John Maneschi’s Italian father and Australian mother met and married in Europe. The Depression brought them back to Milan, where John was born in 1932. He was an engineer in Australia and abroad. He lives in retirement at Mosman, Sydney, where Robert Murray interviewed him in July. We might as well start with the date which sticks in my mind, which was the date of the declaration of war by Mussolini on England and France. I was attending the Gonzaga Institute, a private school run by the Christian Brothers in Milan. On that particular day, a Monday I remember well,…