WWII hand grenade found near memorial to Army Rangers founder at Italian lake

VICENZA, Italy — Reminders of World War II are ever-present at a memorial to U.S. soldiers in the resort town on the northern end of Italy’s largest lake, but a recent bomb scare in Nago-Torbole showed another way the war’s impact lingers.

A beachgoer brought ashore a hand grenade Friday from Lake Garda and left it there, prompting authorities to cordon off and evacuate the immediate vicinity, according to Italian media reports.

Carabinieri, local police and firefighters from Trento and nearby Riva del Garda responded to the area near the former Colonia Pavese hotel on Torbole’s Piazza Santa Maria al Lago, Italy’s RaiNews reported.

The cordon was set up just steps from a pair of war memorials that pay tribute to American soldiers killed in the area in 1945, during the final days of the war.

Mayor Gianni Morandi told the Il Dolomiti online news site that he believed the unexploded ordnance dated to World War II.

Bomb disposal specialists removed the ordnance and detonated it in a safe area, Italian news service ANSA reported.

For nearly two decades, the area where the bomb was found has served as the finish line for the Darby 40-miler, an annual march in honor of then-Col. William O. Darby, founding commander of the Army Rangers.

Darby was killed in the town along with Sgt. Maj. John “Tim” Evans by a German artillery shell on April 30, 1945. Some two dozen soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division also died that day when their amphibious vehicle sank in the lake.

Over the past 17 years, the annual march honoring Darby has drawn Rangers, 10th Mountain Division soldiers, veterans and others to Torbole each spring.

The town is about 60 miles northwest of Vicenza, where thousands of troops are based at the installations of U.S. Army Garrison Italy.