Italian teenager finds Boston WW2 soldier's bracelet and makes it his mission to return it
Topics: World War 2, Travel
Ben Thompson
Featured Image Credit: YouTube / WCVB Channel 5 Boston
Topics: World War 2, Travel
An Italian teenager who discovered a World War Two soldier's bracelet made it his mission to return it home - by travelling all the way to Boston.
Gabriele Pavolttoni was metal detecting in the forest near his home in Pisa, Italy, when he made the discovery.
The 19-year-old began digging in the ground after his detector started beeping, and found something 'shiny' hidden in the soil.
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Pavolttoni said: "I pull[ed] it out from underneath the ground, I put it in my hand I saw, 'This is a bracelet.'"
On one side of the bracelet was the year '1943', and on the other side was a name - Ernest Holtzclaw.
Determined to find the family of the World War Two veteran, Pavolttoni and his mother boarded a plane and flew out to Massachusetts.
Holtzclaw was a member of the US Army's 34th Infantry Division, and he was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in the Mattapan neighbourhood.
However, once arriving there, Pavolttoni and his mother had some difficulty tracking down the grave.
That is, until they received help, from a good samaritan.
Jim Killeen, who works at Mount Hope, said: "I noticed them kinda walking around aimlessly, not set at any one grave.
"We went for a ride just three miles away from there."
This ride would take them to the family home of the Holtzclaws, who were left stunned to be returned with the bracelet of their departed relative.
The family were undoubtedly touched that a teenager from Pisa would make the 3,933 mile trip to reunite them with the family heirloom.
There are approximately 167,000 World War Two veterans left alive in the USA, with 16 million Americans having served in the war between 1942 and 1945.
The 34th Infantry Division, under which Holtzclaw served, was involved in the invasion of Italy, an ally of Nazi Germany, in September 1943.
By early October, the whole of Southern Italy was in the hands of the Allies - made up of the US, the United Kingdom and Canada, to name just a few.
However, the 'Italian campaign' wouldn't be finished until May 1945, by which point millions had been killed.
The Allies suffered losses of nearly 400,000 troops, whilst the Axis forces - Italy and Germany - lost over one million soldiers.
Holtzclaw's bracelet is likely one of many reminders left across Italy of the hard fought campaign to defeat Italy's fascist government, led by Benito Mussolini.