Salvatore Torre and the battle of Pljevlja

Salvatore Torre, a private in the V Battaglione Genio Alpino (5th Alpine Engineers Battalion), was assigned to the communications unit of the divisional headquarters of the 5th Alpine Division “Pusteria”, stationed in Montenegro for occupation and anti-partisan duties between July 1941 and August 1942. He thus remembered, many years later, the battle of Pljevlja, fought in early December 1941, when the “Pusteria” repelled an assault by some 4,000 Yugoslav partisans:

"I was in Pljevlja, on the night of 1 December 1941, at the divisional headquarters. Already on the previous day, the I [Intelligence] Section, headed by Lt. Peduzzi while Colonel Castagnero was away on leave, had forewarned us of an impending attack by the partisans. That night, therefore, few men went to bed, and even those who did remained fully dressed. I remember that someone ordered me to go to General Esposito’s room in order to help his orderly. The General was not there, but he came shortly afterwards. He was pale, he sat at his desk and started to write something. Perhaps he was making his will, perhaps he writing down what was happening around us. The General was ill, to the point that Lieutenant Mascheroni brought him a hot drink, maybe chamomile, maybe tea. At some point we heard like a great murmur coming from the road below. It was the partisans, who were cautiously approaching our headquarters. I and the General’s orderly (I don’t remember his name, but, if I am not mistaken, he was awarded a Silver Medal) started to throw some hand grenades through a slit between the sandbags that had been placed in front of the window. The orlderly then brought a wooden box containing shells of various calibers. My task was to choose the shells of a certain size and insert them in the magazine of a machine gun, which started firing, always through the slit between the sandbags, without being able to see the targets, because of the darkness. We were firing blindly, almost as a deterrent to try to scare off the enemy. But we knew that soon the partisans would break down the wooden back gate of the headquarters and would come up behind us and swoop in on us. We knew that none of us would survive, yet we weren’t afraid. There was, how can I explain, a sense of resignation; it seemed to us that our death would be a natural outcome of that attack. Yes, we thought about our families far away, but without any fear. I do not know how much time passed, we kept firing into the darkness and I was having more and more difficulties in finding the shells of the right caliber. I remember that Lt. Mascheroni came (he came several times) and told the General more or less these words: “General, if we stay like this, we risk to die like rats; we might as well try to make a sortie”. And so we did. Everybody gathered in the courtyard of the divisional headquarters, armed with rifles and hand grenades. It was still dark, even though dawn was not far off. It was cold. At a signal, the wooden gate was thrown open and all of us started throwing hand grenades. The partisans sought refuge in the nearby houses, from where they opened fire on us. We started hunting down snipers, it was a fight with no quarter. A cannon shot decapitated the bell tower, ending the heavy gunfire that had been coming from it. I witnessed the assault that the Alpini carried out to recapture the old fort that the partisans had previously occupied (…) the small fort, overlooking the town, was again in our hands".

Alpini of the "Pusteria" Division in Montenegro, winter of 1941-1942