SUNDAY MEMORIES
Judy Wills
In late 1946, my Dad was transferred to a military facility near Naples, Italy, and while we were waiting to go ourselves, Mom and us four kids were staying with Dad’s mom in Ocean View, New Jersey.
The Wills family, before Charles left for Italy
When it came time for us to go, we were fortunate to be able to fly over, and as I recall, we left on or about the first of February, 1947. We flew out of La Guardia, on Long Island.
Kitty and the four children, ready to fly to Italy
We flew from there up to Gander, in Newfoundland, and it was snowing when we landed there, and while they were de-icing the plane, they decided we needed to spend the night there so they could finish de-icing the plane. They put us up, I guess, some place near the airport. The next morning we flew out of Gander and went across the pond to Shannon, Ireland. When we got there, it was snowing again, so we had to stay overnight again, at Shannon, and the next morning it was good enough weather so that we flew off. We were supposed to fly to Paris, then on to Rome, which was our final destination. However, I had gone to sleep during flight, and somehow it woke me up with everyone screaming and hollering, and it was obvious we were where we were to be going. I said, “what’s all the fuss – are we in Paris?” They said, “no, we flew over Paris because it was flogged in, and we were on to Rome.” So we were finally there. This was about the second or third of February, 1947.
I remember when we actually landed in the airport in Rome, that it was kind of a noisy landing, which was unusual for most airports. It turns out that the main airport had still not been repaired, since it was soon after World War II, obviously, and so we actually landed on what they called, PSP, which is pierced steel plates. They had laid that down and that was the landing strip.
By Royal Air Force official photographer, Trievnor J (Fg Off) – http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//54/media-54531/large.jpgThis is photograph C 5894 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24448640
I also remember they took us almost immediately to one of the nice hotels in Rome, which had been taken over by the U.S. military, and I think we stayed there for a while before we moved to our quarters, which was in the big apartment-type complex in Caserta, which is near Naples. I remember the apartment there was heated with one pot-bellied stove, which was in the middle of one of the rooms. I don’t even remember which room it was, but I remember that pot-bellied stove was the only heat we had in the apartment. I also remember we could look out our room, which was on the second or third floor, and we could see the courtyard, which was where I and my friends used to play.
~~~~~~~~~~To Be Continued~~~~~~~~~~
Judy is living in Central Florida with her retired U.S. Air Force husband of 50+ years. Born in Dallas, Texas, she grew up in the Southwestern United States.She met her husband at their church, where he was attending the university in her town. After college and seminary, he entered the Air Force, and their adventures began.They lived in eight of our United States, and spent six years in Europe, where their oldest daughter was born. She was a stay-at-home mom for many years
Old Things R New 
well cone
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My father was in Italy when they surrendered, and then he was stationed in Naples from 1944 until 1945 as a part of the Allied Intelligence Corps interviewing captured Axis troops.
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