On 9th September, 77 years ago, young soldiers, who came from the prairies of the United States, from the English mists, from the great lakes of Canada, from boundless India and from other distant countries, were unloaded on the beaches of Salerno by landing craft.
The front was very wide, from Maiori to Cilento and in front of them, hidden and very determined, other boys, Germans who had arrived in Italy some time before from the snow-covered Land.
Among them, prisoners of destiny, the inhabitants of the Piana and the Hills, already in mourning for months counting the dead of the bombings.
Among them, also prisoners of fate, the Italian soldiers left alone by the government at the mercy of the Germans or deprived of those commanders, who defended the nation to the last, such as General Gonzaga, who just that night was executed by the Nazis between Battipaglia and Eboli.
For 4 years, the Avalanche project has remembered an important turning point in the immense tragedy of the Second World War: for the first time the Allies landed on the continent after the great escape of Dunkirk, in what Hitler liked to call Fortress Europe.
In Battipaglia, the Mubat association, in collaboration with the municipal administration and many other associations, takes care of remembering those days. The appointment is set for 13th September and everything will be prepared to face what is today a new emergency, or the contagion from Covid 19, but the moral obligation we feel is that of not letting today’s difficulties prevent us from remembering. To meet the necessary access restrictions, the ceremony will be streamed.
