a broken column in the Plain PONTINA
ALDO BORMIDA ONE OF THE FIRST ITALIAN FRONT OF NEPTUNE
The Anglo-Americans in their advance along the Italian peninsula, were detained for months by the line "Gustav". It was a series of fortifications that unfolded for 120 km, from Minto, south of Gaeta, to the Adriatic coast, south of San Vito / Ortona. Nodal point of "Gustav" was Monte Cassino, which was transformed into a natural fortress by the Germans, he saw shattered numerous attacks by Allied. To overcome the Gustav, the Allies planned a landing behind the line of fortifications and thus was born "Operation Shingle", or landing on coast of Anzio and Nettuno. The "Shingle" began Jan. 17 '44 with heavy bombardments of the coast and in the night of Jan. 22, at 2:00 am, the troops began to disembark. The whole exercise was a sort of failure and ended the troops to get bogged down on the Pontine coast. Churchill's comment was nothing short of scathing: "I had hoped - he wrote the British statesman - throw on the beach at Anzio a wild cat, whereas we are on the shore with a beached whale." Only the Allies on May 23 gave birth, "Operation Buffalo" which was aimed at Cisterna di Latina. Fortunately, the conquest of the town agree to the Latium 6 ° Corps to meet the American avant-garde of the 2nd Army Corps, which veterans of Montecassino, advancing from Terracina. As is known, the "liberators" came only in Rome on June 4 following.
the historical memory of the people of the Pontine plain military operations that followed the landing, are remembered as a titanic clash between Germans and Americans. Unfortunately, too often forgotten is that the fighting took part in the first organic units of the Armed Forces of the Italian Social Republic. They were engaged on that front the Battalion of Infantry of Marina Barbarigo ", the Group of artillery Marina" San Giorgio "and speedboats attacked of the Xth MAS Flotilla MAS. In addition, the Parachute Regiment Arditi "Folgore" (1 st Battalion. "Thunderbolt", 2nd Battalion. "Nimbus" 3rd Battalion. "Azzurro"), the Parachute Battalion training "Nimbus", the Group Torpedo Bombers "Carlo Emanuele Buscaglia "Faggioni later called" the 2nd Battalion SS Legionnaire, Legionnaire Exploring the 1st Battalion SS "Debica" and numerous other smaller departments. Alternated on the ground pontine, January-June '44, about 10,000 soldiers and hundreds of CSR of these lost their lives.
After the war, the Italian Republic was born from the resistance found in Neptune and Pomezia, land for the American and German military cemeteries. Unlike, for those Italians who dared to die from the "wrong" there were war memorials, but only a private tomb at Verano. In 1993, the Association of X ° MAS has built in Neptune, at its own expense, a private shrine, also known as the "Field of Remembrance." Only recently, the Association is then able to translate inside the shrine the remains of the fallen "Barbarigo. The translation was made possible only by giving the same field to honor the Fallen of the Ministry of Defence, this assignment that has turned the private shrine in a military cemetery.
addition to the "Field Memory ", turning the Pontine plain, one can encounter in some other modest monument erected to remember the fallen of CSR on that front. At the "Bona Water Ditch" in Ardea is a tombstone, memorial stone and are in Campoverde (Cisterna di Latina) and Borgo Podgora (Cisterna di Latina / Latin America). In particular, in the territory of Latin America, there is a monument consists of a humble broken column on which you can read "Aldo Bormida - nineteen year old student Politecnico di Torino - Fallen for the Fatherland January 30, 1944." On the death of
Bormida has always known very little. A few years ago, a veteran brought you some flowers and told the owner of the farm on which the column insists that he and Bormida were university students of the Polytechnic and were sent to Germany for a cultural exchange. Surprised September 8, had volunteered and were sent to fight the Germans in Italy. Luciano Populin, now an elderly gentleman and delicious, then twelve years old, witnessed the death of Bormida, so he told me: "The January 30, 1944 I was 12 years and four months for me and it was the first terrifying and painful experience of life . Dal Borgo Podgora January 24, after the American landing at Anzio, we moved to the road of the Cross, with a family of clones that we knew. Our spacious courtyard of the house in the village had been occupied, after two days after landing, the armored division of the German reached the Brenner Pass.
From the window of the house of the settler, on 30 January, reaching the street I saw two trucks of soldiers came down, completed the armament, and prepared to go against the enemy. The Americans were on the opposite Musolini Channel, about 150 meters from our house where he had established a young German officer and South Tyrolean origin from where shootings took place between the two forces. Italian soldiers, who then knew they were young volunteers at the Politecnico di Torino, ran against the enemy and began to climb the embankment of the canal on our side away from the memories I seem to have been about forty. The Americans, who were stationed on the opposite to 30/40 meters, they will inexorably reach the top and mow them with weapons.
The memory is still the vision of the poor guys who fell, then the terror, pain and desperation made me hide in the most sheltered of the house. From the house did not go out except for a few moments as the German officer who was with me and we advised the child of the settlers to show us to the well to pump water in the hope that seeing the civilians the Americans could save the destruction of the house . We, after a few days, we were forced to flee on foot at the suggestion that German officer telephoned to their forces not to shoot in the hopes that a truce was.
immolation The memory of our boys resumed after the war (we came back after about two years in Latin) with the testimony of the Piva family, which owns the land where he was the massacre took place. I heard that one boy had survived after the attack had taken refuge in the house of Piva also hosts a German soldier wounded.
The boy went away when she could, and the day after our escape Piva also had to abandon their home, leaving the German soldier wounded in the basement with some provisions and martyred in the fields the bodies that make the air breathable. They returned after a few months in their homeland where they could not stay because everything was undermined;
A spontaneous fire of brushwood had reduced their bodies to bones. In June or July, the Americans intervened and some white bags filled with the remains reduced to bones and nothing was recognizable human beings. After a period of time the survivor returned to the place and remembered the spot where the young man had fallen Bormida
why there and sort the stele in memory of Bormida and where, until a few years ago, some family members came to visit; Currently it has no people are who keep the memory Piva. The remains of the boys should be in a cemetery or Lavinia Pomezia with "Fallen unknown.
This is my childhood memories, but so that the facts narrated are the clearest I have prepared a rough map of the war zone. "
History, the one with the capital" S ", it is made thanks to the memories of a child who is now a gentleman of a certain age. Telling Bormida I wanted to tell one of those guys who, trained to the myth of the love of country, when the country did not called back, making the choice not to sit at the window watching.
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