The group leader who gave the Salce Alpini a home
At the end of 1987 the little house in Col di Salce has a dark door, a lamp above the entrance and the house number painted beside it. In front of it stand the parish priest, a few men in raincoats, a line of Alpini. One of them is reading from a sheet of paper. The 60th anniversary book has kept that photograph with a two-line caption: «The group leader’s speech. At the inauguration of our first headquarters, Decimo Colbertaldo thanks everyone for their hard work».
For more than twenty years the Salce Alpini Group had had only a «makeshift headquarters», as Decimo himself called it. That day, for the first time, the Salce Alpini walked into a house of their own. It was above all he who had brought them there.
A home for the Group
In the annual report read at the general meeting at the end of 1985, group leader Decimo Colbertaldo put the problem in black and white: given «the setting in which we have so far had a makeshift headquarters», the Board had asked the Salce nursery school for a room for Board meetings and the hall for the general meeting, and Father Gioachino Belli had said yes. But Decimo was looking further ahead: «there seems to be another possibility, which will also commit us financially», and he hoped it would «soon become reality». A footnote added shortly afterwards told of the disappointment: the place had been let to someone else.
It took two more years. In July 1987, the Col Maòr announced under the headline «Salce: habemus sedem!», «a nine-year contract was signed between the owners of a small house in Col di Salce and Decimo Colbertaldo, group leader pro tempore». The Salce sports club and the blood donors would also have their base there. So ended a story «begun two years ago with much enthusiasm, hope and plans», driven by the parish priest, «which seemed compromised, but was never abandoned».
The rent was «rather high», and the house, in the newsletter’s words, was «like a wash-house»: it had to be cleaned, whitewashed and furnished, with two small rooms on the ground floor to be sorted out. There was work for Saturdays and Sundays, for masons, carpenters, tilers and electricians, but above all, the Col Maòr wrote in capital letters, there was a need for «PLENTY OF GOODWILL AND ENTHUSIASM». The goodwill came: the list of members who worked there includes Decimo himself, his nephew Cesare, Toni Tamburlin, Ernesto Barattin, Mario De Luca, Mario Dell’Eva and many others.
In December the Col Maòr could write that the Salce Group’s headquarters «has been inaugurated, blessed and opened to members», with opening hours for everyone: Saturdays from 5 to 7 pm, Sundays from 10 am to noon.
From the Board to the leadership of the Group
Decimo Colbertaldo was already on the Group’s Board in 1967, a few years after the founding of the Group, when it was led by Giovanni Dal Pont. In the early issues of the newsletter he often appears for a specific skill: in 1968, for the «Pusteria» gathering, «Decimo is already committed, as sound technician, to the loudspeaker service»; at the 1976 Alpine Befana he is the one «in charge of the amplification system», and his assistant greets the Befana’s procession… with the march of the Bersaglieri.
On 4 December 1981 the newly elected Board met to allocate the posts. «Decimo Colbertaldo emerged as group leader with eight preferences», the Col Maòr reported, after the six years of Ezio Caldart and the twelve of the first group leader. Decimo thus became the third group leader in the history of the Salce Alpini, and led the Group from 1982 to 1987.
His first annual report begins with a greeting and an admission: «This is my first report as group leader». He thanks the young people who have joined the life of the Group, those who set up the nativity scene on the steps of the war memorial, whoever fixed the flagpole. Then he lists the three things that hold an Alpine year together: the Befana, the National Gathering, the outing. On the names of those who helped he stops: «I will not name names, because I might make some unpleasant omissions».
The National Gatherings were his ground. In Trieste, in 1984, the newsletter wrote: «Well done Decimo Colbertaldo and Bepi Savaris of the Salce Group, who organised the tents and the provisions». For Bergamo, in 1986, anyone who wanted to sleep under canvas had to «get in touch with group leader Decimo Colbertaldo or Giuseppe Savaris». At the Group’s twentieth-anniversary celebration in 1984 he was given a pennant painted by Bruna Dal Farra, as were the two group leaders before him, Giovanni Dal Pont and Ezio Caldart.
Deputy and councillor
At the elections of 22 November 1987 the leadership went back to Ezio Caldart and Decimo became his deputy for 1988-1990, and again after 1990. The Col Maòr finds him in the everyday life of the headquarters: in 1988 among those who smartened up its façade; in 1989 and 1990 as one of the two telephone numbers for booking the outing.
In 1992 the newsletter celebrated his silver wedding anniversary with Marzia Callegari. Twenty-five years later, at the general-meeting celebration of 2017, the Group marked their fifty years of marriage, and Decimo and Marzia gave the Alpini a new tricolour flag, to be used at ceremonies in place of the «historic and enormous flag». «And, of course, thank you Decimo! Thank you Marzia!», the Col Maòr concludes.
The pennant, the Gatherings, the family
He never stopped being there. In 2014, at the Pordenone Gathering, he joined the Group for lunch with his brother Ciso. The same year, with Elvio Marchetti, he carried the Group’s pennant to Milovice in the Czech Republic, where a hundred years earlier Italian soldiers taken prisoner on the Karst had died of hunger and disease. In 2016, in Asti, he went with his nephew Cesare, then group leader, to visit a cousin who was a cloistered nun in Costigliole. And in 2024 his name was still on the list of the Board of the sixtieth anniversary.
The Colbertaldo family runs through the whole history of the Group. Decimo was the son of Cesare Colbertaldo and Maria Scremin, and the brother of Carlo – the father of Cesare, group leader from 2012 – and of Ciso; his nephew Cesare, who in 1982 appears beside him and his wife Marzia among the volunteers at the outing, would become group leader thirty years later.
6 June 2025
Decimo Colbertaldo went ahead on 6 June 2025. His memorial card read «He went ahead strong and convinced in his faith», and the Col Maòr added: «…always proudly Alpine!». «Those who, sadly now few, know the history of the Salce Alpini Group», the newsletter wrote, «know that Decimo was always present, with his passion and his willingness, in the life of our association». On the cover, under his photograph, a two-word farewell: «Ciao, Vecio!».
In the funeral homily Father Giorgio spoke of the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. A little over nine months later Marzia too was gone. Their children remain, Daniele, an Alpine member of the Group, and Isabella. And there remains, for those who know the Group’s history, the image of a group leader who, in front of a door in Col di Salce, takes the floor to thank the others.
Dates
Decimo Colbertaldo’s year of birth is not yet documented in the sources consulted.
| 1967 | Already on the Group’s Board; marries Marzia Callegari (silver wedding in 1992) |
| 1968 | Sound technician for the loudspeaker service at the «Pusteria» gathering |
| 1976 | In charge of the amplification system at the Alpine Befana |
| 4 December 1981 | The Board elects him group leader |
| 1982-1987 | Group leader, the third in the Group’s history |
| 1984 | Trieste: organises tents and provisions with Bepi Savaris; receives the twentieth-anniversary pennant |
| July 1987 | Signs the nine-year contract for the little house in Col di Salce, the Group’s first headquarters |
| December 1987 | The headquarters is inaugurated; Decimo gives the speech of thanks |
| 1988-1993 | Deputy group leader with Ezio Caldart |
| 2014 | Carries the pennant to Milovice with Elvio Marchetti |
| 2017 | Fifty years of marriage; with Marzia he donates a tricolour flag to the Group |
| 2024 | On the Board of the sixtieth anniversary |
| 6 June 2025 | Goes ahead |
In the MEMORIA network
- The board today, of which he was a member until 2025
- Mario De Luca, among the volunteers who fitted out the first headquarters
- Antonio «Toni» Tamburlin, elected to the Board with him in 1981
- Ernesto Barattin, at work in the little house in Col di Salce
- Antonio «Toni» Fratta, on the Board in the 1980s
- Mario Dell’Eva, secretary of the Group and voice of the Col Maòr
- The Alpine Befana
- The Salce Alpini Group
- The Col Maòr
Sources
- Col Maòr no. 1/1967; no. 4/1968; no. 6/1969; no. 1/1970; no. 6/1972; no. 1/1976
- Col Maòr no. 1/1982 (election as group leader); nos. 3-4 and 6/1982 (first annual report); nos. 1-2 and 3/1984; no. 6/1985; no. 1/1986 (annual report and headquarters)
- Col Maòr nos. 1, 4 («Salce: habemus sedem!»), 5 and 6/1987; no. 4/1988; no. 4/1989; nos. 1 and 6/1990; no. 5/1992; no. 6/1993
- Col Maòr no. 3/2009; no. 4/2011; 2014 Gathering special; no. 4/2014; 2016 Gathering special; no. 4/2017; no. 1/2018
- Col Maòr no. 2/2025, cover and p. 19, «Decimo è “andato avanti”…»; no. 1/2026
- 60th anniversary book of the Salce Alpini Group (2024), pp. 120, 124-125, 128-129
Note: Col Maòr no. 2/2025 gives his two terms as «from 1982 to 1988»; the 60th anniversary book and the Col Maòr issues of 1981-1987 place the handover to Ezio Caldart at the November 1987 elections.
