Luigi Starr Kramer

During many hours during the first five months of 2011, I thought that I could hear the sound of the wind, the sun, the rain, the laughter, the voices of people who were a part of the world I live in, the city I live in and the region in which I work.

"The men and women of the Italian marines, all soldiers and reservists.”

The voices of soldiers who love the Italians and their brave men that protect the innocent civilians of our land.

Every time I walked down the road from my home the most constant and overwhelming feeling I have was feeling like a sailor.

“As often as it is with Americans who are both in their own country and elsewhere, there is the possibility of re-entry into the zone of normalcy. Italy, the land of my childhood, my father’s country, Italy whose values and culture for more than a century have become ours.”

From the 1980s onwards, the Italian marines have followed a very normal model in a Mediterranean environment where no one is trying to break the ”chain of death”. The soldiers have been in the service for a long time. They have been in the service for a long time, with the island and with the islanders. They are involved in many different incidents, they may be directly involved in many incidents and they make an impact on the region. They have left the same way that they have come: they have come to know the local people and they have got to know, and the feelings that are a part of the territory from which the marines come as part of the local culture and the part that they interact with the local inhabitants.

There is certainly a very intimate relationship formed by their return to Italy. I have been back to Italy more than three years ago and I come back to Italy a lot. I have met friends and of course, I’m very close to the marines and I’m back in the marines. I keep a very close connection to the scene of the riots, the unrest throughout the country and how things have changed since 2011, so from a rather restricted perspective, things have not changed.

Sometimes, though, there are moments that make the whole experience too much. There are moments, for the first time that I think I’ve become attached to another country.