Tuscany - Florence American Cemetery

On the way to the hills of Chianti, Steven suggested we stop at one of the two American military cemeteries in Italy.  The Florence American Cemetery sits in wooded hills near the Greve River and inters American service members who died during the Italian Campaign from June 1944 to May 1945.   Over 4,000 soldiers are interred on this peaceful slope in the heart of Tuscany.  Italy donated the land in perpetuity, and the American government pays to have this gravesite immaculately maintained.  

The cemetery is just a series of symmetrical lines of crosses, and a few Jewish stars, until you get up close and start reading the gravestones.  And even though these men (and a handful of women) died over 70 years ago, it gets personal. You see names and ranks, and their home state, and the date of death.  It all becomes real.  At the top of the hill is the monument to the over 1,400 MIA soldiers whose bodies were never recovered.

The faded grave marker of American Red Cross Nurse Gertrude Tempkin

Four women are also buried at the cemetery.  We came across one, Gertrude Tempkin.  According to a posting by her niece,

On Aug. 3, 1945 my aunt, Gertrude Tempkin died near Modena, Italy, when she
was thrown from an open jeep.  She was with the American Red Cross Civil
War Relief, working with members of the 5th Army, getting hospital supplies
for Ospedale Sant' Antonio near the Marani Pass close to Ravenna. 

Since my aunt was the head of the Cook County Welfare Department in
Chicago, IL, in the 1930s, volunteering for duty with the American Red
Cross in Europe was her way of serving the war effort.

Source here.