Home | Valente and DiRenzo Family History - From Our Correspondent in Geneva (Angelo Abiuso)

Luca Valente and his son Francesco Valente of Gambatesa

Luca Valente of Gambatesa

Luca Valente (b. 1894) was a son of the Francesco Valente (b. 1847) who was an older brother of the Nicola Valente (b. 1853) who was the father of Giovanni Valente (b. 1887). From which it follows that Luca Valente and Giovanni were first cousins.

Luca Valente went to the United States of America for 3 or 4 years. With the money he earned there he bought a farm in Gambatesa.

Luca saw his cousin Giovanni Valente in America, maybe in Camden, because Luca afterwards used to talk about Camden. So when Giovanni went back to visit Gambatesa in the 1960s, he went to see Luca's family. This was when Angelo's mother Maria met "Zio Giovanni", at her grandfather Luca's house.

Because he had learned to speak English in America, Luca Valente had many visits from Canadian or American soldiers during the Second World War. His farm (the one he bought with the money he had saved in America) was near the village cemetery. But Luca also got some farmland (dei terreni) near the Masseria Valente from his father.

This farmland was on the Macchie della Terra side of the Tappino River, on the other side of the road in front of the Masseria Valente, and this was where Luca died. He collapsed while working on his field after breakfast. It was springtime. The field is the one just after the bridge (for someone coming from Gambatesa), on the left. Luca Valente died on 28 May 1955.

Francesco Valente of Gambatesa

Francesco Valente of Gambatesa

Francesco Valente was born on 26 September 1917. He was the oldest son of Luca Valente and Anna Maria MOFFA (from Riccia, Molise). He died in Rome on 4 August 1980. This photograph of Francesco is from the 1970s.

Francesco was the maternal grandfather of Angelo Abiuso (Geneva), from whose photo album these pictures come.

When his father died ...

There used to be an old hat and an old waistcoat hanging in the tavernetta ("a room with a kitchen") at Francesco Valente's house in Via Sannitica. Luca Valente was wearing them the day he passed away at the Masseria Valente. Francesco took them the same day. He put them in his room in Via San Nicola on a coat rack. He said they would remind him of his father. It would be as if his father had just left for a moment and he would come back to take them. When Francesco and his wife moved from Via San Nicola to Via Sannitica, Francesco put the hat and the waistcoat on a wall in the tavernetta.

Francesco Valente in the Italian Air Force

Francesco Valente,
Italian Air Force

Francesco Valente was a veteran of the Royal Italian Air Force (Regia Aeronautica). He was injured during WW2 (Tripoli, Libya) and afterwards set up a store in Gambatesa in the house that had belonged to Luca Valente's brother Donato.

"I remember that when I was a few years old I spent time with my grandfather going from one shop to another to ask for a contribution for a war memorial for Gambatesa."

Francesco Valente's Military Service

Francesco Valente twice served in the air force ground crew helping the mechanics. The first time was in the 1930s when he did his national service at the age of 18 in the Italian Royal Air Force. The conscripts could not choose the branch of the service they were sent to (In Europe even if you volunteer, you cannot choose the branch for yourself. They also say in Europe that the most intelligent men are selected for the Air Force; but in Italy also: which branch you are selected for depends on your village of origin as well: men from Gambatesa usually are sent to the Army). Francesco served first in Ethiopia [Eritrea], later in Libya [Tripoli, Cyrenaica].

The second time Francesco served was some time after 8 September 1943 -- i.e. after Italy had changed sides in the war (The change resulted in civil war in Italy). Francesco was recalled to the Air Force (This was just before the Germans arrived in Gambatesa); he received his "call-up postcard", and was told to report to the airport in Foggia, Puglia. -- This was just before or on the day the United States bombed the Foggia airport. Francesco's father Luca heard the bombing all the way away in Gambatesa and he was very sad and said, "Ah, they have killed my son today." (At night time in the countryside it is very quiet and so people could hear bombing from quite far away [Some people in Gambatesa said that they had heard the bombing of Montecassino]). Francesco's wife was pregnant when the Germans arrived; they teased her: you are pregnant and your husband is away; you must have a boyfriend, they said to her, as if servicemen never had leave.

When my grandmother told me that story she said that the German soldiers used to come often to the Valente Farm, just as the Canadians did after the Germans. The young Germans (they were very young according to my grandmother) used to call my great grandmother "Mamma" or "Mammina"; they used to knock at the door of the farm, late at night, asking for some food and saying in Italian "Abbiamo fame" just as the Canadians did afterwards.

I don't often tell that story because even in Geneva, a few steps from France, being "friends" with the Germans could mean being a collaborateur and still today, even if not as strong as 10 or 20 years ago, people would look at me in a strange way.

My grandmother said, "We always prepared something for them, eggs, bread, cheese, etc. First because we were scared: they were soldiers and they used to come during the night; and second because my mother-in-law had her son, my husband, at war and she used to say that her own son could be starving too."

A few years ago while I was working at the Geneva Airport I met a young man of my age I worked with, Richard. While talking about airplanes he told me that his grandfather was in the Royal Air Force during the war as a pilot. Richard's father is from Abruzzo and during the war a British airplane bombed his father's house and killed his grandmother or his grandfather. Richard's father came to Geneva and he married a British girl, Richard's mother. But the story goes on.

Richard told me that during the war, his grandfather's mother used to prepare a little basket with cigarettes, food and drinks every Sunday and used to visit a camp with Germans pilot prisoners in England. People used to complain about this: "Why are you feeding those bastards?" She always said, "My son is a pilot and if he gets shot down over Germany I hope that a German mother will take care of him just like I take care of her son here!"

La femme est l'avenir de l'homme!

One night at the Masseria Valente a couple of Canadian soldiers, the dogs -- there were two -- started barking, they shot one of the dogs and it died.

Francesco Valente's Memories of the War

Francesco didn't like to talk about the war and when he did he was very sad, very serious. He only talked two times to his grandson Angelo about it. The first time Angelo was sitting on his knee and making airplane sounds, and his grandfather told him that the Italians had dropped poison-gas bombs at night in Ethiopia (probably Ethiopia ["1935-1936 A.D.: Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia) ..."]) or Libya (That was in the 1940s against the British): they dropped the bombs a few kilometers from the enemy camp, and so the enemy soldiers thought they were safe and so they did not evacuate the camp; but the wind pushed the gas over the camp. The soldiers were sleeping outside, outdoors, in the camp and they did not even wake up; the next day Francesco went to see the camp -- the dead soldiers looked as if they were sleeping -- and he was very shocked by this. [It was only in about 1991 that the Italian government admitted that poison gas had been used during the war.]

The second time he spoke to Angelo about the war: Francesco had kept his military suitcase; it was sky blue and his name was written on it in huge letters, maybe with his serial number below it. Francesco kept this suitcase in his cupboard, and inside there were pictures of airplanes in Africa (maybe Libya). He told his grandson that these were important photographs because the airmen were officially not allowed to photograph airplanes; there were palm trees and African houses in the photographs. Also there was a group photograph of 15-20 airmen; Francesco pointed to them with his finger: "This one is dead ... This one ... This one ..."; almost all had died in the war, and he was very sad.

Mio nonno Francesco Valente non era pilota ma aiuto / aiutante meccanico. Questa esperienza sui velivoli (Sia Marchetti mi sembra o Macchi ma non ne sono sicuro) gli fu utile dopo la guerra, quando ordinava e sostituiva pezzi per macchine tessili svizzere Dubied di Couvet (Neuchâtel) nella zona di Campobasso (Molise).

Mio nonno mi parlò soltanto due volte della guerra, con molto tristezza ogni volta. Mi mostrò delle foto e mi disse che queste foto erano preziose perché non avevano il diritto di scattare foto degli aerei. Tutto questo materiale è scomparso, spero di poter ritrovarlo un giorno.

Photograph and story of Luca Valente's sister Serafina Valente who became a nun.
The Ship Passenger Arrival Record and the Declaration of Intention for Luca Valente of Gambatesa. Luca sailed from Naples on 24 June 1922 aboard the SS Europa and arrived at New York on 8 July 1922, a voyage of fifteen days. The ship's manifest says that Luca was going to join his brother Donato at 34 Scranton Street, Rochester, N.Y.
Photograph of Luca Valente's Italian Passport, stamped by the Italian Consulate in Rochester, N.Y.
Photograph of Luca Valente's brother Donato Valente in 1942, in Rochester, N.Y.

The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/valente/abusfoto.html
5 April 2007 : 2007-04-05 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo.