With the deposition of a laurel wreath at the monuments dedicated to the memory of the fallen in their units, the “Folgore” paratrooper brigade today commemorated the 78th anniversary of the battle of El Alamein. The commemoration took place in a reduced form and in compliance with the rules of social distancing and containment of the contagion from COVID-19.
Seventy-eight years ago the paratroopers, deployed in defense at El Alamein, along a front of 15 kilometers with an unequal balance of forces, were able to resist beyond the imaginable, with incredible determination and energy, the repeated attacks of the adversaries, rejecting any attempt to break through and inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. At the cost of great sacrifices, about 1.100 dead, wounded and missing, the unexpected resistance, which lasted for a week, forced the English commands to suspend any further initiative on that front.
The commander of the “Folgore”, Brigadier General Beniamino Vergori, underlined how, despite the physical distancing imposed by the measures to combat the pandemic emergency, the Army paratroopers remain indissolubly united in the memory of the sacrifice of the fallen. His message to the brigade units reads: "For our homeland, the paratroopers have given a lot and continue to give even today with the same strength, intensity and tenacity, with the same courage and for the same characteristic values of the soldier of all time who showed us the 'Way of Duty' . All this is still today the Folgore, that is what it has been, what it represents today and what it will always be ".
The "Folgore" paratrooper brigade is a large unit of the Italian Army which, maneuvering in the third dimension, is able, even at short notice, to plan, prepare and conduct any type of military operation by deploying its own units even at strategic distances.
The personnel of the “Folgore” paratroopers brigade is constantly engaged, even with small groups or individual specialists, in almost all national and international operations where the Italian Armed Forces are employed.
