tourists

There are all kinds of tourists. I meet the ones who want to visit the battlefields, to visit the cemeteries, to reflect on war. Mostly they are good people. Occasionally you meet one who is just filling in time, or wanting to tick another thing off the list of things one must do. I don't like taking them to the cemeteries, when it is just a matter of ticking them off a tourist list. I like the visitors who spend time there, who come away with tears in their eyes, with heavy heart. Then I think maybe, just maybe, they will go home and vote differently, or they will discourage aggression somewhere. I particularly like the ones who let me take them to the German cemetery, when they had only considered going to visit the Commonwealth and Polish dead. There are 20,036 young men in that cemetery. They had mothers too.

Today I drove a lovely man around all the accessible points of interest and to the Abbey. We went to the destroyed town of St Pietro Infine. If you have seen the John Huston film "The Battle for St Pietro" you will know it. I was really really pleased to see that the work being done there, setting the ruins up as a museum, is being done well. Apart from where sites are being established to view things better, or to show the history, it is being left untouched. Too many things in Italy are being rebuilt. I am constantly asking myself what is best, restoration or conservation? For old castles, bombed martyred towns, and many buildings, please just conserve, don't rebuild.

St Pietro Infine was never rebuilt, the returning civilians left the town as a monument to peace, and built down below it. The had buried too many of their people to want to live there again. The first time I visited it, in 2005, vines were destroying the ruins, adding to the decay. I was concerned that even that would disappear as a peace message. The following year a building there was being restored to make a museum. The next time I visited more work was being done. Then I was afraid it would be walled, there would be reconstruction, and an entry fee. But today I could still walk freely among the ruins, still feel something of the reality of war. Many museums tell us of the battles, of bravery, of heroism and deeds; my heart goes also to the civilians in this once-occupied country.

Our museum is on the move. It is an empty shell full of packing cases today. I miss it.