Nov 12, 2025
Whenever I’ve been in Europe, I’ve always thought of my father’s experience here as a tank drive in Patton’s army during WWII. In London and on the Salisbury Plain, I thought of him as a young man, not even 20 years old, getting ready for the Allied invasion on D-Day. In France, Germany, and Belgium, I thought of him in the Battle of the Bulge, how he suffered injuries in Belgium that caused him to be hospitalized in Antwerp, how he helped liberate a concentration camp in Germany and drove his tank through the streets of Berlin. He never spoke about these experiences unless pressed, and said very little even then.
Even though I’ve been to some of the same places, seen the damage, and visited the war memorials, my experience as an American child of a WWII veteran is completely, utterly different than that of my European contemporaries. Growing up in America in the 50s and 60s, we saw little of the damage; we heard few stories, and were taught an heroic narrative of America’s role in both the war itself, and the reconstruction afterwards. And that’s what our parents wanted us to see. They wanted to forget, and to move on with their lives, and in America, they were mostly able to do that.
Here in Italy a different past is still evident. We visited the Chiesa Santa Chiara early in our stay in Naples – the church is part of a convent of Poor Clare sisters, the female order begun by St. Clare, the close friend of St. Francis. The church, which had a medieval foundation and a beautiful, spare interior, had stood for centuries until a day in 1944, when the Allied forces conducted a massive bombardment of Naples, destroying many residential areas and cultural monuments. We saw photographs of the church as it appeared afterwards. The roof was entirely gone and the interior completely filled with rubble. For the citizens of Naples, this was one of the most devastating tragedies of that attack.
The cloister of the convent contained a beautiful garden and unusual columns, friezes and benches covered with majolica tiles painted with scenes of pastoral and domestic life. It was by far the most peaceful place we visited in this frenetic city.
Restoration began as soon as the war ended. Today the church, still medieval in feeling and decor, has an austere beauty and gravity that seem fitting as a monument to the suffering that happens in war. Restoration work in the cloister is still ongoing — we watched some of the conservators at work, restoring the majolica tiles. In the church, I was stunned by the chapel (pictured at the top of this post), the first you see to the right of the entrance. The bronze plaques on the walls contain the names of the local veterans who died, not in WWII, but in WWI, when Italy lost 650,000 of its military. (By contrast, the U.S. lost 116, 516, while the British Empire lost 908,371, France 1,357,800. Russian and German losses were even greater.)
Here we are, in 2025, with a war raging in the Ukraine, barely a ceasefire in Gaza after two years of massive destruction, warships heading toward Venezuela, huge numbers of people dying in the Sudan and many other places on earth — and I have to ask myself, what is the right way to observe “Veteran’s Day”, or “Remembrance Day” as we do in Canada? Yes, we should remember and honor all those who served their countries, but we should use this day to think very hard about the cost of war, not only at the time when it happens, but its effects on people, families, and societies, rippling down through the generations. Being on the “right side” — does that justify the cost? When will we ever learn?
