Gianni Oliva
Ed.LEG, Gorizia 2022
pagg.128
The author dedicates this essay to the battle of El Alamein, fought between 23 October and 6 November 1942, aware that it “we have always spoken little and with discomfort” because “associated with fascist combativeness and the exalted daring of the paratroopers of the Folgore division”. The memory associated with the Alpine troops involved in the Russian campaign is very different, however. “has become a symbol of the price paid by an entire generation for the regime's adventurism, conveyed in the collective imagination by novels of great editorial success”. Paratroopers and Alpine troops are, however, “protagonists and victims of that same season and both faced death to follow the voice of honor, loyalty, duty”.
Trained at the Tarquinia school, the paratroopers will immediately realize “that the war proclaimed in the textbooks and transfigured in the Giochi del Littorio becomes the inglorious hell of El Alamein. The parachutes are just baggage, destined to be lost at the first unfortunate clash. Nobody talks about launches anymore”. And it was precisely in Tarquinia that, in the summer of 1942, from the union of the three paratrooper regiments, the “Folgore” division was born, having as its cultural fathers the Foreign Legion and the daring spirit of the Great War.
The first use of the Folgore took place during the Greek campaign, in Cephalonia, a modest undertaking which, however, was presented, by the media, as “a victory of courage and daring, where the power of weapons and machines is subjected to the will of the fighter.” In the summer of 1942, it was decided to deploy paratroopers in North Africa. Under the command of Marshal Graziani, who tried to convince Mussolini that it was impossible to conduct an offensive worthy of the name, 220.000 men began the enterprise on September 9th with the conquest of Sidi el-Barrani, an Egyptian village that the English had in fact given up on defending, preferring a tactical retreat. At dawn on December 9th, the English counterattack began. equipped with armored vehicles of higher quality than the Italian ones. Graziani writes to Mussolini “declaring that he was in the condition of a captain commanding a ship about to sink because it had leaks on every side.”
On February 7, with the fall of Benghazi, the English reconquest was completed. “It was the worst of Italy’s defeats, and what’s more, it was widely covered in the media.” At his request, Graziani will be replaced. General Gariboldi will take his place.
Germany, determined to give Italy a hand in Africa, plays the Rommel card, who will arrive in Libya on February 15 and who, on March 30, will begin the counterattack, reconquering Benghazi and Bardia. The English will lose “everything they had conquered two months earlier and the Axis recovered the border line, with the sole exception of Tobruk,” which will be conquered on June 21st. On June 23rd, Hitler gives the green light for the advance into Egypt, towards Alexandria and Cairo, which, however, will have to take place “with the forces available on the field, without counting on the arrival of reinforcements from Germany because for Hitler the primary objective remains the Russian front”.
The bastion of El Alamein is the last obstacle to the occupation of Cairo and Alexandria. Rommel's troops, however, are “now exhausted, with reduced ranks and without reserves”. However, he attempts the attack three times, but fails, attributing “the failure was due to the inability of the Italians to guarantee supplies by sea, to the lack of fuel and spare parts, to the ease with which the enemy intercepted and sank convoys in the Mediterranean”. To compensate for the losses, reinforcements were sent from both Germany and Italy. Italy thus decided to transfer the “Folgore” division to Africa, starting in mid-July.
“At the end of August, the Folgore positions were visited directly by Rommel and Kesselring, who congratulated General Frattini directly for the efficiency of his unit”. Meanwhile, Rommel, aware “that his forces are in an unfavorable tactical and strategic situation,” is inclined towards a retreat but both the Italian Supreme Command and General Kesselring are not in favour of this hypothesis. The English, under the command of General Montgomery, are preparing the attack, which will take place at 21.00:23 pm on XNUMX October and which will, however, encounter Italian-German resistance that will delay the plans for the English offensive. “A succession of efforts, changes of direction, artillery fire, explosions transform El Alamein into an inferno dominated by fire and the smell of diesel fuel, while the ground fills with mangled bodies.”
The all-out defense by the Folgore paratroopers gives rise to “in those hours the myth of the paratrooper fighter, ready to fight with any means”. The battle of El Alamein, therefore, “consecrates in the imagination the myth of the courage of the paratroopers because they represent the strenuous will to fight in an atmosphere marked instead by resignation and the premonition of defeat”. On October 25, upon his return to the front from a period of convalescence, Rommel realizes that the only solution is to retreat. But, on the afternoon of November 3, a letter arrives from Berlin, “the peremptory order to maintain the front line at all costs and to resist to the bitter end.” At dawn on November 4, Montgomery launched the decisive attack.
To the Folgore paratroopers, at 14 pm.00 “an English armoured car with a loudspeaker offers to surrender with military honours, but the paratroopers respond “Folgore” and shoot”. At 14.00 pm on November 6, Colonel Camosso decides to surrender: “with him there are 304 survivors of the 5.000 troops who arrived in July from Italy”.
Gianlorenzo Capano
