Lion who enjoyed a taste of Italy

ANDREA Gazzi’s grave lies on the Inner Hebridean island of Islay, a long way from the fish-and-chip shop he left behind in Gorseinon.

- PETER JACKSON

The explanation as to how the Bowmore New Parish churchyard came to be his final resting place is to be found in a maritime disaster during the first summer of the Second World War, one made all the more poignant when put in a rugby context.

Gazzi would never have heard of the game when he migrated a century or so ago from his native Bardi in northern Italy to find, like so many of his compatriots, a rewarding market all over Britain for their cafes, ice-cream parlours and chippies.

Some were believed to be sons of fathers who had fought alongside the Allies during the First World War. Mussolini’s catastrophic decision as Italy’s fascist dictator to change sides at the start of the Second exposed Gazzi and hundreds more in Britain to fatal consequences.

As civilian internees they were rounded up, squeezed alongside German prisoners-of-war aboard a former ocean liner, SS Arandora Star, and deported to Canada. Barely two days after leaving Liverpool without any submarine escort, the ship sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic west of the Aran Islands within halfan-hour after being torpedoed by a German U-boat.

More than half of the 1,600 passengers lost their lives, 48 from the small town of Bardi, among them Gazzi at the age of 39. His body had been washed ashore on Islay two months later, in September 1940.