A nice box, isn’t it? Neapolitan, hand painted, has recently surfaced from old stuff which originally belonged to my great grandfather Aniello Salzano. #memories 1/1 @MariuzzoAndrea @AntonioBanfi1 @GioB1974 
The real surprise was its content though: photos, letters, documents, newspapers cuttings. All related to the life of Umberto, the last son of my grandfather. 1/2
He studied agriculture in Naples, went to Libya to work as an agronomist. When Italy entered In the war on the side of Germany and Japan, Umberto joined the army. He was in Greece. 1/3
During the war his father read the war bulletin regularly, and kept those cuttings he thought relevant to follow Umberto’s footsteps in Greece. 1/4
However, something goes wrong. He stops writing home, and nobody seems to know his whereabouts. He might be lost, died or a POW. His father tries to gather information from the army staff. This is the first pages of one of his notes, undated. 1/5
The search went on many years. Somebody said he might have ended up in Russia as a prisoner, or died when an hospital ship was drowned in the Aegean. Occasionally people came forward, saying they have seen Umberto, he was alive, but often these were fake news or dead alleys. 1/6
My great grandfather (this is him) and his wife died without knowing what had happened to their son. Umberto, the little one, who was daring and athletic, had a taste for life and was curious to see the world. Died or lost, as thousand of others in WWII. 1/7
I was aware of Umberto’s fate. My grandmother, his sister, told me when I was a child about him, and about the desperate search for finding him, or at least his tomb. I knew, but I didn’t realise until I found the box. What remains of Umberto is the content of a box. End
