UXO_ The story of Nicolas

“UXO_The story of Nicolas” was born in 2018, from the collaboration between Mattia Crocetti (photographer) and Nicolas Marzolino (Civil victim of war) and it is a project report the danger of U.X.O.(Unexploded ordnances)in Italy.

It was March, 2013, when Nicolas was just planting potatoes in his field in Novalesa (TO). He was just fifteen. Suddenly, among the clods of earth he saw an object “magical and shining” and, taken by curiosity, took it in his hand to understand what it was. After a few seconds, however, the strange object burst: it was a Breda 35 S.R.C.M. hand-grenade, an unexploded ordnance of the Second World War. During the outbreak Nicolas lost his right hand and his sight.

Nicolas is the testimony of how, although more than seventy years have passed since the last world war, the problem of unexploded ordnances is still alive in Italian territory. It is estimated that at least 25 thousand of unexploded ordnances are still there, 10% of the total bombs of the Second World War dropped by Italians, German, American. Bombs,hells, grenades, land mines, naval and chimical mines are still in our stations, seas, rivers or buildings.

Furthermore in Italy when common people find an unexploded ordnance don’t call the Italian army breaking the italian law and they remove it on their own risking their life or ther other people.

The objective of the project is to create an educational project that informs the new generations on this problem, now unjustly forgotten: a real invisible war.

Nicolas is a soldier that never lived during the war.