In search of the son's grave

“Distintissimo padre!

In nome dell’umanità cattolica, mi permetto di pregare la Vostra Signoria se sarà possibile di far vedere con qualche persona che è di fiducia il sepolcro di mio figlio che è atterrato nel camposanto di Monteroveri. Morì nel giugno 1918 mentre operava i feriti”.

“Rev. Father!

In the name of the Catholic community, I would pray your Lordship whether it could be possible to see the grave of my son, accompanied by a trusted person. My son is in fact buried in the cemetery of Monteroveri. He died in June 1918, while operating the wounded.”

This is the first part of a letter sent from Szeged (Hungary), written by Géza Belle’s father. Géza Belle was an assistant doctor at the Hospital of the Knights of Malta in Slaghenaufi, who died during a bombing raid in 1918.

This is one of many letters addressed to Father Nicolò Nicolao - parish priest in Lavarone between 1908 and 1931 - from fathers, wives, sisters and mothers of those soldiers who died on the frontline of the Val d'Astico, and who were buried in one of the many war cemeteries that rose in the tragic years on the plateau area of Vezzena, Luserna, Lavarone, Folgaria.

The soldiers’ relatives wrote from Hungary, Germany, Poland and Italy, seeking a grave, a cross, or a mound on which to lay a flower, to pray and to shed their tears.

Father Nicolò, simple parish priest in the mountains, always answered. “I’ll gladly care for the search of the tomb of your beloved son”, he wrote to the father of an Italian soldier, “but now the ground here is covered with a lot of snow and it is not possible to find out where he has been buried.”

As soon as the snow melted, Father Nicolò would continue his pitiful research and would take care of the poor remains of some of the numerous young people who lost their life in the folly of the Great War.

The letters and their replies, collected in a booklet entitled “Correspondence with information about the tombs of Slaghenaufi war cemetery and related records”, are part of the parish archive of Lavarone, which has been recently reorganized and inventoried.

In addition to the correspondence with the relatives of the dead soldiers, in the booklet there are also two registers in which Father Nicolò noted the burials that he carried out in the cemetery of Slaghenaufi – writing down the name of the deceased, his date of birth and death, the battalion he belonged to, and his rank.

In the same booklet there’s also a detailed report on the construction of the military hospital of the Order of the Knights of Malta and the adjoining cemetery.