This site has required on my behalf a significant commitment of time and
resources, I hope, therefore, that it will please and interest visitors.
As I have already mentioned on the home page, the principal objective of this
site is to pay homage to all of those who committed themselves, also at the
cost of their own lives, to affirming the value of liberty: I wanted to realize
a simple “digital monument” that can last through time.
I thank the people who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the
realization of this work.
My wife Silvia supported me throughout the realization of this site. She helped
me rediscover the necessary spirit when periodically I would loose the stimulus
to dedicate resources to something that perhaps is useless (how many sites
exist already about D-Day? A lot). She always followed its progress and
listened for hours to the ideas, the anecdotes and the dilemmas of the
divergence between the sources. She is the first user and tester of my site.
The site contains a part dedicated to the "celebrations" of the Bedin family
for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day: this summer we will go for two weeks to the
Loire Valley and Normandy in France. It will be an important trip, especially
for me: they are places I have read about and known for years, from ever since
I can remember, but that I still have not visited. I am happy to be able to go
there with Silvia, it will be a trip charged with meaning and she is the person
with whom I desire to share it.
My maternal grandfather Augusto served in the Italian Air Force during World War
II. Ever since my childhood, the stories of his imprisonment in Munich in
Germany and of his liberation on behalf of the Americans greatly influenced my
interest toward the second world war and still more toward America. The
description of the GIs who liberated him transmitted to me a unique and, I
believe, very realistic image of the liberators. The memory of who lived
directly those events has an immense value and I am sorry not to have had the
time to have known him better.
Andrea is a friend who many years ago (let's say about 15 years ago) introduced
me to military strategy and history and to computer games of military strategy.
In particular I have assimilated from him an interest in the minor theaters of
World War II like Burma and Norway.
My family has always encouraged my interest in history and thanks to them I was
able to fill the bookshelves with every book that I wanted to read.