Monday, July 10, 2000
Veteran celebrated in Italy
Lt. John Fox received Medal of Honor for defending village
By Allen Howard
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jane Fox Pope of North Avondale gets emotional when she thinks about “La Rocca alla Pace,” (Rock of Peace) on a medieval fortress site in Sommocolonia, Italy.
On Sunday, she will visit the site where her brother, Medal of Honor winner Lt. John R. Fox, was killed on Dec. 26, 1944. Mrs. Pope will be part of a ceremony to honor her brother and other soldiers of the 92nd Infantry.
Her brother was among a handful of black American soldiers, known as Buffalo soldiers, who stood alone against one of the final German offensives of World War II.
Records show that only a few lived to tell about the battle when an elite Austrian alpine unit attacked 70 Buffalo soldiers defending the village of Sommocolonia. By that time, U.S. forces had largely taken Italy, one of the Axis powers.
Their valor was lost in history for more than half a century until a special act of Congress in 1996 secured the Medal of Honor to Lt. Fox and six other black American soldiers.
“This should be a wonderful and gratifying experience for me,” said Mrs. Pope, a retired Cincinnati Public Schools teacher and administrator. “I think it will bring a certain amount of peace to me after witnessing the Medal of Honor and to travel across the ocean to witness the Italian government giving a special recognition.”
Myrtle Fox Jones, another sister who also lives in North Avondale, said she will not go to Sommocolonia because she can't stand airplanes.
“I think the whole incident should be put to rest, but never forgotten,” Mrs. Jones said. “The Medal of Honor and this special tribute means a lot to my brother, because he was a true military man.”
Lt. Fox was born in Cincinnati. He graduated from Wyoming High School in 1934 and from Wilberforce University in 1941. He received a commission in the Army in June 1940.
On January 13, 1997, Lt. Fox was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously along with six other black soldiers.
Mrs. Pope will be joined by Lt. Fox's widow, Arlene Fox, and her daughter, Sandra, and two grandchildren, Morgan and Cassandra Charles, all of Houston, Texas, on the trip to Sommocolonia. Mrs. Pope's son, Jerrold Pope, professor of voice at Florida State University, will perform a concert as part of the ceremony in Sommocolonia on Saturday.
Solace Wales Sheets, vice president of the committee for the Sommocolonia Transnational Monument, which planned the ceremony, said the people of Sommocolonia never forgot the black GIs who fed them that terrible winter and died defending their village.
“On July 16, they will honor the black soldiers in a way that their own country failed to for more than half a century,” Mrs. Sheets said.
Mrs. Sheets, who has lived in Sommocolonia, wrote to Mrs. Pope that she stumbled upon a marker on a hillside with Lt. Fox's name on it, along with seven other markers of Italian soldiers.
In her research, she learned that the villagers had become close friends of the black soldiers.
“Among those who will honor the Fox family and the Buffalo soldiers will be some older Sommocolonian villagers who lived through the battle 56 years ago,” Mrs. Sheets wrote. “Sommocolonians hid terrified in their basements during the fighting, and when Axis forces took the village, they were forced out, homeless in the middle of winter, climbing over the dead bodies of black Americans who had been their friends.”
She wrote that the Rock of Peace ceremony will recognize all those in the battle of Sommocolonia.
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