"This story was told to me by my mom. One of the many ghost stories she would recount about spirits during the war. Funny, she has had not one ghost encounter since she's been in the USA."
I received the following account:
“My parents grew up in Italy during World War II. Superstition and supernatural beliefs played a big part in their childhood. During the war, they were seven years of age at the beginning and twelve at the end. Times were tough. Hunger, deprivation, and death played a huge part in their lives.
This story was told to me by my mom. One of the many ghost stories she would recount about spirits during the war. Funny, she has had not one ghost encounter since she's been in the USA.
As a rule, when battles were imminent in my family's area, either German or American soldiers would come into the village and force-march the inhabitants out of the town before the battle commenced. Mom told me the Germans and the Americans were the nicest troops. Others, not so much. One day a German battalion arrived in her village of Montoro to evacuate the civilians. A small garrison was at my mom's house. One German, a particularly handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed soldier gave the children of the house candy and began to show them his medals and things. He pointed to a watch that he had that his grandfather had worn during his tour in World War I. It had kept him safe and it would keep his grandson safe, my mom was told.
The troops marched the village inhabitants out of the village into a reasonably safe zone. After two days the villagers were told it was safe for them to return to their homes and try and reclaim any valuables that may have not been destroyed during the battle. My mom's family arrived at the destroyed shack and tried to salvage whatever they could. In the field, they saw the barn door lying down on the field obviously over something since it did not lay level. A couple of the other boys lifted the door and peered underneath. Three German soldiers were lying dead. My mom was shocked to see that one of them was the handsome blonde soldier. He was dead and had one leg blown completely off. She noticed right away that he still had that expensive-looking watch strapped to his wrist. Now Italian peasants always looked for items belonging to dead soldiers which could be bartered for the very scarce food items. This time however she left the watch on his wrist possibly because of her schoolgirl crush.
Her family gathered what they could and started down the road to find somewhere safe to stay. A little way up the road my mom got a feeling that other refugees were catching up to them. As they got closer my mom turned to greet them. To her surprise, she saw, not refugees but three German soldiers. But they didn't look right. They were kind of transparent. As they got closer and passed she was shocked to see that one of the soldiers was none other than her handsome German friend. They passed her and her soldier friend turned, smiled at her, and clearly said: 'Grazie' They continued down the road and slowly disappeared. My mom was shocked. When she found her tongue, she asked her family if they had seen the soldiers. They said nothing. My mom saw a lot of things during the war she couldn't explain. There was a lot of death, destruction, and misery around. I figure that had something to do with the spirit activity.” N
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