My cousin Frank sent an e-mail about family members serving in the U.S. Military… and I was reminded of conversations that I had with my mother's father on his experience in the U.S. army during World War I.
Yes, my grandfather Salvatore Nuzzo was drafted into the US military in 1917, and served in a company of soldiers that was made up entirely of Italians. Very few of the boys in his company spoke English. As they were disembarking in France to go to the Front, the American commanders had them all stand at attention and swore them all in as American citizens. Papa told me that they read out the oath to them in English (which hardly any of them understood as they were all fresh immigrants), and then their Italian commanders instructed them to say "I do swear". Only later did someone explain to him that he had just become a U.S. citizen.
Today it is difficult for people to get visas to immigrate to the U.S.A., and once they arrive, it is difficult to work their way through the process of attaining American citizenship. It strikes me that my grandfather, Salvatore Nuzzo, was in the country less than two years when he became a citizen. What is more, he took the oath of citizenship, not on American soil, but on board a U.S. ship in a French port.
But of course the great tragedy for my grandfather at the end of the First World War was the the Spanish Influenza raged through Europe in 1918, and so my grandfather's mother and grandmother both died during the epidemic. Salvatore Nuzzo's plans had been to return home in Acerra, but after World War I and the Spanish Influenza, there was nobody home in Acerra to return to. But now he was an American citizen, so he made his life in America.
When my "Papa" explained all this to me, I found it fascinating, but also very compelling.
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