Michelangelo Gratton created a film for the Society of Fiumani Studies – Historical Archive Museum of Fiume (Rome) dedicated to the ceremony organized to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death on a mission in Mogadishu of Andrea Millevoi, Gold Medal for Military Valor in Memory, born and raised in the Julian-Dalmatian Quarter of Rome.

The video can be viewed on the YouTube channel of the Multimedia Documentation Centre of Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian Culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXEpLMcux0s&t

Patriotism and Italianness were in the air on the evening of July 4, 2023, at the memorial dedicated to the fallen Julian-Dalmatians along the Via Laurentina in Rome during the ceremony for the 30th anniversary of the death of Andrea Millevoi , a boy from the Julian-Dalmatian neighborhood born in 1972, who fell in Mogadishu during combat as part of a peacekeeping mission and was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor.

"I still have in my heart the image of Andrea as a child, born into a family of exiles from Fiume and members of the Society of Fiume Studies, who played football in Piazza Giuliani e Dalmati," recalled a moving Marino Micich , director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume and promoter of the initiative. "He was one of the boys from the Giuliano-Dalmatian neighborhood of Rome, and here he learned to love his homeland, through the values ​​his family passed on to him and which were shared by so many other people he met every day in these streets."

In attendance, as always, were Andrea's parents, Elvio and Antonietta, along with a guard of the Montebello Lancers, who honored their comrade's sacrifice with empathy and exemplary care. Maestro Francesco Squarcia dedicated Verdi's "Va Pensiero" to him with his viola. The provincial committee of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, the Giuliana Sports Association, the Association of Italian Fiume citizens in the World – Free Municipality of Fiume in Exile, the National Dalmatian Association, and the Gentes neighborhood committee also participated in the ceremony.

"Andrea was a son of our land," said Donatella Schürzel , President of the Rome National Association of Italian Soldiers (ANVGD), "and a boy from the Julian-Dalmatian neighborhood, a man who came from our roots and who devoted himself to the very end of his life for his country—a word too many today have forgotten or misused during a football match. In his sacrifice, he recalls the young Julians killed in Trieste by the Allied Military Government police in 1953 while demonstrating for their Italian identity."

Two Senators of the Republic, Roberto Menia and Andrea De Priamo , spoke at the ceremony . The latter recalled that since he was a boy, he had frequented the Adriatic diaspora in Rome, appreciating the love of country that pervaded it and was passed down to the new generations, of which Andrea Millevoi was a shining example. Although he had never attended the Julian-Dalmatian Institute, Menia, who addressed moving words to Andrea Millevoi's parents, learned to appreciate it through the stories of his mother, an Istrian exile from Buje, who had worked for a time at the Julian-Dalmatian Children's Home: "In this hotbed of values ​​and ideals, it wasn't nationalism that was cultivated, but rather patriotism in the purest sense of the word."

Titti Di Salvo , President of the IX Municipality of Rome, also spoke, once again demonstrating her great attention to the area and the Giuliano-Dalmata District in particular: "I have become aware of the strength of the values ​​and Italian identity that Istrians, Fiume and Dalmatians, even those of the new generation, always express, from February 10th to the numerous and interesting cultural events they organize, through sad and painful ceremonies: they always highlight their strength of spirit, in an active and ideal-rich manner."

Simonetta Lauri , President of the Giuliana Sports Association, then read the motivation for the Gold Medal for Military Valor in Memory:

Commander of the CENTAURO heavy armored platoon, part of the Italian contingent sent to Somalia as part of the humanitarian operation commissioned by the United Nations, he participated with the 183rd NEMBO paratrooper regiment in the roundup of a neighborhood in Mogadishu. During the subsequent fighting, treacherously provoked by Somali militiamen, he contributed with skill and intelligence, with the forces under his command, to the release of some tanks that had remained trapped in the town.
After escorting a vehicle used to evacuate some wounded soldiers, he returned to the combat zone and, regardless of the incessant enemy fire, coordinated the action of his men and personally countered the enemy attack with the light weapons on board. To make his fire action more effective, he leaned his entire torso out of the vehicle, exposing himself to the fire of a sniper who hit him mortally. He fell with his weapons in his hands, offering a very clear example of courage, determination, absolute contempt for danger and a very high sense of duty sublimated by the supreme sacrifice.
Mogadishu, July 2, 1993