ITALY: From the Depths

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In the marshes near Sicily's town of Marsala, Hunter Paolo Lamia took aim, shot down a black-plumed, white-breasted stilt plover, a breed seldom seen in Italy, which migrates each fall from Arctic Siberia to North Africa. On the bird's right leg Lamia found a glass vial containing a message, written in Italian with scrawled capital letters on both sides of an eight-inch strip of paper. On orders of the Ministry of the Interior, the paper was painstakingly analyzed, determined to be of Russian manufacture. The message: "Many messages but no hope. For 13 years we have been working as slaves in mines. These men have slit eyes. One dies like a dog. We are in the Polar Arctic. We are 300 Italian soldiers from Salara, Friuli, Verona, Padua, Rovigo. God is our hope of salvation."

The Interior Ministry handed the message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has long been seeking information on several thousand Italian prisoners of war missing in Russia. The government made no comment, but officials said they considered the message authentic.