American
military cemeteries started after World War I. Given the number of soldiers
killed on all sides, the U.S. did not know what do to. How could they bring so many bodies back to the United States? They
also had to figure out a way to commemorate the reason these men died, as well
as their sacrifice. So an idea was developed to establish cemeteries overseas,
and let the soldiers become the monuments to their service.
Families of deceased World
War I soldiers were given choices regarding the remains of their loved ones. They
could choose to have them buried overseas in cemeteries with perpetual care, or
returned to a national cemetery or family grave site, or have their loved ones
remains shipped somewhere else in the world and be responsible for the funeral
costs. About 20% of families chose the first option, overseas cemeteries.
According to the American
Battle Monuments Commission there
are 24 cemeteries in foreign lands where nearly 125,000 service men and women are
buried. The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial is one of them. It is in the
outskirts of Florence, Italy, next to an ancient Roman highway, the Via
Cassia.
This cemetery holds 4,402 of
our military dead. Some are the men and women who died in Italy during the last
days of World War II, a fight that ended on May 2, 1945 when the last of the enemy
troops were surrounded and captured in northern Italy. But most of them died in
the fighting that took place after the liberation of Rome in June 1944. These
dead Americans represent 39 percent of the total U.S. Fifth Army’s burials.
Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, Florence, Italy |
At the Florence American
Cemetery there also are over 1,400 names on marble slabs called “The Tablets of
the Missing”. Those stone markers have
no names on them and are marked only with the sorrowful phrase “Here Rests in Honored
Glory a Comrade in Arms Known But to God.” These are the unknown soldiers who
have been buried with their comrades. Their families only know that they died, but
not where they are buried.
The second American cemetery
in Italy which honors the heroes of World War II is the Sicily-Rome American
Cemetery and Memorial. It is located in Nettuno, Italy, near Anzio in the
province of Lazio.
The Sicily-Rome American
Cemetery and Memorial covers 77 acres. There are 7,861 American military war
dead here, their graves form gentle arcs on the wide green lawns shaded by
Roman pine trees. Most of these men died in the liberation of Sicily, which
took place from July 10 to August 17, 1943, and in the landings at Salerno of
September 9, 1943, and the heavy fighting during the landing at Anzio Beach,
which started in January 22, 1944 and didn’t end until May of that same year.
At the Sicily-Rome American
Cemetery, there is a wide central mall that leads to the Memorial. The names of
the 3,085 whose bodies were never found, are engraved on the white marble walls
of the chapel. The names of those whose bodies have since been recovered and
identified are marked with rosettes. In the map room there is a bronze relief
map and four fresco maps that show the military operations in Sicily and Italy.
At each end of each section of the memorial there are carefully tended
ornamental Italian gardens.
Sicily Rome American Cemetery and Memorial, Nettuno (Anzio), Italy |
The American cemeteries in Italy
are cared for by the very people that the men who are buried here liberated.
These cemeteries hold the stories, great and small, of Americans who
volunteered to march long miles with little sleep and in desperate conditions and
in the end lost their lives. The sacrifices they, and their families, made are
not forgotten by the Italians, and never will be.
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