Memory, suffering and dignity on the harshest fronts.
In these days of intense cold, when the frost makes itself felt again in our homes and in our mountains, it is impossible not to stop and think about how much our Alpini and our troops suffered during the ARMIR’s retreat from Russia.
Men forced to march for days through the snow, without shelter, without food, often without hope, facing not only the enemy but above all General Winter, who spared no one.
“It was good dry straw that the Alpini were finally sleeping on,
even fragrant, because it kept a distant smell of fields and summer…
the most beautiful dream for someone at risk of freezing to death…”
— Giulio Bedeschi, Centomila gavette di ghiaccio
In just a few lines, Giulio Bedeschi manages to convey what no military chronicle will ever fully render: the hunger, the frost, the exhaustion and the homesickness of the Alpini sent to fight and die in Russia.
A smell of straw that becomes comfort, a memory of summer that warms more than any blanket, while all around reign the white silence of the steppe and the breath of General Winter.
WHEN A BLANKET WAS WORTH A LIFE…
“20 January 1943.
The columns keep pushing, jostling one another. It is freezing. I cut a blanket into strips and wrap my feet. Saving my feet is too important; I am lucky enough still to have my boots, and at every halt I find the strength to keep moving my feet, to test the feeling in them, to keep the circulation going. Many have their feet wrapped in blankets, but it is as if they were walking barefoot in the snow.”
From the book “Mai tardi” by Nuto Revelli, Cuneo (1919 – 2004)
Alpini officer in Russia.
Sent far away, unprepared for the frost
The Alpini of the Russian Campaign did not leave as conquerors. They left as soldiers obeying orders, often without fully understanding the vastness, the harshness and the absurdity of that front.
They were sent by the thousands to an unknown land, poorly equipped, in uniforms unsuited to temperatures that fell well below thirty degrees below zero.
The cold was not just a weather condition: it was a constant presence, an enemy that got into your bones, that drained your strength, that stole your sleep and, slowly, your hope.
Of the roughly 230,000 Italian soldiers who left for Russia (ARMIR and related forces), about 85,000 never came back: many were killed in combat, died of cold and hardship during the retreat, or met their death in Soviet prison camps.
The Alpine Army Corps numbered more than 60,000 men at the start of the retreat. After the retreat and the battle of Nikolayevka, the survivors were a minority: about 13,420 Alpini got out of the pocket with another 7,500 wounded or frostbitten, while about 40,000 were left behind, dead in the snow, missing or captured.
To them, to those who stayed along the road, Nuto Revelli gave a voice with lines that have become the shared memory of an entire generation: a farewell from a soldier who stays behind, under the snow of Certkowo, near a birch wood, telling those going home that spring will come there too.
(The original Italian lines can be read in the Italian version of this article.)
The retreat: marches into the unknown
During the tragic retreat of the winter of 1942-43, many Alpini walked for days without enough food, without shelter, with frozen feet and hands made useless by the frost. Those who fell often never got up again.
And yet, in the midst of that tragedy, gestures were born that still define the Alpini spirit today: comrades held up by the arms, rucksacks shared, words whispered so as not to give in to the final silence.
They were not medal-winning heroes. They were men who did not want to leave another man alone.
SNOW AS A PILLOW – Marching west…
Bedeschi describes the column moving endlessly westwards across the Russian snow, leaving behind men who sank to their knees and could no longer get up, pulled down by the “demon of the snow”: “the snow is soft as a mattress and is not even cold… it looks like a pillow, you can stay there for just a minute…”.
Giulio Bedeschi, Centomila gavette di ghiaccio
26 January 1943 – Nikolayevka
On 26 January 1943 the battle of Nikolayevka was fought, one of the most dramatic episodes of the Russian Campaign. The Italian and German troops, worn out by fighting and frost, tried to break the Soviet encirclement in the great Don pocket.
In front of the village of Nikolayevka, defended by the Red Army, the attack was entrusted to the Tridentina Alpine Division, the only Italian unit still able to fight. The Vestone, Verona, Valchiese and Tirano battalions, later joined by Edolo and Valcamonica under the command of General Luigi Reverberi, faced a numerically superior and heavily armed enemy.
After hours of very hard fighting, in the snow and the frost, the Alpini managed to open a breach, but the price paid in dead and prisoners was extremely high.
Today Nikolayevka no longer exists, absorbed into the town of Livenka, but its name remains in Alpini memory as a symbol of sacrifice and resistance. Among those who survived that tragedy was Don Carlo Gnocchi, military chaplain of the Tridentina in Russia, who devoted the rest of his life to caring for the disabled and for children with polio.
A SHARED SOUP – Beyond the war…
Hungry, at sunset, with Russian bullets whistling past, Rigoni Stern knocks on the door of an isba, a typical Russian peasant house, and finds Red Army soldiers eating around the table. Rifle in hand, he asks for food. A woman fills a plate with milk and millet from the common pot and hands it to him; he shoulders his rifle and eats, while the soldiers watch him in silence, spoons in mid-air. He says thank you, she answers “you’re welcome”, and the soldiers let him go; the woman even gives him a honeycomb for his comrades. It is one of the most famous pages of Italian war literature: for a few minutes, the war stops.
Mario Rigoni Stern, Il sergente nella neve
Remembering today, out of respect
Remembering the Alpini who died in Russia does not mean glorifying a wrong war.
It means honouring the sacrifice of men sent to die far from home, often without a voice and without a choice.
For us Alpini today, memory is not rhetoric. It is responsibility. It is respect.
It is teaching the new generations that behind every name carved on a memorial stone there is a story of cold, fear, solidarity and love for one’s comrades.
This remembrance comes from the heart: from today’s cold, which allows us, at least for a moment, to imagine the cold of back then and to pay tribute to those who did not come home.
Related articles (in Italian): Visti dal nemico and Ritorno, perché un Alpino non lascia mai davvero casa.
