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@lae
Interesting stories here.
My maternal grandparents are from Italy. My grandmother is from a tiny village on a mountain pass on the border with Austria, called Timau. During the war they were so hungry that they ate the family cat. When they were finally liberated, they heard that the Americans had a truck-full of bread down in the valley, so the family went down and picked up a bun each; my grandmother ate hers on the walk back home. Her mother kicked her out of the house just after the war (no work in Italy) and she got on a train to Normandy, then got to London, and was given a train ticket saying 'Colchester', which is where she still lives.
My grandfather is from another tiny village north of Naples. He was too young to fight during the war and he and his family fled and lived in caves and shacks in the mountains. They could hear the guns at Montecassino, and he said he could see mortar shells flying overhead. Some of their livestock escaped and wandered onto a minefield and got blown up. After the war he and his brothers helped to rebuild the village, but in the early 50s they all left Italy. My grandfather worked as a farmhand in Switzerland and France before moving to the UK, where he met my grandmother and worked in a factory. His brothers moved to New York. A few months ago I found his old village on Google streetview, which he found very entertaining - he pointed out all the houses of his friends and family. He's an excellent cook and has won 'best allotment' every year for as long as I can remember, although sadly he has had to give it up this year, due to ill health.
I don't know much about any of my other ancestors. My stepdad's grandmother passed away a couple of years ago - she was from Shrewsbury and got the train to Colchester in the 1930s to visit a friend. Unfortunately her shoe broke and she didn't have enough money to get it fixed, so she got a job in a hotel and never left.