Today marks the launch of a new digital memorial dedicated to the children and men of San Cassiano di Controne who were lost during the First and Second World Wars. Built from civil records, military archives, cemetery registers, and international databases, the project brings together scattered traces of lives interrupted by war — and, in some cases, restores names and stories that had nearly disappeared from memory.
This project began as an effort to identify the men from San Cassiano di Controne, above Bagni di Lucca in northern Tuscany, who died, disappeared, or served during the First and Second World Wars. What initially appeared to be a small genealogical project gradually became a broader reconstruction of how a mountain community became connected to battlefields, prison camps, hospitals, and military systems across Europe.
The research combines Italian military casualty lists, civil birth and death records, prisoner-of-war archives, cemetery databases, and local family reconstruction. Many records were fragmented or disconnected. Some individuals appeared only in military casualty rolls, others only in municipal records copied years after the wars, while several remain absent from modern memorial databases entirely.
The First World War
The First World War left a particularly visible mark on San Cassiano di Controne. Many men from the village served on the Isonzo front, especially on the Carso plateau, Monte San Michele, Tolmino, and the Bainsizza plateau in present-day Slovenia and northeastern Italy.
Several were listed as disperso — missing in combat — during the major offensives of 1917, particularly the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo. Others died from wounds sustained in combat, while many succumbed to disease, influenza, or exhaustion in military hospitals far from home.
The records also reflect the broader geography of the war. Some men died in Austro-Hungarian prison camps after the retreat from Caporetto, including prisoners buried at Mauthausen and Marchtrenk in Austria. Others served beyond the Italian front entirely. Stefano Bassoi joined the French Foreign Legion before Italy entered the war, while Alfredo Menchini emigrated to Canada and served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
The Second World War
The Second World War affected the community differently, but no less profoundly. Military service, imprisonment, occupation, shortages, and displacement became part of daily life after 1940, particularly following the German occupation of Italy in 1943.
Compared to the First World War, the surviving records are often more fragmented and more dependent on family memory than official military documentation. Some individuals can be reconstructed through military files and cemetery records, while others survive only through oral history or local remembrance.
Families and Community
One of the clearest patterns to emerge from the research is the repeated appearance of the same family names — Bastiani, Barsellotti, Fabbri, Girolami, Mariani, Menchini, Silvestri — across multiple conflicts, regiments, prison camps, and military cemeteries.
These were not isolated individuals, but members of interconnected households spread across hamlets such as Cocolaio, Livizzano, Campiglia, Cembroni, and Cappella. In a small mountain community, the impact of war was concentrated within families and carried long-term consequences for the structure of the community itself.
Ongoing Research
Not every individual has yet been fully identified, and some records remain uncertain or incomplete. The project therefore remains ongoing, with the hope that future archival work and digitization efforts may help reconstruct additional details about the wartime experiences of the families of San Cassiano di Controne.
See how the digital war memorial works…
The digital war memorial is used by hovering the mouse over the names of the memorial, whereby the names with be highlighted. When clicking on the chosen name, a sidebar with information with appear.
Access the digital war memorial here.
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