CASSINO REMEMBER ROBERT, THE ANTI-ARMS SOLDIER
Robert C. Bohm, born in 1920, would have celebrated his 100th birthday yesterday, 8 October. For only four years he failed to reach the milestone of the century of life. Robert died in 2016, at the age of 96, in America. As soon as the war ended he had returned to Ohio, his country, but he had never forgotten Cassino. The long stories of that experience he entrusted to his daughter Chris Arroyo who, two years after her father's death, in 2018, came to the Martyr city to re-tie the threads of memory, visiting the places trampled by her father in the first Battle of Cassino in January 1944, when the Americans of the 36th Division were massacred on the Gari in Sant'Angelo in Theodice. It is still the daughter, now, together with her husband Alain, who asks the Montecassino and Gustav Line aps Association to remember her father on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The ceremonies, in honor of that soldier who refused to use weapons, should have taken place in Cassino, in the presence of his family. Unfortunately, due to the anti-Covid regulations in force, his daughter had to cancel the plane ticket by giving up the trip but not the celebrations. From overseas, he sent a contribution to the Montecassino and Linea Gustav Aps Association which will remember him with a mass on Sunday morning, celebrated by don Claudio in the church of Caira, a hamlet where, 76 years ago, the seriously wounded soldier Robert was the protagonist of a supernatural event that saved his life. Birthday in Paradise is the name that the president of the association Pino Valente wanted to give to the special day. Robert was not interested in becoming an officer. He had been drafted into the Communications Department because for him, human life was worth more than a gun. ' An answer that made him fade the rank of officer and conquer the job of Teachnician of communications. Robert arrives at the end of '43 in Cassino, where the Allied Forces try to break through the Gustav line. The destruction of the city and the abbey has yet to happen. It is the night of February 1st '44, the young American soldier is in Caira, in front of a rural chapel. He is exhausted we read in the booklet created for the Birthday in Paradise '. While the roar of mortars resounds, the communications technician stops to pray in the chapel. Suddenly the chapel lights up. It is at this point that Bohm hears a voice: Tonight you will be hit and suffer a serious injury, but you will not die. I will be with you. That night Robert is hit in the head by shrapnel. He falls into a coma, but will be saved.
--Elena Pittiglio, from Messaggero di Frosinone dell'9 ottobre 2020--
