Meet Your Neighbor
Bruno Latici
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
You read about islanders who are in the public eye all the time, but what do you know about your neighbors - those you see at the supermarket, the gas station, at school or just in passing on the street? Everybody has a story about how they came to be here, what they have done and how their experiences have shaped and perhaps changed their lives and added to the fabric of Nantucket's unique character.

MICHAEL GALVIN/The Independent

This week The Nantucket Independent continues a new feature highlighting island residents. Bruno Latici, an island resident since 1962, is a survivor. His tales of World War II are harrowing, and while today at 86 he is a healthy husband to his wife Gertrude, father to five offspring and a happy grandfather to five children, he carries some heavy emotional baggage from his combat experiences.

Born and raised in Putnam, Conn., Latici attended schools there and was studying civil engineering at the University of Connecticut when the war broke out. In 1942, when he and a friend turned 21, they enlisted in the Army Air Corps. His pilot training was at the Southeast Air Command in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and he received his pilot's wings at Moody Field in Valdosta, Ga. His B-17 bomber training was held in Tampa and Sebring, Fla.

In April 1944, Latici was sent into combat and stationed in England with the Eighth Air Force, a division of the U.S. Army. He flew 26 missions. The last was the beginning of a horrific episode for Latici. Of the dozen planes with the Eighth Air Force in the air that day, he was flying deputy lead pilot with a mission to bomb a munitions factory in the Rhur Valley of Dusseldorf. Three of the planes were blown up immediately by the Germans. Latici's plane crashed after being hit by heavy cannon fire shot from the ground and caught ablaze.

Latici was captured and sent to Stalag One, a prison camp in Barth, Germany where he spent nine months - the remainder of the war - subject to mental but not physical abuse, yet living in deplorable conditions. The prisoners received an average of one meal a day, usually cabbage and potatoes, which are vegetables he no longer enjoys. Then in late April of 1945, the prisoners of war were liberated by the Russians, who wanted to be seen as heros, said Latici. But he and others escaped from them and walked four days, eating what little they could find in nature, until they met up with British troops at the Elbe River in Lunenburg, Germany.

"The reason for the escape from the Russians was that they wanted the prisoners of war to march 600 miles from the Stalag to Poland to be transported to Casablanca. They wanted to take credit for the liberation," explained Latici. "Not many of us would have survived the trip. We were all weak and starving."

Once he and his colleagues reached the safety of the British troops, Latici was sent to a hospital in England for 10 days, then transported to London for his return to America on the Queen Mary. He remained in the Army reserves until he was discharged in 1956. He said his experience in the prison camp changed his life forever.

"I have what is known as survivor's syndrome," he said. "It is quite common with men in combat. You wonder why the guy next to you blew up and you didn't. It's a feeling of guilt."

Following Latici's discharge, he rekindled a friendship with Gertrude Moynihan, a nurse he met in Boston through a friend before the war. That reunion turned to romance and the couple wed in September 1945. They went on to have children Eleana, Renald, Steven, Jennifer and Cristina, who gave them five grandchildren. Gertrude, now disabled, has her primary residence with Jennifer in Woodstock, Conn. but spends time with Latici here and during the winter when he lives on Anna Maria Island in Florida.

After Latici's service discharge, the couple settled in Woodstock, Conn. where he became a steel mill manager until his retirement. They remained there until they visited Nantucket in 1962 with friends who had a summer house here, subsequently fell in love with the island and soon after bought their own home and moved from Connecticut.

But though Latici, who likes to tinker with cars and has five (all running) in his yard, sought to distance himself from his war connections as much as possible, that was not meant to be. Four years ago he received a call from Michael Galvin at the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce explaining that an Edgar Schlimm from Germany was trying to contact him. Schlimm, who was only a boy during the war years, had found that parts of Latici's plane were uncovered during an excavation for a new school in the village of Ludenscheid. He, as an adult conducting research for a book about World War II, found that the parts held a serial number he traced through the Eighth Air Force records which linked the plane to Latici as pilot of Avenger Two. That is how their relationship began, and the men stay in regular contact. Latici believes the parts of his B-17 are now on display in a German museum.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" he said, showing his visitor a portrait of him standing near a B-17 bomber on display at the Nantucket Airport

in 2005. I