Italian World War II memoirs

Below are the accounts of two survivors from the heavy cruiser  Zara , sunk on 29 March 1941 in the battle of Cape Matapan. Both come from the book  Le battaglie navali del Mediterraneo nella seconda guerra mondiale , by Arrigo Petacco. I decided to include the first one as well because, although short and told in third person, unlike the other, it comes from someone who was on the bridge, next to  Zara ’s commanding officer, and thus gives some insight about what was happening there in those moments. The two accounts somewhat complement each other, as the first one ends as the Mediterranean Fleet opens fire on  Zara , and the second begins just after the shooting is over; the first survivor was up on the bridge, the second deep in the bowels of the ship.   The first account is from Sub-Lieutenant Giorgio Parodi, on the bridge. At 22:25 a red signal was spotted to port. “That is  Pola ”, Captain Luigi Corsi ( Zara ’s commanding officer) told Parodi. The...

“ 6-7 March 1941. We have to return to the right bank of the Osum for the offensive. We leave in the evening and we cross again the river (…), and on the following day, in the evening, we reach the ridge of the Mali Trepelit where the mountain artillery is still in place with – I think – two batteries. We set up camp with makeshift tents. A field mass is held for the entire battalion. The rite is impressive  [as the soldiers were given general absolution  in articulo mortis  – which means right before death – by the chaplain, in anticipation of an impending assault]”.   “ 24 April 1941. We enter Greece. The landscape starts changing a little. The villages are more numerous and better looking than those in Albania. The mountains are more rocky and imposing, their slopes have more trees. By now the Greek resistance is almost nil. On the doorstep of some Greek houses, peasants offer some coffee to the Alpini. This gesture surprised me a lot, as the Greek soldiers ha...

Some excerpts from the diary of Sergeant Ettore Galeotti, 25 years old, from Milan, of the 11th Alpini Regiment, 5th Alpini Division "Pusteria": “ 10 January 1941. During these days I got to know better the alpini in my squad: corporal first class Remondino, chief machine gunner Blandino, machine gun carrier Albri, ammunition carriers Capri, Ambrosi and Caveglia, as well as riflemen Vair, Actis, Cugno, Mussino, Albertini. I immediately bonded with them. As soon as they learned that I was a newly-promoted reserve sergeant, and thus I was not a career NCO, and that I had performed my military service in the Trento and Bassano Battalions, always together with the Venetian “pais” [Venetian dialect: paisans] (…) I became “one of them”. They are all good men. One day, along with the food rations, some mail came, as well as a message from the regimental command informing that alpini Cugno and Albri had been awarded the Bronze Medal for Military Valor. We could not celebrate becaus...

Early in the war, a number of bragozzi and trabaccoli , traditional Adriatic sailing boats, were requisitioned and turned into landing craft, as proper landing craft had not yet been built.   A brief, colorful anecdote on this transformation comes from Vero Roberti’s book “Con la pelle appesa a un chiodo”:    “ …the names I use for the four skippers aren’t the ones written on the civil registry, as they had been invented in a famous inn in an Adriatic port where on stormy evenings all sailors, fishermen and skippers gathered. Bragòz, skipper of Maria Rosa, as good as gold, red nose, belly as big as the prow of a bragozzo; Falchetta, skipper of Anselmina, wiry, a face preserved in vinegar, a thin nose that was as hooked as the beak of a buzzard; Semaforo, skipper of Maria Liberata, as lanky as a stack pole, with a bald head that shone more than the lighthouse of Castel di Mezzo; Gratusa, skipper of Padre Eterno, wild and ill-tempered as a cat that has been stroked...

Libeccio , a Maestrale-class destroyer, was torpedoed and sunk by HMS Upholder on 9 November 1941. Her sinking is thus described by  capitano di fregata  (Commander) Corrado Tagliamonte, her commanding officer, in his report:   “ 06.40 – A violent explosion astern. All the aftermost part of the ship, including the aft [120 mm] mount and part of the aft engine room skylight, suddenly disappear. A large part of the personnel who are in the stern are thrown into the water. The ship develops a considerable list to starboard, 15-20 degrees, and goes down by the stern as if she was about to sink, while clouds of steam escape from the stern. I have the clear impression that Libeccio is going to sink any minute now and that time must not be wasted to save the crew. I therefore order the bridge personnel to jump overboard and give also order for the Carley rafts to be launched. Then, I go down from the bridge and I go on the forecastle, I give order to launch the motor launch...

Sottocapo  (Leading Seaman) Alberto Arcene (pen name of Alberto Ferrari, from Padua) describes in his memoirs (“L’ultima torpediniera per Tunisi”) the situation in Naples in the early summer of 1943:   “ …one morning they summoned me to the orderly room: I had been assigned to the Naples submarine chaser flotilla. (…) The first submarine chaser was ready – the first of the flotilla. (…) After a disastrous voyage, I reached Naples in the evening. I showed up at the anti-submarine personnel’s barracks near the harbour station, where I saw only a sentry and the petty officer of the watch. The others were in the nearby tunnel, used as an air raid shelter. The petty officer advised me to go with them. It was better to sleep in the tunnel, the bombers came every night. “What kind of music, you’ll hear!” I reached the tunnel and I clumped with civilians and sailors, in a disgusting medley. There were people who had been living in there for months. What a stench! A heterogeneous m...

The heavy cruiser Pola  was sunk in the battle of Cape Matapan, on 28 March 1941. Attacked by torpedo bombers, she was disabled by a torpedo hit in the engine rooms that left the ship dead in the water and powerless, unable to move her turrets and therefore use her guns; after the rest of her cruiser division, dispatched to her rescue, had been ambushed and destroyed by the battleships of the Mediterranean Fleet, the helpless  Pola  was boarded by the destroyer HMS  Jervis , that took off the part of the crew that was still aboard, and was then finished off with torpedoes.   Seventeen-year-old gunner Giuseppe Anzevino, hailing from a village of Campania, was one of the 1,041 men aboard  Pola  on that night (from “La guerra dei radar. Il suicidio dell’Italia (1935-1943)” by Piero Baroni):   “ After some days [mid-March 1941], we started to make a lot of preparations. We sailed. Nobody knew where we were going. But we were to join the [battl...