Word: civitella
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Married. Princess Sandra Vittoria Torlonia, 22, granddaughter of the late King Alfonso XIII of Spain (and, on her father's side, of the late Brooklyn-born hardware heiress Elsie Moore Torlonia), daughter of Don Alessandro Torlonia, Prince of Civitella-Cesi, one of Italy's wealthiest men; and Clemente Lequio, 33, widower, father of an eight-year-old child, son of a onetime Fascist Italian ambassador to Spain; in secret, in Rome. Often mentioned as a possible mate for Belgium's bachelor King Baudoin, Princess Sandra met Insurance Man Clemente five weeks ago, married him in defiance...
...Germans were preparing to retreat from the little Italian town of Civitella, Italian Partisans shot three German soldiers...
That evening, a few hours after the shooting, a German commandant issued an ultimatum: Civitella would be burned to the ground by seven next morning, unless the villagers surrendered the culprits. The natives did not take the threat very seriously. No informer appeared...
...seven next morning, many of Civitella's women & children were still in bed. A German tank, mounting a flamethrower, rumbled slowly through the village street. As it passed each house, its fire-spitting nozzle licked a blast of flame through the open window. The sleeping mothers and children were burned to death where they lay; the houses went up in flames. Then the tank turned and blocked one end of the street...
...Little Civitella, nine miles off the main highway to Arezzo, has never been described by that careful German traveler, Karl Baedeker. But Italians will remember...