Page 40 - QARANC Vol 18 No 1 2020

38 The Gazette QARANC Association
Corps
Heritage
Matters
In the Autumn 2019 edition of the Gazette, we were able to inform Association members of our success in having three papers accepted for Florence 2020, an International History of Nursing Conference taking place in Florence in the 200th anniversary year of Florence Nightingale’s birth. We need to revise our conference papers for publication in the Autumn edition, but we wanted Association members to know about a truly memorable visit we made the Fiesole Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery.
Keiron recalls asking Anna La Torre, one of the conference organisers from the University of Milan about Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries in Florence and discussing how we might visit the one at Fiesole, near Florence. He explained to her how we try and pay our respects whenever we visit places, especially as we were an official Association delegation. She had not witnessed anyone visiting a British cemetery and holding any form of ceremony before and she was really keen for it to happen and for her to be with us.
Keiron continues: “The more we talked about the more she wanted to make it special and so she spoke to a military historian who lives in Florence, Colonello Antonino Zarcone and soon the Italian Army was involved. I felt that at the end of an international conference it would be great to have an Anglo-Italian ceremony at Fiesole but was not sure exactly what that would mean. It turns out that visiting
Fiesole War Cemetery. Camillo Borziacchiello (who laid red roses) Anna Rovani (Mayor of Fiesole) and Keiron Spires (who laid a poppy wreath on behalf of the Association)
CWGC cemeteries in Italy involves a lot of form filling which Anna and I did together. In turn that led to the Mayor of Fiesole asking to be involved, and it was lovely to meet Anna Rovani on the day. She, like Anna La Torre, had not seen anyone laying a wreath at Fiesole.
There were many conversations, phone calls and signatures required in order to have the Italian Army involved. The Carabinieri phoned Anna La Torre a few times which made her very nervous but on the day we realised it was because the trumpeter was from the Carabinieri!
Anna asked me if we should advertise what we were doing in the conference programme. I said not to because actually it was about us as Army nurses visiting the cemetery to pay our respects and we did not want to turn it into a ‘tourist attraction’. Anna did agree with this, but we decided to invite two serving military nurses from Italy who were attending the conference. One of them, Camillo Borziacchiello, did come with us and also read a poem from an Italian WW2 poet, in Italian:
Poesia militare, Vittorio Sereni
Mezzanotte fu sui cancelli fresca d’acqua nel vento la voce dolente di sonno. Arretrava nell’ora
un paese d’azzurri santuari perduto tra le perse primavere.
Ma salvo nelle voci degli addii sommesso presentiva il mare
al passo dei notturni battaglioni.
Even on the day itself we were unsure who would be there and how it would go. We were very pleased to find the minibus and two soldiers from the Italian Army who were to drive us to Fiesole. When we arrived at the cemetery an honour guard from the Italian Army was already in place. The officer in charge and the trumpeter from the Carabinieri came to speak with me about the order of service. The trumpeter agreed to play The Last Post and Reveille for us rather than the Italian versions.
We waited for the Mayor to arrive. Although my Italian has come on tremendously I had to rely on Anna to help me talk to her and also to Camillo as they had little English. We went through our plans and made ready for the short, simple but very moving ceremony.
What struck me was how much Camillo, Anna and the Mayor took from what we did. We all felt it was very poignant and that having the honour guard and trumpeter really made it special. Our Italian colleagues felt very
Fiesole War Cemetery. Alison Spires, Rebekah SloaneMather, Olivia Barnes
Fiona Mitford