Page 579 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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comes a mass of Bersaglieri, rushing on in glorious confusion .
22
A similar tone pervades the description of the men after their successful rush:
Panting, perspiring, red in the face, my men are beaming with content and laughing,
their eyes all aglow with enthusiasm, as they rest in the conquered trench, regardless
of the fire of the enemy, whose bullets begin to scream angrily, skimming the parapet .
23
In this kind of narrative, rush, excitement, valour and glory are the key elements of
a discourse expressing a form of conventional heroism, rooted in valour and discipline.
In an age of increasingly mechanised warfare, greater numbers and creeping ‘commod-
itization’ of military workforce, the emphasis placed on the cold steel of the bayonets
and the cold blood of the men ‘re-personalizes’ killing and supports a traditional im-
age of military activity. This ‘grammar of the bayonet’ made it possible once more to
imagine the war as a duel, with its codes and norms, and with its inherent character of
‘God’s judgement’. In the narrative of the Henni’s charge, enemies “discharge a vol-
ley or two in frantic haste and then take to their heels”, dismayed by “the mere uproar
24
of our charge” . In a clash of value, the villain is ‘naturally’ doomed to fail. This was
especially true when the bayonet charge represented the last resort to break a stalemate,
thus providing the final demonstration of where ‘true valour’ stood. Another episode of
the Libyan campaign provides a self-explanatory example of this pedagogy. During the
battle of Derna (27 February 1912),

[i]n order to break the obstinate Turkish resistance it was decided to make a counter-
attack, which proved the most successful bayonet charge in all the campaign […] With
a yell like the cry of some savage beast, the Alpini flung themselves on the enemy
[…] For a moment the Turks appeared to hold their ground […] Many [attackers] fell
wounded and were carried away by the all-compelling force of the stream that swept
forward irresistibly. Under the clash of the Italian bayonets the enemy’s front line wa-
vered, as if smitten by the rush of air which the charge had driven onward, then broke
and scattered in all directions, seized with the customary scare which always overtakes
the Arabs when the bayonets flash [...] Then the fury of the Alpini became irrepressible.
The big, good-natured sons of the mountains, ruddy-faced and sturdy, whose smile is
wont to be so kindly and whose glance is as the glance of a child, became for the nonce
lost to all pity […] The irresistible shock swept on of its own impetus, and the dark
mass of Turkish troops was swallowed up in the grey avalanche of the Alpini that bore
all before it .
25

22 On rank-and-files’ experience of the Libyan war, see S. Bono (ed), Morire per questi deserti: Lettere di soldati
italiani dal fronte libico, 1911-1912, Catanzaro, 1992; see also id., Tripoli bel suol d’amore: Testimonianze
sulla guerra italo-libica, Rome, 2005. For a useful comparison with a contemporary source, see B. Bacci,
La guerra libica descritta nelle lettere dei combattenti, Florence, 1912. An officer’s point of view is in m.
cricco, La battaglia di Zanzur dell’8 giugno 1912 nell’inedita testimonianza del tenente Domenico Orsini,
in p. Branca - m. demichelis (eds) Memorie con-divise. Popoli, stati e nazioni nel Mediterraneo e in Medio
Oriente, Milan, 2013, pp. 332-45.
23 t. irace, With the Italians in Tripoli: The Authentic History of the Turco-Italian War, London, 1912, p. 225.
24 Ibidem.
25 irace, With the Italians..., cit. p. 226.