Finally We Are Here. Angelo Grassia

      9

      Meanwhile, our country, neutral after the siege of Sarajevo, began to intervene in the conflict: the symptoms were everywhere evident. The war was soon declared and my father, belonging to the class of 1885, was mobilized in January 1916. Naples was not a very populated city: it could be considered, at that time, a great country: everyone knew each other. Did you want to find someone to talk to? It was enough to go to Piazza S. Ferdinando to see, after a short time, the person you wished to meet, or else in a position to immediately give you news of what you were looking for.

      My father had made a name for himself in the hotel environment, both for the expertise acquired by travelling half the world, and because he was known as an affable and kind person.

      The president of the Italian Red Cross, Marquis La Via, knew very well my father, as a close friend of the owner of the Hotel Santa Lucia. Having heard of my father's call to arms, he sent someone to call him and he asked if he would be willing to work with Major Pavone in the opening of a Territorial Hospital for War Injuries, planted in Naples, in the immediate vicinity of the Mergellina Metro, at the beginning of Corso Vittorio Emanuele. My father accepted the job very willingly and, after a few hardships and setbacks, the hospital in question, called "Regina Elena", was ready to work. My father wore the gray-green uniform and, after a brief interview, they gave him the rank of health sergeant, with the specific task of providing the provisioning, the canteen and many other tasks only he knew how to disengage thanks to his competence, given the scarcity of the staff assigned to the hospital itself.