Arditi
Arditi was the name adopted by a Royal Italian Army elite special force of World War I. They and the opposing German Stormtroopers were the first modern shock troops, and they have been called "the most feared corps by opposing armies".
Reparti d'Assalto were formed in the summer of 1917 by Colonel Bassi, and were assigned the tactical role of shock troops, breaching enemy defenses in order to prepare the way for a broad infantry advance. The Arditi were not units within infantry divisions, but were considered a separate combat arm.
The Reparti d'Assalto were successful in bringing in a degree of movement to what had previously been a war of entrenched positions. They won numerous engagements armed mainly with daggers and hand grenades, which proved very effective in the confined space of a trench. Their exploits on the battlefield were exemplary and they gained an illustrious place in Italian military history. They were demobilized by 1920.
The name Arditi was later used in 1919–20 by the Italian occupiers of Fiume who were led by Gabriele D'Annunzio, most of whom had been members of the Royal Italian Army. Their use of a uniform with black ties, insignia and fez was later taken up by Benito Mussolini's paramilitary forces, the Blackshirts. In 1942, during the Second World War, the 10th Arditi Regiment was created, inspired by the assault units of the Great War.
From 1 October 1975 the flag of X Arditi Regiment was adopted by the 9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment "Col Moschin". To this day, operatives of Col Moschin and Italian commando frogmen are known as "Arditi Incursori" and are viewed as the heirs of the Arditi.
World War I
Early experiments
The first special units within the Italian Army can be traced back to 1914 when every regiment of the Royal Army was ordered to create a group of explorers trained to act behind enemy lines. One of the most famous units of this type was the Baseggio Company that attacked Monte Sant'Osvaldo in 1916.Others argue that the so-called Compagnie della morte, special patrols of infantry and engineers engaged in cutting or blasting enemy barbed wire, should be considered as precursors of the Arditi. They were easily recognizable by their use of armor and "Farina" helmets.
In 1916 the supreme command decided to award special status to Arditi units but was reluctant to create new units. The Arditi badge, to be carried on the left arm, included the monogram VE, and was designed exclusively as a symbol of distinction for these soldiers. This was the first official use of the word "Ardito" by the Italian army.
In reality, all these units had no connection with the real Arditi that used extremely different tactics, training and equipment. In fact, on one hand, the scout units had the same tactics and equipment as the regular infantry, while on the other hand, the Compagnie della Morte filled a very different role, they were sappers and not shock troops and were quickly disbanded at the beginning of 1916.
The idea that would later lead to the birth of the Italian Assault Units dates back to the summer of 1916.
In fact, in that period Major General Francesco Grazioli, commander of the "Lambro" Infantry Brigade, wrote papers in which he explained his ideas on the creation of special elite infantry units that would allow the stalemate of trench warfare to be overcome.
Grazioli, who had observed the bloody attacks of the Italian infantry on the Carso in 1915, thought that these units should employ aggressive shock tactics, focusing in particular on identifying, mass attacking and breaking through the weakest points of the enemy lines, and then advancing in depth, encircling and destroying the strongest points of resistance so as to cause the collapse of an entire front.
According to Grazioli these units, called ''Plotoni Speciali, were to be made up of 36 men each and commanded by a junior officer. 27 soldiers, divided into three patrols of 9 men each, had to be trained in hand-to-hand combat, trench clearing and throwing of hand grenades, their equipment had to consist of a Carcano carbine, 5 SIPE hand grenades and a dagger. The rest of the men would form the Machine-Pistol section of the platoon equipped with two Villar Perosa Machine-Pistols each.
These platoons, created by Grazioli only in his brigade, were formed and trained in the months of June and July 1916 and would go into combat for the first time in August of the same year in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo.
In fact, although it is not certain, it is probable that the special platoons played the role of spearhead in the attack of the "Lambro" Brigade against Monte Calvario on 6 and 7 August 1916.
In the following months the platoons continued to be part of the Brigade, mainly taking part in small-scale actions such as the counterattack east of Gorizia on 11 February 1917 in which the platoons drove the Austro-Hungarians from a position called Casa Due Pini which was lost following an enemy raid.
In the month of May the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo began and the special platoons, reorganized and enlarged, were employed on the hills east of Gorizia but without much success.
After the battle Grazioli was promoted and placed in command of the 48th Infantry Division and this allowed him to develop the idea of shock troops in greater depth and on a larger scale.
Establishment
In fact, as commander of the 48th Infantry Division, Grazioli came into contact with a Major who had also theorized the establishment of shock units using special equipment and tactics. His name was Giuseppe Bassi and he was part of the 150th Infantry Regiment of the "Trapani" Brigade.Bassi, between October and November 1916, had written documents in which he theorized a reorganization and a very innovative use of the Machine-Pistol sections equipped with the Villar Perosa. He believed that the use of the Villar Perosa as light machine guns was a waste and suggested a series of modifications to improve the weapon: the removal of the heavy shield which limited mobility, the introduction of a very light bipod, the modification of the magazines to make the weapon easier and quicker to reload and the introduction of supports to allow the machine gunner to hold the weapon standing up without a crew and to fire it from the hips.
Thus modified, the Villar Perosa should have been used, according to Bassi, to lead attacks by using it as an assault weapon to clear the trenches and storm enemy positions, a role that suited it very well due to its rate of fire.
But Bassi went further by imagining that the Villar Perosa should have been the base of new units of élite soldiers trained in the use of shock tactics and armed with equipment suitable for trench assaults. In his writings, in fact, Bassi explained that, by preceding the regular infantry in the offensives, small units armed with short rifles and hand grenades, accompanied by the violent fire of the Villar Perosa, could break the stalemate of trench warfare.
Bassi delivered these papers to his superior, General Gaetano Giardino, who in turn sent them to Francesco Saverio Grazioli knowing his interest in these ideas. The two met and combined their ideas and had among the readers of their documents the commander of the 2nd Italian Army, General Luigi Capello. Capello, an officer with a very offensive mindset and also looking for new methods to overcome trench warfare, showed himself very interested in the theories of Grazioli and Bassi.
The two had the opportunity to put into practice what they had theorized in the summer of 1917, in fact on 26 June General Cadorna published a document in which he ordered the Army commanders to set up special shock units to use them in counterattacks, trench raids and as the spearhead in large-scale offensives, specifying to favor the Bersaglieri, troops with generally better physical preparation and training than regular infantrymen, but at the same time remaining rather vague and generic, allowing individual officers to make various changes.
Capello immediately ordered the commander of the XXIV Army Corps, General Caviglia, to proceed with the creation of a unit of this type of the size, for the moment, of a company. Caviglia created the assault company within General Fara's 47th Infantry Division, forming it with troops from the Division's Bersaglieri Regiments and based on the ideas of Grazioli and Bassi.
The company was ready in the first half of July and had 229 enlisted men and 37 COs and NCOs and had four platoons divided into four squads and was equipped with: four Machine-Pistol sections with two Villar Perosa each, one section per platoon, a Machine Gun section with two Fiat-Revelli Mod 1914 machine guns, a mortar section and a flamethrower section. The individual equipment of the Arditi consisted of a Carcano carbine, lighter and less cumbersome than the long rifle, a dagger and about a dozen hand grenades. Furthermore, to improve agility and mobility, the cyclist's tunic with open collar was adopted, which would soon become the official uniform of the assault units.
Satisfied with the Bersaglieri Assault Company, Capello asked Cadorna for permission to create an assault unit with regular infantry soldiers and the Generalissimo granted it. So Capello ordered Grazioli to create two assault companies with recruits from the infantry units of his 48th Division. Grazioli, first of all, chose with Bassi a location near Udine called Sdricca di Manzano to create the training school of the Arditi and the HQ of the assault troops, there the recruits were then gathered and were joined by the Bersaglieri Company.
On July 29, 1917, in the presence of Cadorna and King Vittorio Emanuele III, the two new companies were created and together with the Bersaglieri Company they formed the first assault unit of the Italian Army which was called I Battaglione d'Assalto officially marking the birth of the Arditi.
At the beginning of August the three companies continued training in the realistic and harsh Sdricca camp built by Bassi and in that period Capello wanted to introduce an element that became one of the major symbols of the Arditi: the flame-shaped collar tabs. The Arditi from the infantry wore the black flames while the Arditi Bersaglieri kept the crimson flames, already used by the units of the Bersaglieri corps, and, in the following months, the green flames were introduced for the Arditi coming from Alpine units. Furthermore Capello decided to create a third company of infantrymen constituted once again by the 48th Division, so the battalion had 4 companies that were renamed 1st, 2nd and 3rd Assault Companies while the Bersaglieri Company became 4th.
Training ended on 12 August, just when the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was imminent.