Guardia alla Frontiera


The Guardia alla Frontiera, was an Regio Esercito border guard created in 1937 who defended the 1,851 km of northern Italian frontiers with the "Vallo Alpino Occidentale", "Vallo Alpino Settentrionale" and "Vallo Alpino Orientale".
In 1940, the GaF had 21,000 military personnel, deployed in eight commands, 27 sectors, and seven regiments of artillery. It manned 1,000 fortifications, 6,000 machine guns, 1,000 mortars, 100 Cannone da 47/32 M35, and another thousand other medium and small-caliber cannons.
By 10 June 1940 the GaF contained 23 sectors, 50,000 men, 28 battalions "Vallo Alpino", and 22 battalions of fascist militia.

Organization

Each command of the army of GaF could be divided into "sectors", which could be broken down into subsectors and so on for ever smaller units. Each command in the field had two or more subsectors which controlled the fortifications. These works were manned by infantry, artillery, engineers, etc. Despite the GaF being predominantly static it also received five light tank companies, equipped with Fiat 3000 tanks that over time, due to their age and lack of spare parts, ended largely abandoned in Sector armories or buried to use the turrets as a fort.
The Guardia alla Frontiera disappeared after 1943, but nominally was active until 1953.

In Italy

Vallo alpino occidentale

Three artillery regiments supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino occidentale:

Vallo alpino settentrionale

One artillery regiment and one autonomous artillery group supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino settentrionale:
  • 6th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Bolzano
  • Guardia alla Frontiera Autonomous Artillery Group, in Sondrio

Vallo alpino orientale

Three artillery regiments supported the sectors of the Vallo alpino orientale:

In Albania


One artillery regiment supported the 26th Command in Albania:
  • 13th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Tirana

In Libya

Libyan-Tunisian border


One artillery regiment supported the units arrayed on the Libyan-Tunisian border:
  • 14th Guardia alla Frontiera Artillery Regiment, in Tripoli