Gianni Oliva
Ed. The Mondadori trails
pp. 233
In Italy, even today, there are controversial stories that can not be told freely and great soldiers of which we hear very rarely. Indeed, someone would want to relegate to this sort of oblivion entire military departments that, instead, have made the history of our Armed Forces.
In particular, the book "Combat" opens with the following question: what do the brave and the raiders of the MAS (Armored Torpedoes) of the Great War have in common with the paratroopers of the Division "Folgore", the raiders of the X ^ flottiglia MAS and the "gamma" men who fought in the II World War instead? According to Gianni Oliva, appreciated historian, those men share the approach to a specific political area, that of the right, and for this reason are victims of a real obscurantism that, through preconceptions and historical removals, tends to exclude them from the "vulgate historical "Italian. From this point of view, the initiative taken by 17 February 2000 by the then President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (the same who has re-established the celebration of the "2 June" and the relative parade) is emblematic: that day, after more than fifty 'years from the facts, he finally paid homage to the fallen of the battle of El Alamein, a place where today stands an Italian military memorial in memory of the thousands of young Italians who in that place, in' 42, found the death and where the highest tribute of blood was paid by the "Folgore" Division. Despite this initiative, which remained virtually isolated, Oliva underlines the fact that even today the average Italian citizen is reminded, with relative ease, of the Alpine troops fallen during the retreat from Russia, rather than the paratroopers who fell in El Alamein. Oliva wonders whether this is due to the fact that young paratroopers are generally considered "right", while talking about the Alpine sent by the fascist regime to the massacre in Russia would be "left". Fortunately, the story, the real one, is another.
The author, in particular, traces the events of the Italian special bodies starting from those relating to the departments of the "darers" of World War II: although they were decisive in many battles and forerunners of a new way of fighting, at the end of the confitto were dissolved in a hurry, as considered by those who were in power at the time, too "inconvenient" and potentially dangerous. The bolders and their model of combatism became, later on, icons of the Fascist regime and for this reason they were fatally bound to it. Therefore, Oliva underlines how in the collective imaginary we went to determine a wrong overlap, which still resists, between "assault department", "daring squadrist" and "daring fascist man", in which the original meaning was lost of "special department".
Even the raiders of the MAS, capable of making bold attacks on the Austro-Hungarian ships up to the enemy ports, will suffer and still suffer from such a fate. After the successes of World War I, the twenty years of fascism exploited them for their own purposes both military and political, so much so that the Xa MAS is still generally associated exclusively and wrongly with the terrible blood events that occurred during the Social Republic regime. In reality, the Xa flotilla, like all the Italian departments, was caught unprepared by the armistice and its ranks were divided on the two opposing belligerent faces. The author also reminds us of the origins of the underwater raiders and their exploits at the limit of the impossible during the two world wars and the equally daring ones of "gamma" men. Reading the stories of these departments you can appreciate how the remarkable technical-tactical and procedural innovations in the military field introduced with the creation of such units, were accompanied by technical and scientific innovations equally advanced for the time: in addition to the mentioned MAV, in the book is described as invented, experimented and introduced into service, the Slow Running Torpedoes (better known as "pigs"), self-contained breathing boats, explosive little boats and more. Surprising materials and technologies for the time, the result of Italian ingenuity.
Oliva, later, reports the historical events of the aforementioned Folgore Division and its paratroopers, from the birth of the specialty, going to the battle of El Alamein and the lesser known ones of Filottrano (commemorated a few days ago) and Neptune, until its reconstitution as a Republican Army Brigade in the post-war period. Even the paratroopers lived the armistice dramatically, arriving at the real fratricidal clash: Lieutenant Colonel Bechi, veteran of El Alamein, who immediately joined the Badoglio government, died at a roadblock in Sardinia, shot dead by a machine gun a paratrooper who, instead, chose to continue fighting with the Germans. Therefore, it is certainly not possible to homologate, as we tend to do in certain strongly politicized environments, the paratroopers to fascism. As mentioned, many of them, in the aftermath of the fateful 8 September, continued to fight for the so-called Republic of Salò, but many others, instead, did their best by fighting alongside the Allies in the war of Liberation. This is history. Everything else is revisiting history in a political key.
Finally, the author traces the stages of the reconstruction of our Armed Forces after the last war, focusing attention on special forces and special or specialized bodies. In particular, starting from the international political and military context and the national post-war period, Oliva reports the historical events of the "San Marco", the "Lagunari", the raiders of the COMSUBIN, the "Folgore" Brigade, the paratroopers Regiment 'Col Moschin' assault, of the Tuscania Regiment and of the 17 ° Air Force flock. Certainly, some departments are missing (for example, the 4 ° Alpine Paratroopers Regiment and the 185 ° Objective Acquisition Regiment) but the historian's book is still a good job, as it deals with the controversial question at the beginning of the book, free from political constraints. Furthermore, it reconstructs objectively, based on official documents, both the brilliant intuitions of the Major States of the Armed Forces and the obtuse backfalls to cooperate with each other and reports both the exalting successes and the resounding failures.
In short, Oliva shows that, contrary to what one wants to believe, our country has a tradition of respect for the special bodies, which continues today in the context of today's Armed Forces. Naturally, with time, the scenarios have changed. In fact, as the author writes, "if in the 42 the volunteer who made the raider founded his identity on the ideological motivation, on the adherence to a value model of time and on his moral coefficient, today's military volunteer is characterized by his own professionalism and autonomy operational. What has changed is not the individual attitudes necessary, nor the intensity of the training, but the cultural framework in which it operates [...] ". It is sad to see, however, how certain ideologies remain faithful to themselves, as if time did not flow and reality did not change with it. He knows something about Colonel Albamonte, who paid dearly the fact of being a paratrooper and always belonging to the State, considered hostile by some "historical" political fringes: 31 March 2011, in an attack claimed by the "Anarchist Federation Informal ", the Colonel, while he was in service at the" Ruspoli "barracks of the" Folgore "Brigade in Livorno, was seriously injured as a result of the explosion of a bomb pack. In that attack the Colonel lost his left eye, four fingers of one hand, much of the sight of his right eye and still bears the marks of other minor wounds. But it is a paratrooper and as such is used, unlike the person who sent the bombshell, to face openly and courageously the challenges of life: the Colonel is still in service and continues to provide, as always, his own contribution to "his" paratroopers, the Armed Forces and his country, despite a part of him consider him and the "Folgore" as targets to be hit in the framework of his political struggle.
Ultimately, "Combat" is a courageous book because, in contrast with a certain historical-political narrative inside (and foreign) that would want our nation and its people bound exclusively to known Italian stereotypes, it gives us back the memory of men and valiant departments, who have written important pages of the most recent history of Italy and which constitute a substantial part of the tradition of our Armed Forces.
Ciro Metuarata
