{"id":28433,"date":"2012-08-23T14:45:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T19:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28433"},"modified":"2012-08-23T14:45:56","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T19:45:56","slug":"war-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28433","title":{"rendered":"War Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ground was wet and the air noticeably cool for a late August morning in 1942. \u00a0The men of the Italian\u00a0Savoia<\/em>\u00a0Regiment were likely nervous. \u00a0In the midst of a Russian counterattack than had driven a wedge between the Italian 8th Army and the German 6th Army in the Ukraine, the Savoia<\/em> had been thrown as a last-second, stop gap measure. \u00a0Facing them were 2,000 men of the\u00a0Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment. \u00a0With bugles blaring and cries of “Savoia!”<\/em> and\u00a0\u201cCaricat<\/em>\u201d (charge), the Savoia<\/em> Regment galloped into the record books.<\/p>\n

It was the last cavalry charge in military history.*<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The regiment was the 3rd Dragoons\u00a0Savoia<\/em>\u00a0Cavalleggeri (<\/em>Cavalry Regiment), one of oldest and last actual combat cavalry units in any of the major military powers by World War II. \u00a0Founded in 1692, by Gian Piossasco de Rossi, one of the most powerful Italian noble families, the Savoia Cavalleggeri<\/em> carried forward a number of ancient traditions to the modern battlefield. \u00a0The unit’s\u00a0helmets were emblazoned with black crosses, in commemoration of the Battle of Madonna di Campana in 1706 when the unit captured a French battle flag. Each of the 600 men wore a red necktie in honor of a wounded dispatch rider – from the 1790s.\u00a0 And last, but not least, the units still carried sabers. \u00a0Sabers that were drawn on August 24, 1942.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Italian 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment in training. One would have found few changes from the units’ drills 250 years earlier<\/p><\/div>\n

The 3rd Dragoons was but one unit of many among the Italian military presence in Russia. \u00a0From early July of 1941, the Italian military had sought to provide assistance to the German invasion of Soviet Russia. \u00a0Indeed, the entire Eastern Front became a clarion call to unify the various fascist and nationalist element of Europe that had for decades defined themselves in large part to their opposition to Communism. \u00a0Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovakian, Finnish, and various Norwegian and French units would eventually fight on the Eastern Front and Italy would be no different.<\/p>\n

Despite Hitler’s misgivings, Mussolini provided two corps-sized units: the\u00a0Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia<\/a>\u00a0(Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia) <\/em>and the Italian 8th Army (otherwise known as the Italian Army in Russia). \u00a010 divisions in all would serve in Russia, roughly 290,000 men, largely in a support capacity. \u00a0Neither Hitler or the German High Command trusted the Italians, routed on so many other battlefields when bereft of German leadership, to do much more than play a patchwork role on the front line.<\/p>\n

\"\"

An Italian soldier in Russia. Over 54,000 Italians would die as POWs on the Eastern Front alone<\/p><\/div>\n

A patchwork role was precisely what the 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment played starting on August 23rd, 1942. \u00a0As the Axis advance on Stalingrad commenced, the Russians attempted a counter-attack at the River Don. \u00a0Focused at the point between the Italian 8th Army and German 6th, the Russian found themselves able to separate the two Axis forces. \u00a0No organized force stood in the way of the Russians being able to get back behind the German or Italian line – and thus the Savoia Regiment was quickly dispatched to block any Russian advance at the small village of\u00a0Isbuschenskij.<\/p>\n

As August 23rd gave way to the 24th, the Italians skirmished with elements of the Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment. \u00a0The Savoia was already outnumbered, 2,000 to 600, with all but one squadron on horseback when the regiment’s commander, the aristocratic royalist\u00a0Colonnello Alessandro Bettoni-Cazzago gave the order to charge. \u00a0Bettoni-Cazzago, assuming that the longer he delayed an offense action, the worse the Italian position would be, attacked. \u00a0In an age where cavalry divisions were made of steel, not flesh, and fed diesel, not oats, the Italian charge seemed destined to match\u00a0Lord Cardigan’s ill-fated “Charge of the Light Brigade” against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Italian 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment rides into battle<\/p><\/div>\n

The move completely took the Russians by surprise. \u00a0One\u00a0squadron flanked right against the Siberians’ left flank before wheeling around again to press the advantage from behind, hurling hand grenades into the quickly disintegrating enemy line. The another squadron attacked head on and the battle wore down into brutal hand-to-hand fighting, many of the Savoia having dismounted. \u00a0Supported by a machine-gun squad, the Italians amazingly took the field, suffering only 40\u00a0killed and another 79 wounded (to say nothing of the 100 horses lost). \u00a0In return, the 3rd Dragoons killed or captured over 1,000 Russians.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Il Duce visits the Russian Front<\/p><\/div>\n

Isbuschenskij was a rare Italian triumph on the Eastern Front and was quickly forgotten amid the horror of Stalingrad. \u00a0Six months after the last successful cavalry charge in history, the Italians had 150,000 men either killed or captured as the Axis front was smashed by the Soviets. \u00a0Italian survivors of the East were hidden by the Rome press, as veterans angrily voiced their contempt for a government that sent them to Russia woefully unprepared for the winter conditions or the enemy they faced. \u00a0Like Greece or East Africa, Russia was yet another front that Il Duce<\/em> had sent Italian sons to fight and die under misleading or under-informed pretenses. \u00a0The defeat did not go unnoticed by the Italian monarchy.<\/p>\n

Savoia’s commander, Bettoni-Cazzago, was among those royalists who returned from the Russian cold with a heated hatred for the Fascist regime. \u00a0Bettoni-Cazzago would eventually join the anti-Mussolini conspirators who would aid King Victor Emmanuel III in disposing of the Mussolini government in the late summer\/early fall of 1943.<\/p>\n

* Yes, there were horse-mounted units that fought as recently as Afghanistan and South Ossetia<\/a> in 2008, but\u00a0Isbuschenskij remains unique as an actual cavalry unit in an organized charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ground was wet and the air noticeably cool for a late August morning in 1942. \u00a0The men of the Italian\u00a0Savoia\u00a0Regiment were likely nervous. \u00a0In the midst of a Russian counterattack than had driven a wedge between the Italian 8th Army and the German 6th Army in the Ukraine, the Savoia had been thrown as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-ww2-fact-and-myth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28433"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29821,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28433\/revisions\/29821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}