Giacinto De Marco
Portrait of Giacinto in dress uniform. He was later promoted to corporal.
Giacinto did not see active service. He told me that his regiment did spend two days in full kit guarding the British embassy after the Duce was shot on April 7, 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and sister of Baron Ashbourne.
Mussolini was "slightly wounded in the nose" by the attack (how could she miss the duce's most prominent feature). The fascists whipped up an anti-British frenzy and the troops were called in.
Spending an uncomfortable two days camped on the pavement, my father was severly admonished by an officer for smoking some Players cigarettes his father had sent him from England. The officer said "these men are paid a few pence a day, how dare you flaunt your luxuries in front of them".
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