FEATURE/``My War -- Against the Land of My Ancestors'' Published by Fusion Press.

Features Writers

FEATURE...

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Dec. 18, 2000

The memoirs of an Italian-American World War II veteran who was at the front throughout the Italian campaign have been published in Dallas.

As a military government and partisan liaison officer from September 1943 to November 1945, Capt. Daniel J. Petruzzi was an eye witness to every major battle from the landings at Salerno, to Cassino, the Anzio beachhead, and the final offensive. He served with the 82nd Airborne, the 36th Texas National Guard, the Sixth Corps, the 34th Iowa, the IV Corps and the 10th Mountain division.

As part of the AMG team to rehabilitate Naples, speaking "book" Italian, he became known as the "Baby Governor of Naples." As governor of the Southern half of the Anzio beachhead, he supervised the evacuation of thousands of reluctant natives to Southern Italy. Appointed the Fifth Army's partisan liaison officer after Rome, his job was to meet and thank Italian guerrilla fighters and then get them to lay down their arms and go home. Sometimes easy, sometimes at the risk of his life, they said. He was probably the first American officer to see Mussolini hanging in an Esso service station after the partisans executed him as he tried to escape into Switzerland.

Capt. Petruzzi was awarded four combat medals and the Italian medal given to partisans as well as an honorary countship. A graduate of Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Mr. Petruzzi retired in Houston after a 32-year management career with Exxon. He is married, has two lawyer sons, and three granddaughters.

Information about the book and ordering can be found at www.petruzzi.com or at Authorlink.net.