I’m going over some photos from 2023 at the moment: we had taken a long trip and when we got to Bologna we did mostly random wandering. I ran across this wall, and the saying caught my eye. However I didn’t know what it meant. Perhaps readers immediately do?
Even the Olives …, 8.12.23 (Bologna, Italy)
A quick search on Wikipedia gave me this information:
“A Canadian veteran recalled,
We ran for cover, Charlie Donnelly, the commander of an Irish company is crouched behind an olive tree. He has picked up a bunch of olives from the ground and is squeezing them. I hear him say something quietly between a lull in machine gun fire: Even the olives are bleeding.
Then, just minutes after saying that, his unit was retreating and he was hit several times and he was killed.
Charles Patrick Donnelly, July 10, 1914, Killybrackey, County Tyrone, Ireland
DiedFebruary 27, 1937, Arganda del Rey, Madrid, Spain