Borgo Incoronata (Foggia). We are in the northern part of the Incoronata forest of Foggia: the largest plain forest in all of Europe, where the most important sanctuary in the world dedicated to the Madonna has stood majestically for over 10 centuries. Where Saint Francis of Assisi and Frederick II of Swabia, Emperor of the world, in the same historical period frequent this sacred place which seems enchanted but is always in constant movement.
It is in this place that in 1943 Italy lost the Second World War and the Americans won it. It was here that the last local defense, the German anti-aircraft, tried to stop the American planes which also managed to conquer this place where there was a small airport in Borgo Mezzanone, to launch the bombers full of mustard gas and phosgene bombs produced on site near the river that cuts through the woods.
In recent days Michele Di Stefano, historical memory of this place among the most important in Christianity, in which Padre Pio also left his historical trace in 1916, accompanied Giuseppe Saldotto, vice president of the Pro Padre Pio Association – the Man of Suffering of Turin, in an inspection and verification inside the famous forest, where there is an anonymous rectangle of land, surrounded by cypresses and pines, those which are used to delimit cemeteries and leave an identifying trace of the place, only to those who know how to read vegetal writing. The German anti-aircraft fire was defeated and destroyed, causing hundreds of deaths among German soldiers who have been missing in action in Italy for more than 80 years during the Second World War. Today they lie in mother earth in a mass grave dug in an emergency by American soldiers who had already conquered Foggia together with the Incoronata. The reference period should be approximately between July and August 1943. As soon as Foggia is taken: Italy surrenders, signing the surrender without conditions.
From Foggia, heavy and light weapons produced on site, but also gases of various kinds, left, together with war horses destined for Albania which were killed together with around 20 thousand Italian soldiers of the “Railway Engineers Regiment” and several German soldiers, then our allies, coming from much of Italy. These soldiers tried, even under bombardment, to restore the railway network in vain. The thousands of soldiers were buried in a mass grave near and outside the Foggia cemetery, precisely at the intersection of Via Manfredonia and Viale Fortore. The idea is to have German military technicians and operators come to the site who can recover the bones, but also military objects, such as belts and various weapons that were hastily buried in the mass grave to avoid epidemics and to avoid infecting the wild animals present in the forest which at the time was game and food for those displaced from Foggia, the only city totally evacuated in the Second World War. Thousands of grandchildren of these soldiers reported missing in the Second World War in Foggia, lie in these 2 mass graves, we think that peace can be brought to the relatives of these soldiers, by creating an ossuary in Germany, or even here in Foggia, because the dead they are not garbage, whatever race and ideology they may have belonged to. Amen
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PHOTOGRAPHIC:
Bosco dell’Incoronata to the north. Michele Di Stefano during the inspection of the German cemetery. There isn’t even a cross in memory, only pines and cypresses. In the woods instead there are oaks.
Bosco dell’Incoronata to the north. In this land the bones of hundreds of German soldiers reported missing in Italy during the Second World War have lain for 81 years.
Sanctuary of the Incoronata (Foggia).
