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MUSIC

VO

La dolce vita - the sweet life -   deep in the heart of Italy ...

and here comes New Zealand farmer Ron Miller…..

Ron thought track

This is a big step for us

VO

After forty-five years of milking cows - barely stepping out of gumboots, let alone stepping out of central New Zealand -

Ron thought track

This is our first big OE really

VO

he's come all this way, on a mission

Janet

You're not a man of many words I gather?

Ron

no

Janet

but you're going to be making a few today

Ron Miller

yeah well i'm going to have to make a few today // i'm not never been a public speaker or anything

MUSIC + PAUSE

VO

All of a sudden, in Bagnacavallo, an Italian  town of 16 thousand - Ron Miller is gracing the papers, courting flash-bulbs ---posing with the mayor -

all because he's come to return a little diary that's been in Ron's family’s hands for decades.

Janet

Did you expect all that?

Ron

no we didn't expect it at all we just expected to just come over here hand the diary over and say good by we'll see you... laughter

PTC

THIS JOURNEY TO ITALY HAS BEEN 70 YEARS IN THE MAKING DATING BACK TO A TERRIBLE TIME, THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

RON MILLER'S FATHER JOSEPH, SERVING IN NORTH AFRICA FOUND THE DIARY, DROPPED SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT AND PICKED IT UP AND TOOK IT HOME, ALWAYS HOPING BUT NEVER BELIEVING IT WOULD ONE DAY BE RETURNED TO ITS ACTUAL OWNER...

VO

Back in rural New Zealand, after Joseph died,  the diary sat in a box, in a cupboard out of sight, rarely talked about,

Ron

I sort of knew it was around but i never had much to do with it before mum died.

VO

The contents of the pages were a mystery to Ron’s mother - even the owner's name, unclear... 

but the diary's future was never in doubt.

Ron

She just said that dad always reckoned that he'd love to give it back to the family one day.

VO

But finding that family wouldn't be easy….

The only clue, a note from his mother,: "this diary found from italian plane shot down in desert".  

Ron

I assumed he was a pilot and he was dead.

VO

Ron his wife Shirley and their son David did their best: they gave it to the Italian Embassy in New Zealand’s capital city – Wellington.

Ron

Well they didn't find anything.

VO

A few years ago it went around the world with Shirley's well-meaning girlfriend.

Shirley Miller

I don't think she had the chance to take it out of her suitcase and it came back again.

VO

Then the Millers gave it to Edith Daughtery -

EDITH UPSOT: Buenna serra

VO

An English language teacher in New Zealand - who identified the owner’s name.

Edith Daughtery

His name on the diary is Toni Albert or Toni Alberto

VO

Then after weeks of research - throughout all of Italy - she tracked down a young man with the same surname and ... could it be possible?

Edith

He said it's my grand dad and i said really then he said it's my granddad and he's still alive - really i can't believe this he's still alive so i was really i was jumping up and down on the telephone i was really excited and i think he was excited as well.

Shirley

She was so ecstatic and so were we we didn't  sleep all night.

Ron

To find him out he was still alive was the biggest shock we could have got you know.

For the Miller's, there was only one thing to do - get the diary back to its owner, now 96, and to personally hand it over.

Ron

I think it would be quite good to meet the man you know because my father's not here to do it so we'll do it.

They organised care for their animals - and planned their very first big overseas trip.

Janet

Do you like Italian food?

Ron

They eat a lot spaghetti don't they?

Shirley

We’re really meat and veg people end even pizza we've never been into.

But quietly, with each passing day, Ron was fearing the worst.

Shirley

Terrible I haven't seen him so stressed he really has

He's just worried that the old fella might die that's the main thing hasn't it

hmm

Janet

What's he like when he's stressed?

Shirley

He just sits there and stares into space

Ron

Oh come on you didn't say much and yeah no  it has affected us.

FADE TO BLACK + MUSIC

But in sunny Bagnacavallo - near Bologna in Northern Italy - the once, young soldier who almost died serving his country at war - is still a sprightly trooper.

96 year old Alberto Toni, a retired farmer still feeds his extended family from the land ...

Giovanni

Wake up at 6 in the morning, always very busy.

UPFX: "Moo"

VO

Working another piece of earth, 19 thousand kilometres away, Ron Miller runs a small herd of cattle – something he does mostly for the love of it.

Ron thoughtrack

I usually talk to the animals not the people , yeah.

VO

Total strangers, two months ago -  they never knew they were connected by a diary - owned, written in, and lost by one.... kept safe  by the other...

UPFX archive: "Thousands, thousands of Italian prisoners lost the will to fight..."

VO

In 1941 as exhausted, depleted Italian forces in North Africa faced certain surrender to the allies

The young corporal, Alberto Toni, a gunner, stationed in Libya, put pen to the pages of the only diary he ever kept. 

He wanted never to forget the horror of a war that would kill 450 thousand of his compatriots.

UPFX:

14th April 1941

I was shooting all the time and bombs kept on falling

Very cold. These days we are so hungry we almost can't handle it.

13th December

It's raining grenades from all directions.

A grenade hits me but I am buried under rock and I get up, unhurt.

A real miracle to be safe.

Tornero...I will return

Alberto Toni

On our frontline we could go 2 or 3 days without food and water. One day I spotted a big rat, I skinned it, I cooked it and I ate it.

We were so thirsty I EVEN tried to drink the only few drops of urine I could make….but I couldn't…..because it was so bitter.

Janet

You had to cook and eat a rat..what was that like?

Alberto

I roasted it…because we were so hungry we would have eaten anything.

It tasted good, very good

VO

He thinks it was in Alexandria, Egypt, after he was captured by the allies, taken a prisoner of war, that he lost his diary.

Alberto

We were almost a thousand in one compound and it was a disaster. I think I lost it there... we were searched every day so i'm not sure. A British soldier seeing that little book must have felt that it was something interesting and kept it for himself.

VO

Alberto assumed that diary, that precious record of a year - on the front line in Northern Libya - was lost forever...

Angela

Wow...It's the first time he has got tears in his eyes - isn't that incredible...

Janet

You say he's talking about the war and about that diary?

Giovanni

All the day but at least once a week or once a month.

Janet

For how many years?

Giovanni

For all the years that i know of him.

VO

Son in law Giovanni Emiliani, helped write Alberto's memoir of the war years .

UPFX ITALIAN: "La linea..."

Giovanni Emiliani

He remember everything, it's incredible unbelievable.

VO

It's complete - but for the missing diary.

Giovanni

It's really a piece of art written down because he had only this, lets say wire to connect -  a really bad situation of the war with his life he left at home, and it was the the only friend .

MUSIC + GUNFIRE FX