Italian funeral in Rybnik, Silesia, 1921

Another picture offered by my friend Filippo (thanks!) and a nice challenge, as it hasn’t any legend. But thanks to some seearches on Google and the help of my favorite French forum, I was able to find the date and the location of the event. Let me explain how it was possible.
First, an analysis of the photograph. It clearly shows a funeral, with soldiers. They are coming from the big church in the background. Two trucks are carrying coffins, which are 4, maybe 5. The soldiers were Adrian-style helmets and there are several civilians.

Italian funeral in Rybnik, May 1921

And there’s this little roadsign, we can read “Pless 32 km”. Let’s search on Google! We can find a little village with such a name in Germany, but it’s too small to explain the presence of road signs at a 32 km distance. But Pless was until 1921 a German town  in Silesia, before its annexion to Poland (it took then the name of Pszczyna). And they were indeed allies occupation troups in Silesia between 1920 and 1922, with some deaths because of riots. I wasn’t able to find a trace of riots with several French deaths in the same time. On the other hand, Italian soldiers, who had the helmet Adrian too, had 15 losses on 2 and 3 May 1921 in Czerwionka, all of them belonging to 32th Reggimento di Fanteria (you can read an article about Italian forces in Silesia here). This town was about 34 km away from Pless. I then just had to rad the Italian press of May 1921 to search the location of the funeral. According to the La Stampa, they were organized in Rybnik. And guess what, St. Antonio’s Basilica in this town is identical. I was then able to find on a Polish forum another pic of the same funeral.