Conti Flavio G. - World War II Italian Prisoners of War in Chambersburg

IMAGES
of America

WORLD WAR II
ITALIAN PRISONERS
OF WAR IN
CHAMBERSBURG

This map belonging to Giovanni Barb shows his movements during World War II as both a soldier and POW when he departed for Sicily and later returned from the United States. Visible on the left is the Letterkenny chapel, which was built by the prisoners. Barb was very attached to the small church, and it represented one of his most endearing memories of his POW experience. (Courtesy of Giancarla Barb Biandrate.)

ON THE COVER: Letterkenny Army Depot Italian Service Unit prisoners pose at the Caledonia State Park located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on July 14, 1944. The soldiers had arrived at Letterkenny in March and April of that year from other detention camps in the United States. The recreation area at Caledonia had a large swimming pool that many groups of POWs often frequented during good weather in the summer months. (Courtesy of Frances Tonolo MacAvoy and Eva Cittadini.)

IMAGES
of America

WORLD WAR II
ITALIAN PRISONERS
OF WAR IN
CHAMBERSBURG

Flavio G. Conti and Alan R. Perry

Copyright 2017 by Flavio G. Conti and Alan R. Perry
ISBN 978-1-4671-2723-3
Ebook ISBN 9781439663301

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937003

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We dedicate this book to all those Italian POWs who, through their perseverance and sacrifice, collaborated with the United States during World War II to ensure the defeat of Nazi Germany and the rebirth of Italy after the bleak experience of fascism.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We could not have written this book without the multitude of photographs and documents that the scores of family members of exLetterkenny POWs generously provided us over these last two and a half years. The greatest numbers live in Italy, but several, having emigrated with their families as children following the war, have reached out to us from here in the United States and other countries such as Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and France. We share our sense of earnest gratitude to all of them for their great enthusiasm and willingness to participate in this special project. Because of sheer numbers, we cannot list them all, but readers can find their individual names listed after each caption we have provided to accompany our photographs.

We also gathered material from an important archive in ItalyIl Ministero della Difesa, Direzione Generale di Commissariato e di Servizi Generali, Ufficio Spese Generali Nazionali ed Estere, Archivio Generale di Deposito, Roma, listed henceforth as MDDGCSGA when appropriate in the captions. We wish to thank all the staff members who were always available and highly professional in providing us information. In particular, we would like to mention the archivists Mauro Fagiani, Angelina Puccio, Elisabetta Giudice, Enrico Tuzzi, and Paolo Frezza.

A few key individuals in the Chambersburg community gave us great support. We need to mention Dave Goodman for his initial help in providing us first-source materials that the Letterkenny command had kept over the years; Dave Sciamanna, former president of the Greater Chambersburg Chamber of Commerce, for his organizational and leadership abilities; and the Reverend Dr. William H. Harter and Paul Cullinane, respectively president and secretary of the Historical Letterkenny Chapel and Franklin County Veterans and 9/11 Memorial Park, for their acumen in generating community interest for this book.

Two archivists stateside helped us with scanning important images. Our thanks go out to Catherine Q. Perry at Gettysburg College and Bob Dunkelberger at Bloomsburg University.

Finally, we are most grateful to Erin Vosgien and Caroline Anderson at Arcadia Publishing, who carefully considered the merit of our work and ensured the highest quality of presentation for each of our photographs.

INTRODUCTION

A symposium took place in Milan, Italy, on November 13, 2015, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the repatriation of some 1,200 Italian soldiers who had been detained at the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, from May 1944 to October 1945. On this occasion, organizers of the conference, including one of the authors of this book, Flavio G. Conti, inaugurated a photographic exhibit that offered viewers an intimate portrait of POW life at Letterkenny. Beyond family members of ex-POWs and Dr. Conti, several political representatives of the Lombardy region and the City of Milan were present, along with academic experts and Italian diplomatic exponents who joined the festivities from all over the country.

These special events in Milan took place not long after a very special celebration had unfolded in Chambersburg on October 24, 2015, to honor the Letterkenny Italian prisoners. Here, too, a photographic display played a vital role in recounting this fascinating World War II story, when a set of permanent images was placed inside the back atrium of the chapel the Italian POWs had built during the war. This place of worship is still used today and is considered a historic landmark. The event garnered welcomed media attention: representatives from the US Congress, Italian embassy, Chambersburg Chamber of Commerce, Franklin County, and Corpus Christi Church spoke at Mass, exchanged official gifts, and recounted important aspects of prisoner life during the war. Several scores of Italian Americans were also present, including children and grandchildren of former POWs who had returned to live in the United States after the war. Most significantly, an Italian delegation comprised of family members and friends of ex-prisoners had traveled from Italy to revel in the memories and listen to Dr. Conti deliver the keynote address.

The great interest in the subject matter of these Italian POWs, both abroad in Italy and here in the United States, helped to generate a historical study titled Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania: Allies on the Home Front, 19441945, that Farleigh Dickinson University Press published in October 2016. Simultaneously, there arose a great parallel need to publish a full-length photographic history that could furnish a precise picture of typical POW life for these Italian soldiers.

Photographs have a wonderful power to tell stories, and these presented here aim to reconstruct an aspect of the American home front during World War II that has not received much historical analysis until recently. At Letterkenny, as in general with other POW detention camps, and especially those that hosted cooperating soldiers, the Italian POWs could take pictures and be photographed with great freedomeven when Italian American relatives and friends came to the depot from towns and cities both near and far. We hold, therefore, that this present photographic study can be of great interest to scholars and the wider public in general and not solely to family members of these prisoners. Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, ours is the first full-length photographic study dedicated to cooperating Italian POWs in World War II.