“Each death is a set of memories, almost like an entire library disappearing. “World War II veterans are dying at a rate of one thousand a day,” says Burns. The film debuts on September 23 on public television. For months afterward, she looked at photographs of soldiers in the newspaper and insisted that Babe was among them, alive and fighting.īabe’s story is just one of dozens told by World War II veterans and their families in the NEH-supported seven-part documentary, The War, produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and written by Geoffrey C.
Babe’s mother refused to accept that her son was dead. On June 26, the family received word that Babe, just eight days shy of his twenty-first birthday, had been killed in the battle for Cisterna. He’s going to Rome and he’s going to see his relatives.’ Can you imagine that? You think about it now and it’s so unreal.”īabe’s letters stopped coming in June 1944. When you get there show them these letters and they’ll treat you well.’ And at the time, you think, ‘Well, yeah, heÕs going to be in Italy. my mother had my aunt write a letter in Italian that she had sent to Babe. “But you don’t actually put Babe in that position. “You see probably on the newsreel or you read about it in the paper about different battles,” says Babe’s brother, Thomas Ciarlo. Well, things here are moving pretty smooth and the only thing I do is eat and sleep and if I keep it up much longer I’ll be a barrel.īabe’s family believed him. I am in the best of health and I hope to hear the same from all of you always. When the letters arrived, they said nothing of the horrors Babe had seen. Every day she would wait on the porch hoping the postman would bring another letter from her middle son. His mother, a widow, lived for his letters.
Babe wrote to his family back in Waterbury whenever he could.
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