"An American soldier wounded by shrapnel is being given blood plasma transfusion by Pfc. Harvey White, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in Sicily" July 1943. But the reason that I posted this photo was. . .

for the Italian villagers behind the scene.

What a change between 1945 and now.

I've commented on it before, but the Italian women and girls behind the soldier aren't shoeless because there's a war on.  They're shoeless because they're Italians.  Italy was dirt poor.

And far from glamorous.  Indeed, Italy had the reputation as a backwater with spectacular architectural and cultural exceptions.  But by the 1950s that view was changing and by the 1960s Italy was thought of as glamorous. And rather obviously something changed not only in the depictions of Italy, but in Italy itself.