Cristoforo Ventura has spent the past four decades dutifully tending a memorial he helped create to honor the sacrifice of 38 U.S. Army paratroopers and a Navy nurse killed in Sicily during World War II. Now in his 80s, Ventura remembers playing amid war trenches and bunkers near the site and hearing stories from farmers about fierce fighting between American and German forces.

Ventura wants his fellow Sicilians to recognize the significance of Allied efforts during the war that resulted in their freedom. The memorialized service members, mostly from the 82nd Airborne Division, perished during the first days of the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943. “(I have been) always grateful to Allied troops for the liberation from neo-fascism, which brought hunger, abuse of power and suppression of liberty,” Ventura said through an interpreter.