Joseph Costanzo's is a tale of an immigrant family polarized by war, a series of chance encounters spelling survival and the long journey to finally finding and making peace in an adopted country once his sworn enemy.The son of an Italian-Canadian father and an Italian mother, Costanzo had ties abroad as his father, uncle and cousins were living and working in Canada years before the Second World War in the hopes of sending for their families back in Italy one day. But a 20-year-old Costanzo - now a proud 87-year-old Etobian - was still living in Mussolini's Italy when the fascist leader decided to enter the war. Suddenly he found himself facing his Allied family members from across the battle lines.
"Two Italian police in December 1941 came to my door and told me I'd go to jail if I didn't fight," he said. "I had no choice."
A pipe fitter by trade, and a nimble one at that, Costanzo was quickly recruited to helm the Avorio, the Italian submarine in whose cramped quarters he'd make the best friends he'd ever had.
It was those brothers in arms Costanzo remembers most fondly, and can now reflect upon with a smile, when he looks back on the Second World War; they were men he thought he lost and whose perceived deaths haunted him for more than 60 years until he learned their true fate.
"On a submarine, it's like a family," he said, wiping away tears at the guilty memories of the day he thought all hands had been killed in action while he remained on shore. "When I think about it, I cry."
When the Avorio set sail on its final mission in January 1943, Costanzo was in a jail cell. After a night of drinking, he took exception to an offhanded comment one of his fellow soldiers made about his dad, and he clocked him - an uncharacteristic bout of violence that likely saved his life.
"He called me a 'son of a Canadian.' You don't say anything about my father, so I punched him in the nose," he said.
The man he hit outranked Costanzo and he was punished with a demotion, a two-week stay in jail and a month's suspended pay. Eight days into his punishment, the Avorio left port without him. Soon after, the sub was reported missing, its crew presumed dead.
Costanzo was left to mourn the loss of his 'brothers,' not knowing that they had not been sunk, but captured by the Canadian destroyer HMCS Regina during a dramatic surface battle off the coast of Tunisia in which only a few of his ranks died - his replacement among them. The fact that most of his fellow Avorio submariners survived the skirmish was a fact lost on Costanzo for more than six decades.
Meanwhile, a mistake in the paperwork resulted in Costanzo's family being notified of his death - a small funeral ceremony was performed in his southern Italian hometown as Costanzo took up his new post aboard the Italian submarine The Sirena.
In September 1943, just months after joining the Sirena crew in an ever losing battle against the Allies, the Italian Armistice finally came. The crew were ordered to scuttle the vessel that evening and Costanzo, along with his commander, was among the small contingent who remained on board to sink the submarine, lest it fall into German hands.
Little did they know the German Schutzstaffel (or SS for short) were awaiting them on shore.
"They killed my commander in front of me," Costanzo said, tears welling up again. "They shot him."
Costanzo managed to escape, but was chased onto a train by SS agents. As he ran through the carriages with the Germans hot on his heels, four nuns took pity on him and allowed him to hide under their habits.
"I hid under the seat and when the (Germans) came, the girls tell them I go 'that way, that way!'" he said, describing how the nuns diverted the SS and saved his life. "They would have shot me, too."
Finding himself near Venice, Costanzo, now a virtual deserter, decided it best to make the long trek home along the Italian Peninsula, despite the battles raging all around him.
Shock and sheer relief greeted him when he walked into his hometown unscathed, much to the delight of his mother who had given him up for dead. But the celebration was short-lived - Costanzo was commissioned back to war duties, this time on the side of the Allies. He trained British corvette crews in anti-submarine tactics until the end of the war in 1945.
Just two years later in 1947, he reunited with his father and the rest of his family in the northern Ontario town of Schreiber - but still, shame over his fallen Avorio comrades and for living in the country of his former enemy continued to plague him.
"The thought that they had been killed left him with an overwhelming sense of guilt," said Costanzo's son Robert, who is working towards publishing a book chronicling his father's story, entitled Mussolini's Sub, Canadian's Son. "I remember him saying many times growing up, 'I shouldn't be alive.'"
But all of that changed in 2004. Robert Costanzo was in the process of buying his first house when a discussion with his lawyer, a naval history buff, uncovered the truth about the Avorio.
"When I told him my father's story he pulled out this really rare book written by an obscure Italian admiral - in the book there was a picture of the Avorio being captured by the HMCS Regina, not sunk," he said.
The story came out, and soon Costanzo was contacted by former crew members of the Regina, who shared with him smiling photos of his captured crewmates on the deck of the Canadian destroyer.
The image still brings a smile to the face of the man who spent more than half a century in mourning - at long last an image of happy remembrance for Joseph Costanzo.