Italy's Sorrow by James Holland

Author:James Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

Pavolini’s personal bodyguard, the Bir el Gobi Company, seamlessly became part of the Black Brigades. Since their formation, they had been based in Maderno, accompanying Pavolini wherever he went, and fulfilling their role as protectors of the Fascist Party leader. Like most Italian troops and militia, they lacked funds and equipment. Several of the officers, however, realised that Florence might offer an opportunity for them to get their hands on a good supply of weapons, ammunition and other materiel. With the Allies only a few miles south of the city, there were now few Republican forces left there; a raid on the Carabinieri barracks might prove extremely worth their while – after all, if the barracks were about to be overrun, there was no point leaving everything there for the Allies.

The man given the task of stealing this booty from their own side was Lieutenant Barnini and his platoon, which included his senior NCO, Sergeant William Cremonini. The first obstacle to be overcome was the lack of transport, but fortunately the father of one of the officers managed to get hold of a Fiat 626 truck and enough petrol, and so the platoon of twenty-six men began the long, 160-mile journey to Florence.

They reached the city without mishap, and Barnini reported to Pavolini, who, in his newly militarised role, had set up a tactical headquarters at the Excelsior Hotel. ‘I introduced myself to Pavolini,’ noted Barnini, ‘and told him I would do whatever was needed to protect the Party. He was very encouraging about my plans.’210 The atmosphere in Florence was tense. As with Rome, Kesselring had, on Hitler’s express orders, declared Florence to be an open city, so there were almost no German troops at all within the city. From the south, the guns boomed incessantly.

At the Excelsior, Barnini attended a meeting with Pavolini and the Florentine GNR and SS police commanders. As he and William had now discovered, the Carabiniere Barracks were indeed bursting with trucks, petrol, weapons and ammunition. ‘In short,’ wrote Barnini, ‘it was exactly what we wanted for our Company to become completely autonomous.’ A plan was agreed between them and the GNR commanders that they would raid the barracks at nine the following morning. Lieutenant Barnini, however, had other ideas. Realising the GNR commander would take the lion’s share of the booty, he led his Bir el Gobi platoon to raid the barracks three hours earlier than planned, at 6 a.m. There, they disarmed the Carabinieri who still remained, set them free, including the officers, and by 8 a.m. had already sent their lorry to Maderno stuffed with all the best weapons they had found – hundreds of rifles, but also machine guns, mortars, pistols, and masses of ammunition. They then hid the rest so that the GNR would not take it and over the next four days sent back several more truck loads of equipment – so much, in fact, that back at Maderno they hardly had room enough to store it all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.