[The following takes place in liberated Italy.]
One afternoon in September 1944, George McGovern and his shipmates arrived in Naples harbor. From the deck they could see dozens of little boys lined up on the wharf, holding out their hands and yelling in broken English, “Babe Ruth,” or “Hershey Bars,” or “gum.” Just as the Americans began to reach into heir pockets, the ship’s loudspeaker came alive and the captain said, “Now look, nobody throw anything to these children. These kids are starving and a couple of days ago an American ship came in here and the soldiers started throwing candy bars and the kids jumped into the water to get some and several of them drowned. We don’t want to repeat that. We came to help these people, not to drown their kids. Don’t throw anything. I mean anything.”
McGovern recalled them as “spindly-legged kids with pale faces,” and he admitted, “This was my first exposure to people on the edge of starvation.” Outside Naples that night, in an AAF base, he could hear “mothers scrounging around in the garbage cans looking for scraps of food that they could take home to their kids.”
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen E. “Cerignola, Italy.” The Wild Blue: The Crews of the B-24. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 128. Print.
Further Reading:
Original Source Listed:
McGovern interview, Eisenhower Center.
Don't feed the
birdsrefugees.