New York – Il Miracle of Sant’Anna has become the coincidence of Spike Lee, or the Arlington revelation, home of the Pentagon. Seventy-seven years after the Buffalo Soldiers massacre in the Apuan Alps and fourteen after the film shot by the director to remember the sad fate of an unlikely handful of African American soldiers, the Pentagon gave the name to the remains of one of the two soldiers killed in Cinquale and exhumed by the American Cemetery in Florence: the simple soldier classified as X-124 was called Maceo A. Walker. He was twenty when he was killed by the Germans. Walker would be the cousin of the New York director. His mother would be Spike’s grandfather’s sister.
“I didn’t even know he existed”
When Lee in 2008 filmed The Miracle of Sant’Anna, which tells of the friendship between an African American soldier and a child, without knowing it he was also telling the story of Maceo, one of the black soldiers of the Buffalo division sent to ruin in the name of a country that continued to humiliate them. “When I received the letter from the Pentagon I was thinking of a joke – admitted the director – I didn’t even know that Maceo existed”.
Sent to massacre
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, enlisted in ’43 and sent to Italy in November ’44, Walker was part of the expedition that went down in history as the most tragic and disorganized: that of the battle of Cinquale, on the Apuan Alps, in Tuscany, fought in February ‘ 45 along a mined canal, between rain and mud. The Americans had attempted to cross the canal, ending up as an easy target for German fire. On the second day the water of the Versilia river had turned red. On the fourth, the regiment was withdrawn with ignominy. “They do not have the emotional and mental stability necessary for combat,” the general had ruled Lucian K. Truscot.
700 fell
Badly trained, poorly equipped and worse conducted, but with an ambitious task: stationed in Livorno, they had to uproot the Nazi forces from the mountains of the north-central. The Cinquale was 60 kilometers away. They died in the eighteenth century, and among these many of those soldiers considered the children of slaves and victims of episodes of racism by fellow soldiers and Southern commanders.
The last letter to mom
The battle was fought between 8 and 11 February. Walker was killed on the 10th. The next day the order came to retreat south. Five days ago Walker had written to his mother. The letter arrived on February 17. His parents were informed of his death only in March. “They were fighting a war on two fronts – he explained to him Washington Post Sarah Barksdalea scholar of the history of African American soldiers – one on the battlefield, the other in a segregated army and in a segregated America. ”Walker was among them.
Work on the poor remains
The identification came through a research launched two years ago by the Pentagon, which made available the technologies used to solve crimes committed even half a century ago, through the comparison of DNA. The tests are done in a laboratory in Nebraska. The genetic code obtained from Walker’s remains, legs and pelvis still wrapped in military woolen cloths, matched a cousin, a man who lives in New York as a Shelton Lee, but more famous with the nickname Spike. The other was the director’s brother, David. Experts aren’t 100 percent certain, because the director is from another branch of the family, but the odds are high. The Pentagon has asked Lee to promote DNA collection among African Americans, who are more wary of collaborating with the Defense.
“Fallen for Democracy”
“It is not only my cousin – said the director – but all his brothers of the 92nd division. The Buffalo soldiers, who fought for a country where they were not considered first class citizens”. Walker’s identification is a small posthumous victory. “It’s as if Maceo – commented Lee – had looked for me to tell me: Spike, I want you to know that I existed, and I want you to spread the word so that the world knows that I existed. I was 20 years old, I was enlisted and I died in Italy, in the Second World War, fighting for democracy “.