My mom's brother was a captain in the army that moved through Italy under Mark Clark. He was wounded in Italy and was awarded the Purple Heart, but he stayed there to recover and continued to serve until after the war. Anyway.. I had always thought of him as something of a fuddyduddy until my mom told me that while in Italy he had had an affair with a contessa, making promises that he had no intention of keeping. As he moved north with the army, Italy was finally liberated and he was made military governor of a northern area where he lived in a little town and was waited on by local Italian women. There he had a short liaison with the laundry girl and then he went back to America. There he married my mom's best friend from Catholic school and settled down to work for the California Highway Patrol as an efficiency expert. Not too long after they married, along came a letter from the contessa asking him when he was going to have her come to America and... you can guess the rest. lol -- My uncle the cad. I didn't hear that story until just a few years ago.... and it sure added color to the way I thought of my uncle.

Sue