The letter is yellowed and brings us back to June 1917 on the Isonzo River front. A front line made of endless Karst rocky hillsides where Italians and Austro-Hungarians destroyed their youth. It begins with a “dear family” and then it shows concern about the vicissitudes of home and its vineyards. The letter ends with the hope to be back home all together when finally “the day of happiness” returns and the war will be over. On September 20, 1917, a bomb hit my great-grandfather and that letter remained forever a vain hope.
A common hope for millions of fallen and all the families that were devastated by World War I. I think at all the battlefields I have seen and all the tragic stories I came across and that I try to keep alive with my photographic exhibition and book here they fought! I also think at my other great grandfather who died a year earlier during a daring assault.
I imagine Oslavia, that immense War Memorial where my great-grandfather rests among tens of thousands of unknown Soldiers. On the white marble a terrible number says 57,740 fallen.
We shall never forget.
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