I am a historian of the Second World War and the aim of this site is to enable others to access some of the research I have carried out over the past few years, and to encourage people to exchange ideas and views about a wide range of subjects relating to the conflict. On this site you will find an oral history archive with transcriptions of many of the interviews I have conducted with veterans of the war from many different countries, and there are also blogs, comment pieces, book reviews, suggested reading, and also contributions from other leading historians in this field.
I hope you find it interesting.

James Holland

Blog - Wednesday 19th July 2006

Diary of Writing Italy’s Sorrow

Wimborne, Dorset, July 19, 2006
A very hot day.  Went to see Colonel Pat Ive in Wimborne, who served in a Reconnaissance Battalion in Italy.  He was very jovial and spry and seemed to have enjoyed a long and successful career in the Army – and, I got the impression – didn’t have too bad a time of it in Italy.  He also admitted he had had very little to do with the Italians.  I do think that for the majority of combatants, the trials and tribulations of the ordinary Italians caught up in the middle of it all, barely registered on their radars.  And why should it?  They had enough to worry about.

 

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