Retired 1st Lt. Jim Armstrong salutes during the presentation of the U.S. and Italian flags during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the surrender of the German Army in Italy. Armstrong served with the 91st Infantry Division in the Apennine Mountains north of Florence, Italy, and was wounded with less than three weeks before the surrender. (Jason Chudy / Stars and Stripes)
NETTUNO, Italy — It’s been more than 60 years since Jim Armstrong left Italy, a place where he lost many friends with the 91st Infantry Division.
“I joined them north of Rome in the Apennines [in late 1944],” the retired first lieutenant said Monday, before the start of a joint Italian-American Victory in Europe commemoration at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno.
“I was wounded April 16 [1945] and the war ended [in Italy] May 2nd,” said the gray-haired Armstrong, who lost one of his feet. “That’s how close I came to not making it.”
Sitting a few seats down from Armstrong was Daphne Romeo, who beckoned in a soft, British accent and talked about her husband, Anthony.
“He was one of the ones that took the brunt of it,” she said.
Like Armstrong, Anthony Romeo was an infantryman with the 91st. Unlike Armstrong, Romeo fought in the area during the Anzio-Nettuno landings.
The flat, well-manicured cemetery is less than a mile from the beaches where those landings took place in January 1944.
The Allies spent the next five months trying to break out from the beachhead.
“The fighting was hard here and he was injured,” she said choking back tears.
“I discovered he had been awarded the Purple Heart.”
Anthony Romeo, she said, survived the fighting.
While the war took its share of American lives in Italy — nearly 20,000 — time is now taking its inevitable toll on the former soldiers.
Many of those veterans aren’t physically able to make a long trip back to Italy.
“I’m the only one [at the ceremony], I think,” said Armstrong. “There are several Vietnam veterans and one Korean War/Vietnam veteran.”
In fact, Armstrong was the only American World War II veteran in a group from the American Legion Post 50 from Pelham, N.Y.
Romeo, also part of the Pelham group, sat in the warm Italian sun without her former infantryman husband, who died 15 months ago.
She decided to make the trip anyway.
The American Legionnaires were a key part of Monday’s ceremony, and they later traveled a few miles to a British Commonwealth cemetery in Anzio for a small service and wreath-laying before heading north to continue their tour.
They will spearhead another V-E Day ceremony Sunday, at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial at 11 a.m.
Pelham native and current Assistant Secretary of the Navy Richard Greco Jr. will be the guest speaker at the cemetery, which sits on the quiet grounds of a former vineyard.
What took the Allies more than six months to travel during the war was expected to take Armstrong, Romeo and the rest of the group fewer than six hours to drive.
But Armstrong has been waiting for 60 years for his return, and he’s determined to again see the area, no matter how long it takes.
“Especially Florence,” said Armstrong about the cemetery. “That’s where my friends are.”
Retired 1st Lt. Jim Armstrong salutes during the presentation of the U.S. and Italian flags during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the surrender of the German Army in Italy. Armstrong served with the 91st Infantry Division in the Apennine Mountains north of Florence, Italy, and was wounded with less than three weeks before the surrender. (Jason Chudy / Stars and Stripes)
Brig. Gen. David Zabecki, right, the Southern European Task Force (Airborne) rear commander, talks with retired 1st Lt. Jim Armstrong, who fought with the 91st Division in World War II. (Jason Chudy / Stars and Stripes)
