Celestina Aceti Vaccarone

John e Celestina’s wedding, Glasgow 1947 Source (G. Zucca, I Giusti di Lomellina, 2023)

John Doleman, a Scot, captured at Tobruck in June 1942, was a prisoner in  PG. 66 in Capua and PG. 53 in Sforzacosta,before being transferred, in June 1943,to the Cascina Rinalda work camp connected to the “distribution centrer” PG. 146 of Mortara, where the British and Italians wre jointly engaged in agricultural work. 

At the announcement of the Armistice, when the guards assigned to watch over the Allied soldiers disappeared, Celestina, with other people living in the area, reached the facility to warn the prisoners of the “extraordinary news that gave hope for a swift end to the war”. The young woman was 21 years old and came from a family of threshers of Protestant faith. John was one of the soldiers the young woman approached, and to celebrate the fact that they were no longer enemies, she invited him home “for tea”. It was the beginning of a bond that would last more than sixty years.

John was welcomed by Celestina’s family with the “warmth and affection usually reserved for relatives.” For nineteen months, he hid in the house, in the ingenious shelters created for him: at first, he stayed near the rabbit hutch located in the courtyard, beneath which a pit was dug with wooden-lined walls and blankets; then inside a large wardrobe whose bottom was modified to create a hidden cavity between it and the wall behind; and finally, in a small shelter built outside the house, the  hatch of which was covered by a large water pump. It was precisely thanks to one of these hiding places that John—and the family caring for him—escaped unharmed from a German roundup that hit Breme.

Following the danger, the young man was temporarily moved away from the Aceti family home and sent about twenty kilometers away to Olevano, where Marcello Modini, a railway worker, hid him at a railway signal box; however, Celestina continued to take care of him, bringing food and clean clothes daily.

Back in Breme, John stayed at the Aceti family home until the end of the war, when he could finally leave his shelters and move freely around the village. After some time, however, contacted by the Allies, he was recalled to his homeland: “John’s departure caused some upheaval at home because the friendship and affection between the Scottish soldier and the young Celestina had turned into love, and so there were promises and vows on one side, and tears and suffering on the other.”

John, however, did not forget the promises he made: upon returning home, he immediately wrote to Celestina, asking her to join him in England, where the two married in 1947. In 1948, however, the couple decided to return to live in Breme, where they remained for the rest of their lives: “John—known to everyone as Jock—who, during his time in hiding, had learned the Lomellina dialect much better than Italian, integrated very well with the people of the village and grew old there peacefully.”