📚 THE COL MAÒR TELLS
Our Group has borne his name since 1964. In the second issue of the Col Maòr, Mario Dell’Eva devoted a long portrait to him: “Our General”. We reread it alongside the other papers in the archive.
House, garden, flowers, bees and bird-trap
In the Col di Salce years, Mario Dell’Eva remembers him “always on the move between house, garden, flowers, bees and bird-trap”. An old general among his beehives, who at the grave of Zaccaria Bortot, “his sharecropper and former orderly”, stood up to speak: Dell’Eva records his words.
Yet the portrait published by the Col Maòr in June 1964, signed “Dem.” (Dell’Eva himself), begins a long way from that garden: “Born in Verona, but a Bellunese by adoption, he spent almost all his military life in the 7th Alpini.” The exact dates would only come with an article of July 2011: Pietro Zaglio was born in Verona on 20 April 1885 and died on 16 June 1961.
His bond with Salce also ran through his wife. A September 1938 note in the parish bulletin, transcribed by the Col Maòr in 2004, tells how on 24 September 1913 the young officer married Nella Prosdocimi in Salce, where her family had its villa, and how he lived in Salce until the autumn of 1936.
The “Feltre” and a little girl at Agordo
He had started out as a volunteer in the 6th Alpini, then moved on to the Military School. In 1909 came his posting to the 7th Alpini: lieutenant in the “Feltre” battalion, 65th company. Dell’Eva does not let the coincidence pass: thirty-seven years later, that same company would be commanded by his son Giuseppe. At Agordo the young officer earned a commendation for saving a little girl who was about to be run over. With the “Feltre” he went on to fight in the Libyan war.
From Monte Nero to Mount Grappa
The Great War left its mark on his body. On Monte Nero, with the “Pinerolo” battalion, he was wounded for the first time, earning the bronze medal for military valour: “He led his unit very skilfully on the firing line. Wounded, he encouraged his men”. Then came upper Carnia and, in command of the “Monte Nero” battalion of the 8th Alpini, Pal Piccolo, Pal Grande, Freikofel. There he was wounded again, and did not give up his command.
After Caporetto came the retreat, fought step by step: the Mauria Pass, Piduel, Longarone, all the way to Mount Grappa. On the Col della Berretta the “Monte Clapier” battalion had lost its commander, and Zaglio volunteered to take his place. In the end, Dell’Eva writes, “only 14 men were left, almost all of them wounded”. His name went into the war bulletin; he himself went into captivity.
From Belluno to Libya
With peace restored, from 1 August 1919 he commanded the “Belluno” battalion for years. In 1932, as a colonel, he led the 67th Infantry in Como; two years later he was back in Belluno, this time at the head of the 7th Alpini. 1938 brought promotion to general, and with it Forlì and the “Rubicone” division. The Second World War sent him to Libya, where he commanded the “Pavia” division for three years until a serious war illness forced his repatriation; then it was the turn of the “Assietta” division, in Sicily. A Lieutenant General and a disabled veteran, he was placed on the Roll of Honour.
Back at Col di Salce
8 September 1943 found him “in his villa at Col di Salce, ill and tired, but still proud”. And there he stayed. After the war the offices piled up: he chaired the Nastro Azzurro association of decorated veterans, the Veterans’ Association, the ANA Belluno Section and the association of war invalids; he was a town councillor and commissioner of the civil hospital. And around the villa, the garden, the flowers, the bees.
The 1964 portrait takes its leave of him with an Alpini phrase: “one late afternoon he entered Cantore’s Paradise” — the heaven of the Alpini, named after General Antonio Cantore. Fifty years after his death, in 2011, the Group remembered him with a ceremony in Salce.
A name that stays in the family
The general’s name did not remain only on the pennant. That first pennant, in 1964, had been donated by his son Giuseppe, a lieutenant colonel and member of the Group (the story of the inauguration); the godmother was his daughter Eugenia, whom the Col Maòr recalls in 1989 as “Eugenia Zaglio Meloni”. His other son, Francesco, was also an alpino. Half a century later the scene repeated itself: for the Group’s 50th anniversary, in 2014, a new pennant was “kindly offered by the Zaglio family, with little Chiara as godmother”.
The 60th Anniversary Book adds his grandson Umberto, a medical colonel of the Alpini. And one object: the general’s tunic from 1913, the year of his wedding in Salce, which the Alpini Group of Albignasego (Padua) keeps together with a letter from an Austrian officer of the Paneveggio fort.
When the sources do not agree
- His rank at Caporetto. The 60th Anniversary Book says he was “wounded as a captain”; a testimony collected by the Col Maòr calls him “major” in October 1917, and the 1964 portrait also speaks of “the then major” on Mount Grappa.
- The promotion to captain. The 1964 portrait places it before the war; the 1938 note says it was “for war merit”.
- Rommel. The 1964 profile writes that the battalion won recognition even from the enemy, “the then major Rommel”: in 1917 Erwin Rommel was not yet a major, and the detail needs checking.
- The dates of birth and death come from the 2011 article and still await confirmation from the civil registers.
Help us remember
- Who knows the history of the villa at Col di Salce where the general lived?
- Who keeps photographs or documents of the Zaglio family in Salce?
Write to us from the Contact page: every contribution will be checked and, if confirmed, will enter MEMORIA.
