The Woman Colonel and South Africa’s Forgotten Italian War

by Elvorne Palmer (staff) | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

May 2008 brought to an end the term of the first high-ranking female Defence Attaché in Rome, Colonel Susan Palmer, who amongst her duties and travels in Italy discovered one of the best-kept secrets of South African-Italy-Commonwealth history.

Four years ago, Rome might have frowned at the notion of a woman, a military big-league donna from a country thousands of miles away, joining the ranks of its ‘secret society’ of international military.
Now, at the end of her term, Colonel Susan Palmer – a real live GI Jane, complete with military training, decorated uniform, recommendations, contacts, and a reputation for getting things done – of the South African Defence Force, has left Rome no alternative than to believe that a woman can do anything a man can do, just as well, if not better.

The first in Rome and more…
Over the past three years and four months, Col Palmer served as the first ever female Defence Attaché in Rome. The feminine touch proved a welcome change to an industry traditionally dominated by men, and is certain to leave behind a legacy that went well beyond the rudimentary tasks of an Attaché: serving her country, organising official trips to Italy, and acquiring clearances for special flights over Italian airspace, etc; and giving generals and officials of the Italian Defence Force the opportunity to have obligatory official photographs taken at events and functions next to a woman for the first time in their careers. By comparison, the highest ranking female in the Italian Defence Force is at present a captain, meaning it will be at least ten years before Italy has a female officer of Col Palmer’s current rank (by which time she may well be a general). But Col Palmer’s legacy goes even deeper: during her term she unearthed a valuable ‘secret’ of South African WWII history in Italy, of immense importance to the two countries.

South Africa’s forgotten Italy war
The discovery was made deep in the heart of Italy’s Apennine mountains between Bologna and the Po valley, in the communities of Castiglione dei Pepoli, Monte Stanco, Grizzana Morandi and the surrounding area, where, unbeknownst to South Africans, local people gather annually not only to celebrate their towns’ emancipation from Nazi forces in the autumn of 1944 by the 6th Armoured Division from Bloemfontein, South Africa, but even to raise the South African flag in ceremony. Their gratitude is so great, because this area was the site of the biggest, yet least-known, massacre of innocent civilians in Italy during WWII: the Marzabotto Massacre.

Marzabotto extermination
It was an exceptionally bleak atrocity for Italy, as it involved the extinction of an entire ‘race’. The story is well told in Jack Olsen’s 1964  book, Silence on Monte Sole, but unfortunately there’s only space here for a summary: on 3 October 1944, German and Austrian SS troops were ordered to purge the entire area of Monte Sole and Monte Ruminci, because the townspeople of Marzabotto, Grizzana Morandi, and Monzuno were suspected of helping and supplying Italian partisans along the Gothic Line, which Hitler himself had ordered to be kept at all costs to sever south Italy and Allied forces from the industrialised and developed north. Here Allied and Austrian SS forces saw out the last winter of WWII, tired, cold, depleted, neither able to advance or retreat. Here is where the Allies eventually broke through the following Spring, spelling the end of the war in Italy. Before that, Nazi troops literally marched into every town and exterminated every living thing in sight. Women, children, young babies and the elderly alike were killed by gunfire and with grenades. By sunset 3 October, Marzabotto’s and Monzuno’s unique population of mountain people, nearly two thousand people, were entirely exterminated.

Executed on the morrow
The SS then started moving into Grizzana Morandi and Monte Stanco herding the townspeople into two groups in no particular order. The first group (half the population) were slaughtered that night, the remaining group was to be executed the next morning.
On 4 October 1944, the executions had already started, when out of nowhere a group of Allied soldiers who had been sent to patrol and scout the area, unaware of the purge, appeared and engaged the SS in combat. After a long battle they managed to drive the Nazis off well behind the Gothic Line, saving the few remaining people of Monte Sole. This group of soldiers was the 6th Armoured Division of South Africa.
They were the first Allied troops to arrive in the area; British, American, New Zealand, Rhodesian (modern day Zimbabwe), Australian, and Indian troops arrived some three days later from the nearby American base in Livergnago (dubbed ‘Liver & Onions’ by soldiers) with food and supplies for the towns’ afflicted victims and set up Allied camps along what is today one of Italy’s most famous war commemoration sites – the Gothic Line.

A lifetime later…
Hence, the people of Monte Sole celebrate South Africa every year, because the few survivors (some even today), owed their lives to the 6th Armoured Division.
Col Palmer is today practically a Monte Sole local. She has arranged special celebrations and commemoration days there from now on recognised by South Africa and attended by the ambassador, the (new) Defence Attaché, embassy official, and even government bigwigs flown in from South Africa. She also assisted the community of Castiglione dei Pepoli in gathering information, photographs and testimonies to contribute to a new museum dedicated to the 6th Armoured Division. The town is also the site of the only Commonwealth War Cemetery in Italy entirely built by South Africans though few get the chance to visit because of the distance and cost of travel. Similarly, the Italian Zonderwater Cemetery in South Africa is maintained by local communities there on behalf of Italian families who can’t visit South Africa regularly. Col Palmer oversaw the signing of an official commitment by the Italian Carabinieri and local communities to maintain the graves of young soldiers who fought and died so far from their own homeland. In Zonderwater, South Africa, there is an urn with soil from Castiglione dei Pepoli, and in Castiglione, there is an urn with South African soil from Zonderwater.
A new street connecting Castiglionei dei Pepoli and the entire area with the Bologna-Modena highway was unveiled in November last year was named in honour of the South African 6th Armoured Division.
Col Palmer takes with her to South Africa, a commemorative hand-made plate revealing the natural beauty of the area, to present as a gift to the current commander of the 6th Armoured Division in Bloemfontein, South Africa, as proof of the Italian towns’ appreciation for what the division did over 60 years ago.

Arriverderci Roma
As for Col Palmer, TRF has it on good authority that she has seen, lived, and tasted Italy and especially Rome thoroughly. She has visited nearly every town, every monument, every church and every beach in Italy in such a short time that it’s no wonder she says:
“It’s just about time to return home, that much I’m sure of; but what to do about my heart which I invariably left somewhere between Trieste and Noto (Sicily) in this little lovable Italy, is anyone’s guess. If anyone finds it, they should leave it where it is, so I can keep coming back to look for it every year.”

(First published in the May 2008 issue of The Roman Forum magazine under the title “Arriverderci Roma: A true Prima-Donna in Rome”)