You may remember from this posting that my wife and I spent the first half of September visiting Italy. During our stops in Rome, Assisi, Bologna, and Venice we saw remnants of history that spanned from a century before Christ, during the time Julius Caesar, all the way into the 20th Century. Of our many visits, however, only one place made me brush at a tear and softly tell my wife, “This is Hallowed Ground.”
I’m speaking of the World War II American Cemetery and Memorial, located on seventy green acres south of the city of Florence and dedicated to the members of the U.S. Fifth Army. These troops, under the command of Lieutenant Mark W. Clark, pushed northward into higher country in June of 1944, following the liberation of Rome from Axis control. Their objective — shared with the British Eighth Army and the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces — was to shatter the so-called “Gothic Line” of Axis defense in the Apennine mountain range. Historians mark this campaign as some of the very toughest fighting to occur in any front of the second world war; it spanned the summer of 1944 through May 2, 1945, the date all Germany’s soldiers in Italy finally surrendered to the Allied forces. Today, almost nine thousand markers bear testament to the sacrifices American G.I.s made to secure that victory, and another fourteen hundred names of those identified as “missing in action” are inscribed in a series of Tablets of the Missing.
The timing of this piece is no accident: since 1954, November 11th is observed each year as Veterans Day in the United States. We dedicate these images, taken at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, to the memory of all members of The Greatest Generation who served during World War II, and to honor those who have risen to the call and defended the cause of Liberty throughout history.
The cemetery’s visitors center features a large map, detailing the campaign to destroy the Gothic Line. The upper-right inset zooms in on just a few of the arrows depicting troop movements within the larger map.
And, while not directly related to the Florence Cemetery, this concluding thought from the cartoonist-in-chief, Milton Caniff — captured in his Christmas Day 1987 Steve Canyon daily — is a reflection on America that serves all its citizens well, on Veterans Day, and every day. (Click for an isolated image.)
