My curiosity to learn about this man was inspired by a visit to the Italian War Memorial Church in Nyeri, Kenya, it is not your ordinary Catholic sanctuary. It houses the remains of 676 mostly Italian soldiers captured by the British durin...
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the Second World War.Vaults containing the remains of African soldiers,
mostly from Somali-land, who could not be interred in the church
because of their faith. They had fought alongside the Italian
soldiers.At the entrance here is a marble-lined tomb, It is that of the
Prince Amedeo Savoia-Aosta, the leader of the Italian forces in East
Africa. He himself commanded the 7,000 Italians at the mountain fortress
of Amba Alagi, in Northern Ethiopia. With his water supply compromised,
surrounded, and attacked by 9,000 British and Commonwealth troops and
more than 20,000 Ethiopian irregulars, the Duke of Aosta surrendered
Amba Alagi in Northern Ethiopia on 18 May 1941. Due to their gallant
resistance, the British awarded him and his men a surrender with
military honors. Shortly after his surrender, the Duke of Aosta was
interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Nairobi, Kenya. He was placed in
command of his fellow prisoners, but never saw the end of World War II.
On 3 March 1942, shortly after his internment, he died at the prison
camp, reportedly as a result of complications from both tuberculosis and
malaria.Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister under his
father-in-law Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, paid Amedeo a high
compliment in his famous diaries. Upon being given the news of the
Duke's death Ciano wrote, "So dies the image of a Prince and an Italian.
Simple in his ways, broad in outlook, and humane in spirit."
Outstanding
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