Italian probes story of town's tribute to Omahan, GIs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130106/NEWS/130109695/1685#italian-probes-story-of-town-s-tribute-to-omahan-gis

By Christopher Burbach

The story has been told for almost 70 years in the picturesque little town of Manziana, Italy: how four American GIs were killed by fleeing German soldiers, and how the grateful townspeople reverently blanketed their liberators' burned bodies with flowers where they lay on the roadside.

Yet it was only in 2011 that the townspeople learned the names of those soldiers who died in 1944. One of them was 21-year-old Constantino Chiea of Omaha, the only son of an Italian immigrant couple.

And only in late December 2012 did anyone from Chiea's family learn how he had died, let alone how the town from his parents' native country paid its respects.

Photo:
Constantino Chiea

They know now because a man in Manziana resolved to uncover the story and again pay respects to the fallen GIs. Vincenzo Lucherini, 59, a nuclear physics researcher, longed to put names to the memory of the American soldiers. He wanted those names to be remembered. And he wanted their families to know about it.


FULL story at link.