This morning, more than eighty years later, the sacrifice of Giuseppe Forma, 19, was remembered with emotion by the mayor of Sarule, his hometown, Maurizio Sirca, along with a delegation of fellow villagers and the young marine's grandchildren. A floral arrangement was placed on his grave, followed by a moment of reflection and prayer in the military memorial at the La Maddalena cemetery. The Royal Navy soldier rests next to his comrades and Commander Carlo Avegno, who also fell. Luca Falchi, the delegate of the Municipality of La Maddalena, was also present.
Giuseppe Forma was just 19 years old when his life was lost under a hail of machine gun fire at the foot of Fort Carlo Felice on La Maddalena. It was September 9, 1943, the day after the armistice: in those dramatic hours, one of the first acts of the Italian Resistance was taking place on the island. Forma, a young marine originally from Sarule, chose to fight as a volunteer alongside Commander Carlo Avegno against the Nazis who had occupied the military stronghold. A comrade also fell with him: together, they were almost certainly among the first casualties of the War of Liberation, in the Battle of La Maddalena, when soldiers and civilians succeeded in repelling the Nazi-German occupation.
Giuseppe Forma's life was short but intense, marked by a profound sense of duty. He grew up in a large family, with seven children orphaned by their father. He chose to enlist partly out of altruism: he volunteered so that his older brother could return home and help the family in the fields. He was, as his family remembers him, "a golden boy." Giuseppe's memory lives on above all in the words of his family. The letters sent during the few days he spent on the island (he arrived in August, just weeks before the tragic end), the telegram announcing his death (of which his mother had a strong premonition), and even the poems in Sardinian, perhaps dedicated to a love that never blossomed, speak of the sensitivity of a boy taken from life too soon. But one image, above all, remains etched in the memory: that night before departure, when he woke his younger sister, promising her that upon his return he would bring her a doll; a promise he was unable to keep.
