by Giulio Bendfeldt – 25/10/2020

Source: the Adige

Sixty-six years ago, on October 26, 1954, the national Risorgimento was completed with the definitive return of Trieste to Italy and, after nine years, the period of terror that had accompanied the end of the Second World War in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Istria ended. A period that saw the genocide and then the dramatic exodus of the Italian population of Istria, Dalmatia and the Quarnaro Islands. We all remember the photographs of the entry of Italian soldiers into the city that symbolized that martyrdom, but few remember that to get to that day – in addition to the many deaths in the clashes between the Triestine and the English in the autumn of 1953 – there was also a Defense plan that, on the orders of the Christian Democratic Prime Minister Giuseppe Pella, prepared a project to reconquer Trieste and Zone A. A project that made Verona the first rear area.

Let's go back to those years: Italy is a defeated nation, that's how it is considered and treated beyond the facade declarations. It has been placed in the Western bloc and that should be enough for us. In Korea the USA and China are fighting to extend or limit the communist expansion in Asia. The USA believes that in Europe the Yugoslavia of the dictator Josip Broz, Tito for his people, is a bulwark against Moscow - the perfect union with Turkey, Greece and Italy - and they fill it with money, weapons and friendship. So every time Italy asks to resolve the question of Trieste and Istria, the Yugoslavian butcher always finds himself on the side of the USA and the United Kingdom who, after all, don't have all this desire to give Italy a prize. It's a tug of war that always sees us in a position of weakness. Alcide De Gasperi tries. But his government falls and Giuseppe Pella decides to shuffle the cards a bit.

On the eastern border between Italian and Yugoslavian soldiers, skirmishes are not lacking. Everyone is trying to steal the best positions in view of a peace treaty that will come sooner or later. Trieste is defended by a veil of allied forces. The Italian Army is however still light: battalions and regiments are not at 100%; the armaments are those left by the Americans and English, the artillery has few rounds in stock, the soldiers are starting to replace the model 91 with the Garand, the air force is starting to operate with the first jets, the navy no longer has large units. But not even Tito has all this great strength: the party's soldiers, ex-Italian ships already war booty, insufficient tank units.

The chain of command involves the Minister of Defense, Paolo Emilio Taviani, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Giuseppe Pizzorno. The objective is simple: to take Trieste. A coup accomplished in a few hours to secure the city and Zone A: the Allies – the Government recommends – must not be touched; the Yugoslavs must not be pursued beyond the border between Zone A and Zone B.

That plan – Fabrizio Castellano (a tank colonel, director of the Archive Service and Chief of the Historical Office of the Army General Staff) recounts it in great detail in the magazine “Storia Militare” in January 2004 – ultimately involved almost 13 thousand soldiers from October to December 1953. The 1931 class of soldiers were not discharged at the end of their service until the end of the crisis. On the other side of the border, pseudo-partisan formations were mobilized and the transfers of Italian citizens between zone A and zone B of the Territory of Trieste were blocked. Faced with the request, the General Staff studied the plan in detail: it involved its elite units (the Novara Lancers and the Genoa Cavalry, which used the most recent tanks in service); several regiments of the Mantova Division and, as the situation became more heated, it expanded the device with bersaglieri, paratroopers, lagoon soldiers, carabinieri, the Navy and the Air Force. Logistics, all on the railway, becomes the absolute protagonist. The Christian Democrat partisans of Osoppo are also recalled, that Gladio that they will later want to dismantle, disavowing its value, infiltrating them into the martyr city.

The various units, depending on the urgency, approach and move away from the border. The allies monitor them by sight, pretending not to understand what all this deployment is for; the Yugoslavs put partisan formations on pre-alert. A Yugoslavian pilot deserts in Aviano, two of ours disappear or desert, an Italian soldier is killed in a firefight and others are captured and then released. The air is tense, anything could happen. And Verona suddenly finds itself on the front line.

The Third and Fifth Wings are stationed in Villafranca. Both are changing aircraft from the P47 Thunderbolts to the Republic F84G Thunderjet fighter-bombers (in the photo, an F84G in flight over Punta San Vigilio). They are the most modern of the moment: in Korea they fight against the Migs every day and beat them; we have them and so does Tito. The Third Wing is asked for aerial reconnaissance, the Fifth (groups 101, 102 and 103) for tactical support. Montichiari is also in this deployment with the Sixth Air Brigade. In total there are 200 combat aircraft ready to support infantry and artillerymen.

The diary of the Departments is laconic: «In that year, the 3rd Wing was in the process of aircraft transition, from F.51 to F-84, and was therefore employed for the most part in training, in the summer and autumn months it took part in exercises, but in Puglia (in the Altamura area). We find it operating, in reality officially in exercises, in the Udine area only from 20 January 1955. As regards the 51st Wing, we find in the historical memory of the fourth quarter the use, on 24 October 1954, of “24 F-84 aircraft of the Air Brigade that paraded over Trieste on the day of the entry of the Italian troops” the Public Information Office of the Air Force reports to L'Adige. In 1953, in order not to remain discovered, the Defense moved anti-aircraft artillery units to Villafranca. It may be a war game, but units are moving every day, and tensions are running high.

In Trieste the population forcefully asks to return to Italy. Nilla Pizzi won at the Sanremo Festival a few months earlier with a song openly pro-Trieste “Vola colomba bianca, vola, dille che non sarà più sola..”. Pella (who saw the latest election results rewarding MSI and monarchists) warns the Anglo-Americans that he wants to close the Trieste game, that he has no more patience: if the situation is not clearly defined, Italy will not join the European Defense Community and will not grant Italian soil for NATO bases (in Aviano, a few kilometers from Trieste the USA wants to bring part of the nuclear arsenal…).

On November 4, 1953, Prime Minister Pella went to Redipuglia, a few kilometers from occupied Trieste, to commemorate the victory in the First World War. He was welcomed by thousands of people: it was an unmistakable signal. In an attempt to avoid an escalation - the Yugoslavs at that time decided to block the border between the two zones A and B while hundreds of Italians fled from Zone B - a radio appeal for calm was made to the people of Trieste by General John Winterton, commander of the Allied Military Government in Trieste. The appeal was followed by a dirty trick: the ban on displaying the tricolor. But on that same day, defying Winterton's ban, the architect Gianni Bartoli, mayor of Trieste, had the Italian flag raised on the municipal tower. The removal of the flag, the arrest of students who were waving other flags in the square, unleashed the English and clashes began that lasted for days with thousands of people of Trieste in the square. The English open fire on the crowd: Pierino Addobbati, Francesco Paglia, Nardino Manzi, Erminio Bassa, Saverio Montano and Antonio Zavadil die. Another 53 people are injured. The henchmen chase and beat the demonstrators inside the churches.

The funerals of the young men killed were attended by a huge crowd. It was a scandal that could no longer be stopped. Winterton was urgently called back to London and negotiations were opened in London just as quickly: they began in February 1954 and ended in May with an agreement that squared the circle. On 5 October the Memorandum was signed: Trieste returned to Italy. On 26 October the Bersaglieri were the first to enter the city while the F84Gs of the Air Force departed from the Treviso base and raced through the sky, and the destroyers and cruisers of the Navy docked in the port.

He will later recall in the Chamber, in the hall, the MSI member Renzo de' Vidovich, one of the organizers of the 1953 uprisings: "Trieste has returned to Italy because on November 5 and 6 we, the national youth, took to the streets and had six dead and one hundred and fifty-three wounded: the English and Americans shot at us without too many compliments. There were no communists fighting with us, there were no men of the left: it was just us. We have always said that with us there were Italians of all parties, even if then, when someone died, or was hit, in their pocket they found the membership card of Giovane Italia, of Goliardia Nazionale and of the Movimento Sociale Italiano. But we continue to say that in the streets there were all Italians, even if we were unfortunate enough to be the only ones to fall. It was we who deliberately, knowing that you would deny us those weapons that you had brought to Trieste and that were located in various places, made the sortie against the Allied Military Government; it was we who determined with blood the return of Trieste to Italy. And if you rushed to sign the Memorandum of Understanding, it was because we had given you a year's time and October 26 was now close to that November 4 when we would rise up. We said it: I was so naive that I even made a signed manifesto out of it. We said clearly that if the Italian governments were not up to the situation we would take to the streets, we would chase out the Americans and the English - of whom we wanted to be allies, not servants - and we would conquer that national freedom that was the symbol and the continuation of the Risorgimento. Sixty-six years ago, Italy found its honor in Trieste.