ABSTRACT
Like Ulysses’ son, my father had just been born when his father departed for the Great War. Italy opened hostilities a little later than the other countries, but the period of post-war instability made demobilization a long-drawn process. Millions of children had abundant time to find themselves without fathers. The terrible “Spanish flu” broke out, and my father’s father, who was an officer in the medical corps, remained in the army for a lengthy period after the signing of the armistice. When my grandfather finally returned, my father was over four years old and had been raised among women: his mother, his older sisters, two maids and the mistress at the nursery school. Both of his grandfathers were dead. Though a couple of his uncles were alive, they too were in the army: one of them for countless years, since before declaring war on Austria, Italy had been at war with Turkey, on the conquest for lands in North Africa.
