Page 575 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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infantry divisions, two Bersaglieri regiments, one field artillery and one mountain artil-
lery regiment, two garrison artillery companies, three sappers companies, two cavalry
squadrons, and a signal company equipped with radios. The total establishment was
34,000 men, 72 guns of different calibre, and four field radio stations, integrated with
5
logistic and medical supports partly provided by the national Red Cross association .
Between mid-October and December 1911, seven more infantry brigades and one in-
fantry regiment were deployed, together with six Alpini battalions, one Bersaglieri regi-
ment, eight cavalry troops, twenty-five artillery batteries, seven fortress artillery com-
panies, engineers, medical and support units, accounting for about 55,000 men and 154
guns. Finally, between January and October 1912, the establishment was strengthened
with four new Alpini battalions, seven Ascari battalions from Eritrea, and one Meharisti
troop . From an operational point of view, the war assisted to the first tactical use of
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aircrafts and armoured cars; the first air bombings; the first Italian use of modern ma-
chine guns and pre-assembled shelters, and to the first large-scale recourse to wireless
telegraphy in a land campaign. Finally, Italian troops developed and applied their first
counterinsurgency doctrines, based, on the one hand, on the lessons learned in East Af-
rica, on the other on the body of international literature that was then evolving, together
with the transition from a traditional, Nineteenth-century-style form of colonial warfare
towards more modern patterns of irregular confrontation .
7
In this sense, the general feeling was that the conflict could play a positive role in the
evolution of Italy’s social and political structures. As a product of the country’s more
vital forces – for long time strangled into the ties of Giolitti’s politique politicienne –
the war was not just a way to satisfy the requests that the ultimatum to the Sublime
Port spelled out. It was also the occasion to strengthen Italy’s unity and to reaffirm its
international ambitions. The failure of the strategy of peaceful penetration carried out
by di San Giuliano was opening a long-coveted window of opportunity. It was not only
in the eyes of the nationalists or of the activists of the futurist movement, who strongly
supported the war in its early stages, before cooling down when the operations stuck
into an apparently endless stalemate. It was also in the eyes of a wide galaxy of cultural,
political and material interests, which found in the ‘Libyan adventure’ their rally point.
Expectations were widespread in many military circles too, hoping to find in the new
overseas expedition not only a professional opportunity. According to General Luigi Ca-
dorna, for example, the Libyan campaign was just “a trifle expedition” (“una spedizione

5 pavone, Dalle carte..., cit., p. 66. During the following days, Giolitti and di San Giuliano also involved the
Duke Luigi di Savoia, CO of the Torpedo boats inspectorate (‘Ispettorato siluranti’), to make sure to avoid
further incidents like Prevesa, and keep the Italian units in the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea “at least five kilo-
metres from the enemy coast”, as the Cabinet requested on 6 October.
6 comando del corpo di stato maggiore, Ufficio coloniale, L’azione dell’esercito italiano nella guerra
italo-turca (1911-1912), Rome, 1913, p. 9. A translation of this document is in The Italo-Turkish War (1911-
12). Translated and Compiled from the Reports of the Italian General Staff by First Lieut. Renato Tittoni,
U.S.M.C., Kansas City, MO, 1914.
7 L’azione dell’esercito..., cit., p. 11.