In 1943, following the Allied landing in Salerno (Operation Avalanche), a large quantity of fallen soldiers remained buried in the earth and sand of the beaches

One of the obligatory roads for the Anglo-American columns, which aimed to quickly occupy Naples, is the current SS 18, which passes through the small town of Cava dé Tirreni.

Some time later, after the war, Lucia Pisapia Apicella, mother of the family and local greengrocer, noticed some children playing football with the skull of a fallen soldier while walking.

The scene shocks her so much that she dreams of a clearing of eight knocked-down crosses and eight soldiers begging her to return them to their mothers.

Lucia, a very religious woman, goes to the Allied command to ask, like a simple mother, for a worthy burial for those boys from the enemy army, but the answer will be that it is not their responsibility, but the mayor's. After various attempts at dissuasion, in 1946 the mayor granted her permission to deal with it personally, making two gravediggers available to her who soon backed away out of fear of the unexploded ordnance still scattered in those lands.

So the woman decides to tackle the task alone. She searches for all the remains of the bodies of the abandoned soldiers, she cleans their bones from the shreds of flesh, washes them and reassembles the skeletons and then places them and preserves them in zinc boxes that she commissions at her own expense from the town blacksmith. She also collects personal objects and documents that could facilitate the recognition of the deceased and carefully catalogs them to deliver them to the police station.

The cassettes, however, are transported to the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà.

Even though everyone tells her that it is a waste of time and money as well as a great danger to her safety, Lucia takes the risk of blowing up and always replies: "Song all 'children' and mother".

She gathered a total of 700 soldiers, not only Germans, but also Polish and Americans. She also collects those who had occupied her land, but she doesn't care, they are all boys.

The news also reached Germany, where in 1951 she was called by the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, to be awarded the Grand Cross of the German Order of Merit, the highest recognition for services rendered to German state.

From then on, for the Germans she became "Mama Luzia" or "Mutter der Toten" (the mother of the dead).

She in Italy she In 1959 she received the honor of the Commandery of Merit of the Republic from President Giovanni Gronchi and she was proclaimed an honorary citizen by the city of Salerno.

For more than thirty years Lucia went to pray in the place where her adopted children were buried, until she passed away on August 27, 1982 at the age of 94.