Repentant American soldiers have presented an Italian woman with a birthday cake to make up for the one their predecessors stole from her as it cooled on a windowsill 77 years ago.
It was the eve of Meri Mion’s 13th birthday when US troops arrived in her village of San Pietro, near Vicenza in northern Italy, to fight against German soldiers.
During the battle, her family spent the night in the attic, emerging the next day after German soldiers, who had fired shots near her home, retreated.
Mion’s mother then set about baking a birthday cake, leaving it to cool by an open window, only for it to be stolen by presumably hungry American soldiers.
An emotional Mion, who turns 90 on Friday, was presented with a replacement cake by soldiers from the US Army garrison in Italy during a ceremony at Giardini Salvi in Vicenza on Thursday.
She said she had not been expecting the cake, although clearly remembered the moment the one baked for her 13th birthday “disappeared”.
“I was surprised,” she told the local newspaper Il Giornale di Vicenza. “But then I realised the American soldiers had taken it and it made me happy. It was a good end given everything they had done.”
The large cream cake with strawberries, garnished with a basket of mini Easter eggs, was presented by Sgt Peter Wallis and Col Matthew Gomlak, the garrison’s commander, during a ceremony attended by Italian and American soldiers, local officials and residents.
Gomlak recalled the fighting between the US military and German forces in the Vicenza area in 1945, during which 19 American soldiers were killed, and how local residents offered the troops bread and wine.
“That warm welcome by the people of Vicenza continues to this day,” he said.
Mion said she would share the cake with her loved ones to mark her 90th birthday. “I will eat the cake with my entire family, remembering a wonderful day that I will never forget.”
