Daniela Morelli: SOS UOMO IN MARE, Admiral De Giorgi tells ...

Give the right tribute to the personnel of the Navy, committed daily in saving lives, to make young people know the world and the activities of the Great Silent and finally, devolve funds to the association Andrea Doria, committed to supporting the orphans of the Navy personnel: these are the reasons that led Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, Navy Chief of Staff to write the book "SOS Man at Sea" with Daniela Morelli.

The book, published by Giunti, tells the life and work experiences of a man who found the right place in the Navy to develop his ambitions and his professional and human dreams "when I chose to be an officer in Marina, I knew very well that I chose the Armed Forces that would give me the widest possible range of professional opportunities. There is nothing like the Navy that can open completely different professional horizons: from the diver to the diver, from the pilot to the raider, from the rifleman to the doctor or engineer".

At the age of four he already knew he would become a sailor, a family passion - his father Gino De Giorgi was commander of the 19ª squadron during the Second World War and then Chief of Staff of the Navy from 1973 to 1977. Now that he has more years, he is the one who holds that position and commands 30.400 people, "an articulated world made up of men and women who perform the most diverse activities. Being the leader of this community, which you must inspire even before commanding, is my great challenge".

The same challenge to which the 28 December 2014 responded efficiently when it directed, for 72 consecutive hours, the rescue operations of the passengers 400 of the Norman Atlantic ferry, burning in the Sicilian channel, keeping the helicopters upright on the ship, despite the smoke and the flames, until the last living beings were not evacuated: three dogs. 

The memories of the Argentario, the '68, the passion for sailing but also the many missions around the world, the stories of women and men who have sought a life expectancy by crossing our seas, the arrests of slavers, the rescue operations: splits of one's own and professional life alternate in the pages of the book, composing the puzzle of a man who has dedicated his life to looking after others and according to whom “courage and determination are fundamental and common qualities to all sailors: without courage it is not possible to face the sea and without determination it is not possible to maintain a constant impulse throughout one's life, in order to be able to bring home the results".

The book comes out in a series for boys and it is precisely the admiral who explains why "I would not like the new generations to grow up thinking that it is right or normal to abandon to their fate those who flee from war, and that we can reject and let drowning masses of desperate people drown. Europe may decide to crumble, to barricade itself, to spread its land lines of barbed wire, to try to stop the refugees, but there are no walls in the sea for those who ask for help ".

Anita Fiaschetti