Also on our trip to Italy, we visited the US military cemetery and memorial near Florence.

Like all other US cemeteries, it is impressive and immaculately maintained. In spite of the dry summer, the grass was green and crisp.

When we arrived, an American couple came to bring flowers to the grave a relative. Taps were played. You can tell that all honors are being observed for such occasions. Very moving.

The cemetery is about the same size as the one in Margraten, but with a bit over half the number of headstones: 4.392. This is one of two US cemeteries in Italy. The other one is the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery near Anzio, which is the bigger one in terms of number of graves.

We looked for headstones of soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division in particular. We had Chat GPT propose us a list of locations and a route to follow. This also took us to the grave of one of the three Medal of Honor recipients there: Roy W. Harmon of the 91st Infantry Division. And the exceptional grave of a non-combattant, Ralph Barnes, the American correspondent. On November 17, 1940, on his way to cover Mussolini’s invasion of Greece, he was killed along with five Royal Air Force crew members when his plane crashed in Yugoslavia.

More information can be found here on the ABMC website.