Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
Reverse:Marcia ItalicaD'Italia flammeggin le sante bandiereBaciate dal sole, baciate dal vento,Su l'aspro sentier di Bezzecca e di TrentoDe l'alma Trieste, sul cerulo mar.. . . Fratelli di Trento, Triestini fratelli,La patria s'è desta alla grande riscossa!Dell'aquila ingorda la barbara possaDai liberi petti domata sarà!Parole di Enrico MercataliMusica di Angelo Balladori.Casa Editrice Sonzogno - Milano. 1915.
"Two carabinieri took the lieutenant-colonel to the river bank. He walked in the rain, an old man with his hat off, a carabinieri on either side. I did not watch them shoot him but I heard the shots. They were questioning some one else. This officer too was separated from his troops. He was not allowed to make an explanation. He cried when they read his sentence from the pad of paper, and they were questioning another when they shot him. They made a point of questioning the next man while the man who had been questioned before was being shot. In this way there was obviously nothing they could do about it. I did not know whether I should wait to be questioned or make a break now. I was obviously a German in Italian uniform. I saw how their minds worked; if they had minds and if they worked. They were all young men and they were saving their country."
A lieutenant in the Italian Army Ambulance Corps and narrator of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry is caught up in the collapse of the Italian Second Army and the Italian retreat in the Battle of Caporetto. Having managed to evade German and Austro-Hungarian troops, he is seized at a bridge crossing the Tagliamento River. As Mark Thompson writes in his history of the Italian Front, The White War, 'an order on October 31 authorized any officer to shoot any soldier who was separated from his unit or offered the least resistance' (page 319). Henry is a junior officer speaking Italian with a foreign accent, and was, in the chaos of the retreat, separated from his unit.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, page 224, copyright © 1957 Ernest Hemingway, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1929
1917-10-31, 1917, October, Battle of Caporetto, Caporetto, execution, Italian army, Italian soldier