If you asked young Valentina Distefano what life is like in her hometown, she’d probably tell you that nothing ever happens.
She’d probably add that most days she doesn’t meet many new people either. Midday on Tuesday, however, things changed dramatically at her high school – Instituto D’Istruzione Secondaria Superiore Michelangelo Bartolo – in the small Sicilian coastal town of Pachino, Italy. You see, during a special assembly at this school of 400, Valentina met 50 visiting Canadians. They (with my wife and I as hosts) had just begun retracing the trek of Canadian soldiers who liberated Italy 65 years ago this year. And the Sicilian teenager actually got the chance to interview one of those visiting Canadians, 88-year-old Gordon Major.
“What did you feel like after you landed?” Valentina asked.
“I was too young to feel anything,” Major said. “It’s a very long time ago.”
Major is actually one of six veterans of the Second World War on this trip. When Gordon was barely 20, he told me, he was eager to join up, to serve in the war. When his older brother finally told him the time was right, Gordon signed up in Guelph, Ont., and began training with the 29th Battery of the 11th Field Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery. Early in 1940 his unit sailed for England, where he trained for three years. Then in summer of 1943 the regiment joined the surprise attack on Sicily to begin the liberation of Europe.
When I sat with Major at breakfast the morning before we left for the visit to Pachino, he kept referring to Sicily as if it were half a world away. He’d forgotten he’d actually flown here to this island province of Italy, just the night before. It was his first ever return to Sicily since wading ashore 65 years ago to support the Canadians’ effort to first defeat the Italian armies of dictator Benito Mussolini and then drive occupying Nazi forces from Sicily forever. Major and his comrades liberated the home of Valentina Distefano’s great-grandparents in just 38 days.
But more than Valentina had prepared for this extraordinary day. Also asking questions were her cousin Corrado and her schoolmates Vanessa Vizzini and Giuseppe Carrubba. Two of their teachers, Rosalba Savarino and Sebastiano Minardi, guided their teenaged charges in the research and production of a nearly 80-minute DVD called “Lo Sbarco” or “The Landing,” which they proudly presented to their Canadian guests at the end of the ceremony. Through the early afternoon teacher Savarino and translator Rosie Scifo led the Canadian veterans and the rest of their tour to the very southeastern tip of Sicily.
There, in the early hours of July 10, 1943, along the beaches of Costa Dell Ambra, more than 25,000 1st Canadian Division troops joined nearly 450,000 other British and American soldiers in Operation Husky. It was, up to that time, the largest amphibious landing in history. On that first-ever D-Day landing site, the Canadian veterans from our tour strolled in quiet contemplation, pocketed grains of sand, photographed the vast stretches of beach and one – Jim Ronan from Kingston– even donned a bathing suit and dove into the chilly May surf in tribute to the so-called D-Day Dodgers.
“It feels great,” veteran Jim Ronan said. “It’s one way to remember.”
Naturally, on hand to join in the festivities were several politicians and administrators. They offered warm municipal greetings and the appropriate handshakes and smiles to make the event official. But clearly the Michelangelo Bartolo students were the stars of the day. The four young ambassadors of Pachino didn’t hesitate to ask another visiting Italian campaign veteran, Dan Wilkin of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, a challenging question in the school ceremony.
“Did you agree with the orders given?” Vanessa asked him.
“There wasn’t much choice,” Wilkin said. “After all, there was a war on.”
The tour ended with pictures in front of the school, along the beach and posed in front of the commemorative plaque and monument erected and maintained by the town and the school. But for Valentina Distefano the payoff came when the vets and their Canadian guests turned and applauded them and their hospitality.
It will be a long time before she ever suggests that nothing ever happens in Pachino again.
