Just a little more than ten years ago, on Sunday 16th July 2000, the worlds press arrived in Sommocolonia the document and comment on the commemoration service for the sacrifices of Lt. John Fox and other members of the U.S. Army’s segregated 92nd Infantry Division during World War Two – (article here). We wrote then that there was committee being formed in Sommocolonia to bring back some life to the tiny village which was gradually being deserted and left to its own devices. The committee was formed with the aim of raising money to buy a building in Sommocolonia and convert it into a shop and bar for the village as there had been no shops in Sommocolonia for a number of years. The press and media have long gone and a decade later, still no bar or shop has seen the light of day in the village but this week comes the promising sign of new life as a series of events has been organised with the intention of bringing people to Sommocolonia.
This Thursday, Barga Jazz Festival Touraround arrives in the piazza with Nicolao Valiensi and his DUBULOVER project. Claudio Riggio on guitar, Roberto Bellatalla on double bass and Marco Ariano on drums.
EDIT >>>>>> causa maltempo il concerto previsto questa sera a Sommocolonia è stato spostato a domenica 8 agosto, sempre alle ore 21.00 – This concert has been cancelled due to the rain and will instead take place on Sunday 8th August at 9pm
On Sunday the area will be open to artists who will be taking part on the first Sommocolonia Concorso di Pittura – painting competition. Local produce will be on sale for those wishing to try some of the local cheese and salami and in the evening – music in the piazza.
The following Thursday, once more music is the order of the day but this time in a far quieter setting when the streets lights will be extinguished allowing the natural light of the evening stars above to shine down on the village. Readings from the poet Giovanni Pascoli by Graziella Cosimini should add to the peaceful tranquillity of this event.
All in all, something for everybody up at Sommocolonia – well worth the trip up the mountain, don’t you think ?
When a massive German assault was launched on this windswept mountain village in December 1944, a scant two platoons of American infantrymen were dug in here. Their own commanding officers expected them to throw down their guns and run. But for twenty critical hours, the tiny complement of seventy G.I.s — all of them black, from the U.S. Army’s segregated 92nd Infantry Division — held out against an offensive that might have changed the course of World War Two.
Then they vanished, almost completely, from the war’s official records. It has taken five decades of stubborn efforts by the battle’s few survivors, and twenty years of research by a San Francisco Bay Area woman who accidentally stumbled onto their tale, to fill in the empty page in that history. – Frank Viviano – source