CESENA, Italy — For a few stormy days in October 1944, a young Canadian tank sergeant became part of the Bocchini family in an ancient Italian town caught up in the whirlwind of a world war.

For decades after, Mamma Bocchini would speak with fondness of Sgt. Frederick MacDonald, who saved her life, saved her home and befriended her children.

On Thursday, her daughter Letitia, just two years old at the time, wept as she attended a ceremony honouring Victoria Cross winner Ernest (Smokey) Smith and the other "Canadese'' who liberated their beloved town from German hands.

Letitia doesn't remember the moustachioued Canadian, but she heard so much about him over the years, she feels as if he were a long-lost brother or an uncle, his story and his image imprinted on her soul and in her heart.

She longs to meet his family.

For it was MacDonald who saved Letitia's mother from rape at the hands of an Allied soldier. It was MacDonald who walked her home each day. It was MacDonald who put out the fire when a grenade exploded inside her home.

And it was MacDonald who brought her starving family food.

"He was a small man with a black moustache,'' recalled Letitia's brother, Luigi, 16 at the time. "He was a very straight type of a guy.

"He was very serious but a good person. He would come to the house.''

Their home was near a railway line, a strategic point in the fighting as Allied forces pushed their way north, river-by-river, house-by-house, town-by-town.

Their time together was short but intense in an intense time. As the fighting pushed north, MacDonald was moved out with the other Canadians.

The family tried to keep track of his movements.

He was killed by a grenade the same night Smith earned the Victoria Cross -- Oct. 21-22, 1944. Like most soldiers of the day, he was initially buried where he fell.

The Bocchini family got word of his death. After his body was moved to the war cemetery nearby, Mamma Bocchini would always ensure there were fresh flowers at his grave.

"As long as she was alive, she never forgot him,'' Letitia said through an interpreter. "He became part of the family.''

Another Canadian was killed by a grenade right outside the Bocchini home. Luigi still has his helmet.

Other Cesenians recalled the Canadians with affection Thursday.

Elsa Ravaioli was 12 when she set out across the contested Savio River bridge to find food. She and her family had been sleeping in a tunnel to avoid Allied bombs. She remembers vividly the ruins and the fear.

"We didn't have anything,'' she said. "I crossed the bridge over to the other side to get some fruit because we didn't have anything to eat at all.

"We used to go in the country to get anything we could. And when I came back, no bridge. I had to wait until the Canadians built something to pass over to the other side. The soldiers thought it was funny for us children to be there because it was very dangerous.''

She recalled the liberation of the town, the troops marching through, the crowds cheering and shouting: "Siamo stati liberati (they have freed us).''

"It was a great relief for everybody,'' she said.

Ravaioli embraced Canadian veterans on Thursday, thanking them for all they had done. "Grazzie, grazzie,'' she said.

"I love the Canadians, the Americans, the English people,'' she said. "I love all of them, very much.''

The town's mayor, Giordano Conti, thanked the Canadian veterans in a speech:

"Your image, and that of our own partisans, will be forever linked to our town's liberation and all that it meant -- the end of the war and Nazi fascist dominion, the return of peace, the initiation of rebuilding that allowed us to live a new life of serenity and prosperity.''