Nassiriya, widow Coletta: “Joseph and all the fallen have sacrificed themselves for great values”

“I am proud of what my husband was and how he lived his life, how he got to that extreme pain with his uniform that melted away on him.” Proud for the “strong sense of attachment to the uniform, for the love that he and the other fallen have given”. This was stated to Adnkronos by Margherita Caruso Coletta, wife of the Carabinieri brigadier Giuseppe Coletta who died in the attack in Nassiriya, on the eve of the anniversary of the massacre. “There remains the awareness of having had a wonderful man next to us, with a billion defects like all of us, but with the immense strength of good, with his hands stretched out towards each other”, adds Margherita Caruso, recalling that, like Giuseppe, all the fallen “they sacrificed their lives for great values”. At 18 years after that tragic day, memories “remain even if faded because God gives you the strength to continue living and rejoicing – explains the wife of the Carabinieri sergeant – We lived in San Vitaliano and that day I was taking my daughter, who he was 2 and a half years old, at the pediatrician. News followed one another and I ran back to our service quarters in the barracks, but fragmented information arrived. I immediately asked the commander and shortly thereafter the general of the carabinieri arrived who he told me what had happened, only by looking at him I understood that Joseph was among the fallen “. Giuseppe Coletta, like the other Nassiriya soldiers, was close to returning to Italy. They had heard with his wife the evening before the attack: “In Sicily, for San Martino, they make crispelle and he asked me if I had made them. We talked about everyday life. Usually we would talk once a day, but that day he called me again. ” A presentiment? “Not really, it was not based on an alert, but sometimes there is such a bond between people who love each other that you perceive things without being able to explain them”, underlines the widow Coletta. “She asked me to pass our daughter Maria to her, but the little girl became serious and told me: ‘I won’t talk to dad because he doesn’t come back’. ‘”.