Italy 1943-45

Our battalion came to the shores of Italy several days after the initial invasion on the beaches of Torre Annunziata. This railroad town, south of Naples, was near the historic remains of Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius could readily be seen north of our camp with a little wisp of smoke coming out of its peak.

One day during the course of making medical rounds at our anti-aircraft gun sites, I stopped to take some pictures in Pompeii. This picture included the slumbering Mount Vesuvius, vaguely, in the background.

It is interesting, that thirty years later I took photographs of Pompeii once more with Mt. Vesuvius in the background, emitting a wisp of smoke.

In March 1944, Mount Vesuvius erupted. If I recall correctly, we heard a large boom, which in itself was not unusual in those days. As we looked to the north however, the wisp of smoke had changed to a huge cloud of black smoke shooting upward from the peak of Vesuvius. Lava was flowing down its eastern slope

I learned later that our American troops helped save a good number of inhabitants of the village of Ottaviano with their military vehicles. The flowing lava apparently demolished the village. Unlike that which happened centuries before there was no reported loss of life.

At that time our battalion was ordered to proceed to the Adriatic coast to protect the port city of Bari. Day had turned into night. The black ash completely blocked out the sunlight. Our convoy drove eastward across the peninsula with our vehicle lights fully lit, unconcerned about being attacked by the Luftwaffe. They certainly could not fly in this blackened sky.

	Likely image of Vesuvius Post 79 A.D.

During my second (non-military) tour of Italy in the late sixties, I showed my family the various areas where our battalion was located and other points of interest. Of course, Pompeii was a high point. I explained to my children about the epic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that occurred in 79 AD, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.

“Pliny the Younger” witnessed the eruption and later recorded his observations in two letters. He described the preceding earthquakes, the eruption column, the pyroclastic flow, and the subsequent tsunami. Volcanologists now use the term “Plinian” to refer to this type of explosive eruption. It is calculated that 6 cubic miles of mountaintop were blown out by the explosion, ascended about 20 miles and descended on Pompeii and Herculaneum, burying the two cities in ten to one hundred feet of debris.

In 1595, excavators discovered some artifacts at Pompeii, and centuries of pillaging followed. It was not until the mid nineteenth century that serious archeological excavations revealed much about how the people lived during that time (and died during the eruption). There are actually numerous molds of people in their final moments.