A lifetime and thousands of kilometres later, Eric Hemming has finally been able to say thank you in person to the family who saved his father’s life after he escaped a prison camp during the Second World War. “The bravery, the courage that they showed to take him in – if they would have been found. The dad would have been killed. The two kids would have been sent to a concentration camp, and they would have burnt down the farm. So they risked everything to shelter my dad for seven months,” Eric said. Norman Hemming, Eric’s father, was one of thousands of Allied prisoners of war who fled Italian POW camps days after an armistice was announced in September 1943. After making his way over mountains, forests and pastures in central Italy, he found himself in a farmer’s field in Magliano Sabina, north of Rome, in early November. Vito Urbanetti came across the soldier, exhausted and starving, and took him in. It was an act of kindness – in the face of great risk – that sparked a story that has connected two families over decades despite never having met until now. The photograph Eric lives in Sherwood Park where his mother and father settled after moving to Alberta from Great Britain. He said his father was a quiet man who didn’t often speak of his experiences during the decade he spent as a soldier. “He never spoke about the battles, any of the difficult situations, but he did speak about a family that helped him and he spoke about that family often," Eric said. While Eric knew of the family’s compassion and courage, he wanted to learn more about the man in the old photograph that Norman had kept and remembered so fondly. Eric said it took no time at all to find answers after posting the photo online and he was on a plane on his way to Italy within a year. “A journalist who had actually already been working with the family in Italy was able to connect the two families,” he said. “While we were looking for them, they were also looking for us.” The daughter Norma Urbanetti was 14 years old when Norman, then in his 20s, arrived on the farm and was safely tucked away in an underground cave on the property. Like her father Vito, Norma was fond of Norman. She would bring him what little food the family could spare every few days, and the two overcame the language barrier to become close. Eric was surprised and delighted to learn ahead of his trip that the young girl, now a 96-year-old woman, was still alive. What’s more, when the two met this summer, she still recalled his father with love. “It was 80 years later and she still remembered him and had a soft place in her heart for him. That was, to me, the most special part,” he said. “I remember bending down to her and holding her hand, and basically thanking her, because if they would not have sheltered my dad, he almost certainly would have been recaptured, almost certainly would have been killed,” Eric said. “She did save his life, and for her to remember him and to speak highly of him was an amazing moment.” The grotto While Norman would sometimes help out on the farm when the coast was clear, with German troops stationed nearby, he spent much of his time underground in the grotto. During the trip, Eric visited the cave, which had been preserved by the family. It was a humbling experience, he said. “I had always pictured the cave as being this big space,” he said. “The reality is it was an underground hole.” “We lived this great, comfortable life, and he was all by himself, for the most part, in the dark for seven months, I can’t imagine that. “It wasn’t pretty. It was a cave that was made of limestone, so it was not particularly stable. It’s dirty, tons of bugs. It would have been difficult.” In August, Norma and her children commemorated the cave with a stone plaque that reads, in Italian, “Norman’s refuge.” In a letter, the women’s sons explained that the honour was a wedding gift for Eric’s daughter, one that would “remain forever and be a source of pride” for their entire family. “I got the feeling that if the same thing happened today, that remaining family would do the same thing,” Eric said. “Honestly, they were wonderful people, very open, and proud that they had been a part of that story.” Not the end Allied troops arrived in central Italy in June 1944, ending Norman’s time with the Urbanetti family. After heading to Napoli to rest and recuperate, Eric said his father was deployed to Germany where he spent the rest of the war. When he finally made it home to England, he met his wife and settled down, working as a postman in the countryside. The family later moved to Sherwood Park where they lived until Norman died in 1995. Eric said his father never had the chance to go back and meet Norma, but he would have loved to know she was still alive and that the story the two shared lives on in their loved ones. “They just had good things to say about him, and she had passed that down to her family, to her sons and daughters and grandchildren,” he said. “They were very proud of Norma, of their mum, and of their grandfather. I’m very proud to have been able to help.” With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Curtis Goodrum
