“GOOD RUNNERS!”
THE ITALIAN TROOPS. RECOLLECTIONS OF LAST WAR. “Personally, I found the Italians to be very nice people, but, with the exception of their Alpini troops, which were very good, they were the worst soldiers I have ever seen or heard of.” was the succinct summing up of the Italians as a fighting nation by a Dunedin resident who spent a considerable period in Italy during the las’ war. ■
“I arrived in Italy with the Allied Expeditionary Force in time to meet the Italian Army in full flight, from’ Caporetto,” he said to a “Daily Times” representative. "They poured past in their hundreds and thousands, stopping only to pillage, and the Allied forces had to get past them as best they could and hold up the enemy advance. The Italians behaved like e mob of sheep without a leader, and although nowadays they may be better trained. I don’t think it is possible that those sheep have been turned hue lions."
The Italian penchant for putting on a brave and dashing front when the battle had been won for them by some • one else was also mentioned by the informant, who said that during the 18 months he was with the Allied forces in Italy he saw several instance: in which the Italians took full credit for work in which they had had little hand. "Whenever we took a small town." he said, "the Italian troops which had not been much in evidence during the fighting suddenly appeared and paraded through the streets as if they alone had been responsible for the victory. If they were certain that a victory was about to be won they joined the fight—and it would appear that that is the reason why they have decided to declare war on the Allies at the present time—but on other occasions they were very good at running." The conviction that the French forces on the Italian border should have little trouble in dealing with their adversaries was also expressed by the resident, who said that although (lie Italians were very good with machinery. he had so poor an opinion of their fighting qualities that he though their armoured divisions would prove no match for the French.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1940, Page 7
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370“GOOD RUNNERS!” Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 June 1940, Page 7
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