Artifact May Return as ‘A Bell for Anzio’

In the 1944 novel “A Bell for Adano,” John Hersey portrayed the anguish of Italian villagers whose town bell was stolen by fascists just before liberating U.S. troops show up.

That same year, during a protracted Allied offensive near Rome, Army Sgt. Herbert Roth was roving through the Mediterranean village of Anzio when he glimpsed a bronze bell protruding from the rubble of a church.

Just 9 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter, it hardly rivaled the beloved treasure depicted in Hersey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale. Roth packed it in his jeep and took it home as a memento of the war.

“To me, the bell had a lot of meaning,” said Roth, 84, invoking the names of a string of comrades who were among nearly 50,000 soldiers killed at Anzio in one of the most ferocious encounters of World War II.

Now, 54 years later, a museum in Anzio has somehow learned of the whereabouts of the bell that had been used for maybe half a century to call people to Mass at Saints Pio and Antonio Church.

It is “our wish that the bell be returned,” museum custodian Amerigo Salvini said in a recent letter inviting Roth to attend next year’s 55th anniversary commemoration of the Anzio battle.

Roth, who is too ill for the trip, said he would be inclined to give the bell back. But there’s one snag. He no longer owns it.

After keeping it on a shelf at home for 53 years, he donated the bell last fall to the newly opened Italian American Community Center in Gates, a Rochester suburb.

Weakened by two open-heart surgeries, Roth said he had long been eager to find a spot where his artifact would be properly appreciated.

“I’m in accord with what the community center feels--no way would I ever cross them after they treated me so well,” said Roth, who was honored with a lifelong membership.

The community center doesn’t want to make any hasty decisions. Its president, Bernie Iacovangelo, said the Anzio Beach Museum seems happy with his idea of displaying the bell there for three months, then accepting a life-size replica.

The real bell, however, might even end up permanently again in Anzio, with the replica adorning the community center, he suggested.

The museum in the seaside resort 38 miles south of Rome says the bell carries historical as well as sentimental value. On its side is the protruding figure of a lion’s head, a papal symbol marking the church’s founding in about 1850, Iacovangelo said.

The museum heard about the bell from members of the community center who went to Anzio hoping to find old photographs of the church--and possibly the bell too.

During the invasion of Italy, the Allies ran into tough German defenses at Anzio in early 1944 and didn’t break through until May.

They were bombarded by a mighty Nazi artillery gun nicknamed “Anzio Annie” that was rolled out of a cave each night atop a rail car. Shells from the gun destroyed the church, which was rebuilt after the war.

“Every night we feared for our lives when ‘Anzio Annie’ came out and started blasting,” said Roth, who also fought in the North African desert campaign and at the Battle of the Bulge and somehow escaped unscathed.

“Only God looked after me,” he said pensively. “I saw plenty of war. I saw so much of it.”