On August 3, 1933, a military plane crashed into the mountains of the Susa Valley, near the village of Borgata Santa Chiara di Giaglione (TO).
The pilot was a young 27-year-old Sardinian, Lieutenant Cesare Lai of the Royal Air Force.
He was approaching the large meadow of Prà Plan used as an airstrip, but a group of children were playing on the grassy clearing bathed in sunlight.
A fatal moment to decide, an emergency maneuver that saved the lives of the little ones and left no escape for the aviator.
An instinctive choice, which canceled out all the other choices Cesare could have made. Cesare departed from Ulassai, in the heart of Ogliastra; Cesare a convinced anti-fascist; Cesare in love with the teacher Aurora.
Everything that the young man was, or could have become, crashes in those woods on the border with France, which he had flown over so many times in reconnaissance, and where today a memorial stone and a cross made from the wreckage of the aircraft quietly remember his sacrifice.
In 2021, the administration and the community of Giaglione decided to restore the memorial stone and honor him with a commemoration in which the mayor of Ulassai and the Lai family also participated.
And so, in the name of remembering the tragic and heroic event, the two communities today feel their bond of friendship stronger.
