Page 201 - La Grande Guerra dei Carabinieri - Flavio CARBONE

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The role of the Forests in the war effort:
Forests

manpower, means and equipment

he First World War brings due adjectives: “modern” and “industrial”. The war has been able to move a lot
of efforts in different fields. Specifically many industries had the opportunity to gain a lot of money work-
T ing for the armies during the efforts requested by the war. Having a look on the forests and on their role
during the war, it is very important to underline what they were able to do. The timber represented the lack
part in every country and a new and huge request came from the supreme commands in every country. In Ita-
ly, the situation was really difficult.
In the Giolitti’s era new laws were approved in Italy. So before the war new organisation started, with new
possibilities and new personnel entered in the Royal Forestry Corps. The war blocked a lot of initiatives and
many persons in the Corps moved to the combatant units because of the need of the Army (the Royal Forest-
ry Corps personnel was not excluded from the mobilisation). On the other hand, two high-qualified civil serv-
ants of the Corps (Professor Arrigo Serpieri and Mister Giacomo Segala) worked in the civil affairs department
within the Italian Supreme Command.
Many forests received a lot of dam-
ages because the bombing or because
irregular tree cuts occurred due to less
professionalism. Many areas in Italy lost
a huge quantity of timber coming from
their forests. For some small villages, the
war represented a unique opportunity
for business because of the need of tim-
ber. Everything started to slow down at
the beginning of 1918 when new regu-
lation came into effect in order to save a
small amount of money selling timber to
rebuild the state’s forests after the war.
Everything started to come slowly to the
end of the war and to come back to the
normal life.