Gruppo Alpini "Gen. Pietro Zaglio" di Salce – ANA Belluno Section
Help the living to honour the dead – Nardo Caprioli
What is the true story of the Ponte di Perati? Behind the famous Alpini song lie the Julia Division, the dramatic Greek campaign of 1940, a bridge that was genuinely fought over and destroyed during the withdrawal, and the testimony of those who lived through those days. The history, memory and legend of one of the symbolic places of the Alpini tradition.
An editorial on Hartog’s “presentism”, the Genoa Adunata and the true meaning of Alpinità: why remembering the past helps build the future.
The Boys of Aosta ’41 were the university students who attended the first Reserve Officer Cadet Course at the Aosta Military Alpine School. Many volunteered and paid for their service with their lives in the Second World War. A tribute their story deserves.
August 1917, the Isonzo front. Arturo Toscanini, who has come to the front to visit his son Walter, serving in the artillery, persuades General Capello to let him put together a military band. On 26 August he leads it to the summit of Monte Santo, captured only hours earlier, and conducts marches and anthems there for four days under Austrian fire.
In 1918 Helen Johns Kirtland, an American photographer for Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, followed the battles of the Piave and Monte Grappa from the front line, documenting Italian soldiers with courage and skill. Her photographs, kept at the Library of Congress, tell a story long left in the shadows.
After Caporetto, Veneto and the Belluno area lived through a year of occupation, famine and deportations: the “An de la Fan”, the year of hunger, and the silent resistance of its people.
More than 2,000 military cableways and 2,300 km of rope: how the Italian Corps of Engineers supplied the high-altitude trenches of the Great War, in the words of a 1917 war correspondent.
September 1918: the Italian 35th Division under General Mombelli in the last battles on the Macedonian front, the Bulgarian collapse, the truth about the “10,000 prisoners” and the occupation of Bulgaria.
Duilio Pitto, a founding member of the Salce Alpini Group, recounts his escape from German captivity in Fiume in 1943 with a perfectly forged leave pass.
Where do the words sergeant and marshal come from? The etymology and history of Italian non-commissioned officer ranks, from the Middle Ages to the reforms of 2001.
