Teen from Italy finds Boston World War II soldier’s bracelet
By Emily Maher
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BOSTON (WCVB) — An Italian teenager who found a World War II soldier’s bracelet in the woods near his European home has made it his mission to return it to the rightful owners half a world away.
“I was interested in seeing who was this person,” Gabriele Pavolttoni, 19, said.
Pavolttoni was metal detecting in the woods near his home in Pisa, an Italian city located near the Mediterranean coast.
Suddenly, he heard the noise every detectorist waits for.
“My metal detector started, ‘bing, bing, bing, bing,'” Pavolttoni said.
Pavolttoni said he started digging, and then something shiny caught his eye.
“I pull it out from underneath the ground, I put it in my hand I saw, ‘This is a bracelet,'” Pavolttoni said.
It was a silver bracelet with a World War II soldier’s name engraved on the front, with the date 1943 and the name Ernest Holtzclaw on the back.
Pavolttoni said he knew he wanted to find Holtzclaw’s family, a member of the U.S. Army’s 34th Infantry Division, to return it.
“I found his grave in Boston,” Pavolttoni said.
He and his mother hopped on a plane and came to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with an important mission that would bring him to the city’s Mattapan neighborhood.
When Pavolttoni spotted the American flag at Mount Hope Cemetery, he knew he was close to finding the soldier’s grave and stumbled into the man who knew just how to help.
“I noticed them kinda walking around aimlessly, not set at any one grave,” Jim Killeen, with Mount Hope Cemetery, said.
Killeen and another man who works at the cemetery helped Pavolttoni track down the grave and the family’s home.
“We went for a ride just three miles away from there,” Killeen said.
When they got to the house, the soldier’s family was stunned and in awe, as they returned the bracelet of Holtzclaw, a World War II American soldier.
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