📚 FROM OUR ARCHIVE
Three young men on horseback on a mountain track, one in a vest, all three smiling. The same photograph has been published twice, with two different captions. Behind it lie two stories of Salce: that of a man who came back and that of a man who did not.
One photograph, two captions
The first time this photograph appears in the Col Maòr is in 2005, as a farewell to a member who had just died. Underneath it says: “From the left Arcangelo De Biasi, Antonio Coletti and Domenico Martin in Albania in 1941”. Nineteen years later the same picture turns up again in the 60th Anniversary Book, but the line beneath it has changed: “1942 Russian Campaign — First on the left Arcangelo De Biasi, last on the right Antonio Coletti (missing)”.
Albania or Russia? 1941 or 1942? Before trying to answer, it is worth getting to know the two men.
Arcangelo De Biasi, a fighter on three fronts
The young man on the left came from Canzan and was born in 1919. When the Col Maòr said goodbye to him in 2005, it gave him a headline that reads like a life story in itself: “A fighter on three fronts of the Second World War”. His call-up came on 10 March 1940, to the 7th Alpini, “Belluno” battalion; three months later, in June 1940, he came under fire for the first time on the French front. By the following winter he was in Albania: from 14 January to 23 April 1941 he fought on the Greek-Albanian front with the “Val Cismon” battalion.
With the “Val Cismon” battalion of the 9th Alpini, “Julia” division, he left for Russia on 16 August 1942 and stayed on the Don line until 21 March 1943. His battalion, the Col Maòr writes, suffered “93 per cent losses (1,609 out of 1,730)”. He came back. Yet he never talked about those months, “not even to his sons Loris and Dario”; at most, a word about the great cold. Home again, he worked all his life at the Belluno post office. His funeral was held on Monday 14 February 2005, in the church of Col di Salce.
Antonio Coletti, missing at Popovka
The other man, Antonio Coletti, enters the pages of the Col Maòr in 2008, in the series “So as not to forget them…”, in which Armando Dal Pont remembered the soldiers of the parish of Salce who died in war. He was born on 31 August 1914 at Godega di Sant’Urbano, near Treviso, the son of Luigi and Adelaide De Zotti. He worked the land as a sharecropper for the noble Giamosa family.
His war, too, had started early: in 1940 against France, with the “Belluno” battalion of the 7th Alpini; then, in 1941, the Greek-Albanian front and the Balkans, until April 1942. On 1 August 1942 he married Luigia Coletti, known as “Gieta”, and they had a daughter, Dolores. A fortnight later, on 16 August, Corporal Coletti of the “Val Cismon” left Aidussina for Russia. On the same troop train was his brother-in-law, Pietro Coletti of Col di Salce, born in 1918, who on 15 January 1943 would earn a bronze medal for military valour at Selenji Jar. Six days after that, on the fifth day of the retreat, the two men vanish together: listed as missing “in the action at Popovka, on 21.01.1943”.
Armando Dal Pont ended his piece with a line that binds the two stories together: “Among the few who came back… was Arcangelo De Biasi of Salce (1919 – 2005)”.
So, Albania or Russia?
For now the documents are not enough to decide, which is why we publish both captions. There are, however, a few clues:
- the original file kept by the Col Maòr in 2005 is named “…Russia_1941”, an impossible combination, because the Alpini left for Russia in August 1942;
- in 1941 both men were on the Greek-Albanian front, but according to the sources in different battalions: De Biasi in the “Val Cismon”, Coletti in the “Belluno”;
- in 1942, on the other hand, they were in the same battalion, the “Val Cismon”, and left on the same day.
None of these clues is proof. About Domenico Martin, the third rider, our papers say nothing more. What remains is the photograph: three young men on horseback on a mountain track, one in a vest, smiling at the camera without yet knowing which of them would come home.
Help us remember
- Who lent this photograph to the Col Maòr in 2005? Is there a copy with writing on the back?
- Who was Domenico Martin?
- Does anyone recognise the place of Antonio Coletti’s portrait, under the motto “In adversa ultra adversa”?
Write to us from the Contact page: every contribution will be checked and, if confirmed, will enter MEMORIA. The barracks where the local Alpini served are described in Our Alpine Barracks.
