📚 THE COL MAÒR TELLS
Ten years after its birth, the Group celebrated up high, on the hill that gives its name to the newsletter. Mario Dell’Eva described it “behind the scenes and on stage” in the December 1973 issue.
“6 am: it’s raining!”
“Sunday morning, 30 September. 6 am: it’s raining!… 6.30: it’s stopped.” That is how Mario Dell’Eva, known to everyone as “Dem”, noted the dawn of a day a year in the waiting. From the windows of the Bettin house he was watching the work on the Col Maòr through binoculars, and he had reason to keep his eyes glued to them: it had rained right up to Friday, and he himself had been in hospital, getting out only just in time.
The idea had come twelve months earlier, in a passing remark from a board member: “You know, we must hold a celebration on the Col Maor”. And, to win him over, the clinching argument: “I’ve organised ten feasts of St Bartholomew! Do you think I can’t manage…”. The Board said yes “unanimously” to a programme in two parts. The morning would belong to the Knights of Vittorio Veneto, the veterans of the First World War, “Alpini and non-Alpini”; the afternoon to the celebration. Dell’Eva later wrote it all up for the December 1973 Col Maòr under the title “Behind the scenes and on stage”.
The Knights’ morning
At 9 the canteen opened and the Ponte nelle Alpi band came up. The Group’s “boce”, its young Alpini, were nearly all there. Of the nineteen Knights of Vittorio Veneto from Salce, fourteen came.
At 10.30 don Gioacchino Belli said Mass. By then, Dell’Eva writes, he was “considered our Group chaplain more than our parish priest”. The speeches followed. Group leader Giovanni Dal Pont went back over “the history of these ten years of life” and remembered the members who were no longer there. Giuseppe Rodolfo Mussoi, president of the Belluno Section, praised what the Group had done, the Col Maòr among it. Mayor Piero Zanchetta praised the simplicity of the ceremony.
The “boce” hand medals to the “veci”
Then came the medals. They were silver, a gift from the Group, and each carried the ANA badge, the Group’s name and the name of the man receiving it. The first three were handed over by the mayor, the Section president and the Group leader. All the rest were presented by the young Alpini, the “boce”, who had asked to be the ones to do it. For each Knight his service record was read aloud, and Dell’Eva noted: “A few furtive tears, many shining eyes.”
One of those old soldiers was Giovanni “Nani” De Menech, born in 1896. A few weeks later he sat down and wrote to the newsletter: thank you for the invitation “to the fine celebration organised for the 10th anniversary of the Col Maor newsletter and of the Alpini Group of Salce (a pity about the weather!)”, and thank you for the medal he had received “as an old combatant”.
Rain, tents and accounts
The weather, indeed. At 12.10 the rain came back, and lunch ended up under two tents lent by a military unit, the same one that had supplied the kitchens. In his account “Dem” thanked the members the way the village knew them, by their nicknames: “the Cisos, the Gìos, the Cicis, the Cencios, the Ezios, the Renzos, the Italos, the Nanis, the Marios”. Along with them he thanked the Municipality of Belluno and the “Cadore” Alpine Brigade. The pennants of several Groups from the area had come up to the meadow, among them Belluno Città, Castion, Sois, Ponte nelle Alpi, Sospirolo and Trichiana.
The newsletter did not stop at thank-yous: it printed the accounts too. The celebration had closed at a loss, and the gap was filled by donations from members, by the Parish of Salce and by the Group’s own funds. There was room for a jab as well: not a single officer of the 7th Alpini had come up the Col Maòr, although “the commander of the 7th is traditionally a member of our Group”.
Ten years since when?
The 60th Anniversary Book comes back to the celebration on four pages: three times the date is 30 September 1973, once it is 1974. The account written at the time settles the matter: it was Sunday 30 September 1973. The ten years were counted from the Group’s foundation in 1963 (the story of the Group’s birth). In his letter, though, Nani De Menech was also celebrating the tenth birthday of the Col Maòr, born in 1964 (the history of the newsletter). For the old soldier born in 1896, that rainy Sunday on the Col Maòr had marked both.
Help us remember
- Can you recognise the people in the photographs of the celebration on the Col Maòr?
- The full list of the Knights honoured is in the December 1973 Col Maòr, but our copy is partly illegible: does anyone keep an original?
Write to us from the Contact page: every contribution will be checked and, if confirmed, will enter MEMORIA.
