The Redipuglia Ossuary climbing the slopes of the Carso above the Via Eroica.
Italy remembers World War One – la Grande Guerra – a bit differently than World War Two. First off, they were on the winning side in the first war. Second, a little over a hundred thousand more Italians died during the First than the Second – 651,000 to 689,000 compared to approximately 500,000. The vast cost of the First War in treasure and men along with THE thought by Italians as unfair results of their sacrifices at the treaty tables at the war’s end ended destabilizing the nation. Enter the Blackshirts and Benito Mussolini.
Flagpole atop Monte San Michele remembers the Italian brigades who fought here as well as the Unknown Soldier in Rome whom was one of the Fallen from the battles here.
Monte San Michele. Welcome to one of the battlefields upon where so many Italians, as well as their opponents from Austria-Hungary, spilled blood during the 1915 to 1916. These campaigns fought in the harsh limestone hills just east off the Isonzo River. The extreme efforts of that long year and three months remembered by King Vittorio Emanuele III’s proclamation in 1922 of the hill’s inclusion as a zona sacra, a place of special memory to the Italian nation. At least three zone sacra in Italy relate to World War 1 – Pasubio and Monte Grappa are the other two. There might be more but those along with Monte San Michele are the big three.
The Duke of Aosta stands in the middle of the Third Army Monument in Torino.
Right around the southeast corner of the former Royal Palace in Torino stands an old Roman gate, repurposed on the west side into the Palazzo Madama, the first Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and today a museum of art dating back to the late Middle Ages. The museum opens up onto Piazza Castello to the west with a statue dedicated to the army of Sardinia which played a significant role in the Risorgimiento. On the east side, past the two remaining Roman towers, stands a large monument mounted by two groups of four soldiers with a large, somewhat brooding man standing alone, fists clenched, looking to the east. This man depicted is Emanuele Filiberto Vittorio Eugenio Alberto Genova Giuseppe Maria di Savoia, Duke of Aosta and a a cousin of Italy’s king Victor Emanuel III.
Filiberto, during World War One, led the Italian Third Army against the Austro-Hungarian forces on the Carso for two years from June 1915 until October 1917. Erected between 1933 and 1937 after the general’s death in Torino in 1931, the bronze statue stands cast from four captured artillery pieces, the “Statue in a Coat” – “statua in un cappotto”. The monument memorializes the “Undefeated Duke” of the “Undefeated Third Army” – “la armatta invitta”.
