Pearl Harbor. Midway. D-Day. The Battle of the Bulge. Iwo Jima. The epic battles of World War II still resonate 70 years later. Yet one of the costliest U.S. campaigns is barely remembered: The war in Italy and its linchpin, the desperate fight at Monte Cassino. "You never hear anything about it," says Albert DeFazio. "It just boggles my mind. That's why I'm [ticked] off."

Mr. DeFazio is 92 and lives in Penn Hills. He has two scars on his back, shrapnel wounds he suffered from a German shell burst at Monte Cassino in 1944. He earned the Bronze Star for actions under fire with the 36th Infantry Division and later came home suffering from shell shock — post-traumatic stress disorder in today's lingo — after more fighting on the way to Rome. He says he has symptoms of PTSD, all these decades later.