The unredeemed Italians enrolled in Russia in the Legion that fought the Bolsheviks

The ship that left the Russian coast on September 24, 1916 was the first transport of Italians locked up in Tsar Nicholas II’s prison camps because they had been captured wearing Austrian uniforms. Those young men were unredeemed from Trentino, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and Dalmatia, who spoke Dante’s language, and whom Emperor Franz Joseph had sent to fight on the Eastern Front. Their fate was taken care of, each in his own way, by Major Cosma Manera of the Royal Carabinieri and the merchant from Benevento Andrea Compatangelo who had proclaimed himself captain. And so two military corps of Italians were created, one with the black insignia of the Redeemed Legion of Siberia, the other with the red insignia of the Samara Battalion (later Savoia), destined to arrive, through unspeakable hardships in Russia devastated by civil war, all the way to China, for the long-awaited repatriation. For the first contingent of 1,700 men, embarked on a steamer in Archangel, everything went smoothly, with the landing in England, and for a second of almost as many unredeemed. Afterwards, it took a feat.

An official mission and an unofficial one

A military commission of three officers of the force on a mission to Petrograd had been interested in the fate of the prisoners in Russian hands who were available to fight for Italy: Major Giovanni Squillero, Captain Manera (immediately promoted in rank) and Captain Nemore Moda. The repatriations had been accompanied by Squillero and Moda, but the adverse weather conditions first and the outbreak of the Russian revolution in 1917 and the armistice of Brest-Litovsk signed by the Bolsheviks later, ruined all plans. It was then that Manera managed to dilute the four companies into small groups to put on the trains that were still travelling towards Siberia, to then gather his men and head for Vladivostok under the control of the “white” admiral Kolchak supported by the Entente in the hope of embarking. A journey of eight thousand kilometres. The chaotic situation and the lack of ships led him to distribute the soldiers in the Italian concession in China of Tien-Tsin, obtained after the victory in the Boxer War of 1900, and in Beijing, reorganizing them into a military force. Already in the summer of 1918, Manera had organized – at the disposal of the commander of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in the Far East, who arrived in Tien-Tsin on the steamer “Roma” and then in Viadivostok on 17 October 1918 – a first battalion of volunteers, with uniforms provided by the Japanese and Enfield rifles lent by the British. In the meantime, the major, despite enormous difficulties, had managed to recover other prisoners of Italian nationality in Russia in the throes of civil war, until he formed a unit of just under two thousand men divided into eight companies housed in English barracks: the Redeemed Legion, in fact, which would join the Alpine troops who had landed in the Far East to support the Entente. The Alpine hat will be the distinctive sign of nationality together with the tricolour cockade.

The Man Who Wanted to Become Captain

As for Compatangelo, who had been carrying out his import-export activity in Russia for some time (and who he still suspects today also had a spying role, as events seem to confirm), starting in August 1918 in Samara, in the Volga region, he had decided independently to organize, arm and equip at his own expense the Italian Samara Battalion with the irredentist Italians of former prisoners willing to swear allegiance to the King of Italy, and to attempt to reach the concession of Tien-Tsin, crossing Siberia by train attached to the combative Czechoslovak Legion, an army of former Austro-Hungarian soldiers who were fighting their way to safety and repatriation on an armored and well-armed train that traveled across Siberia facing clashes while the civil war between the Whites and the Reds was raging. There was a real treaty between the Battalion and the Czechoslovak authorities. The Samara was the first Italian unit engaged against the Bolsheviks, to open the way along 7,000 kilometers of Trans-Siberian, at 40 degrees below zero, to reach Tien-Tsin fighting in Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg. The Savoia Brigade formed by about 300 men wore red insignia in homage to the Arditi. It shared the epic of the Legion fighting against the “reds” and settled in Krasnojarsk where it changed its name to the Savoia Battalion. Upon the arrival of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in the Far East of Colonel Filippi di Baldissero, in August 1919, the battalion of about 400 men was sent to Vladivostok where it was disbanded in the Redeemed Legion of Siberia. In September 1918, this strategic port was home to Japanese troops (about 70,000), Americans (5,000), English (800), French (about a hundred) and Italians (1,400). As for Compatangelo, just as he had mysteriously materialized in history, the “captain” of Benevento disappeared into thin air, and we only know that he died in Shanghai in 1923.

Aid to the “White” Counter-Revolutionaries and Repatriation in 1920

The task of the Italian Expeditionary Force was to maintain control of the Trans-Siberian railway in Manchuria to allow the arrival and distribution of Entente war material to the counter-revolutionary “white” troops. The Italians and the irredentist units fought clashes with the Bolsheviks throughout the summer of 1919 in Irkutsk, Harbin and Vladivostok. Rome began the repatriation procedures, with the return to Tien-Tsin by rail. Cholera was raging in China and it was only possible to embark on the steamship “Nippon” on 26 November. The last to leave Manchuria was Major Manera, in 1920. In Italy, the landings took place in Naples on 23 February and in Trieste on 2 April. The Redeemed Legion had numbered over three thousand soldiers, whose behaviour was publicly praised at the time, and the soldiers considered their commander to be a true “father; but the Italians rescued from the Tsarist prison camps, from hunger, cold, disease, were at least ten thousand. Despite his feat, the numerous decorations and the promotion to colonel, he will never reach the rank of general. He died in Turin in 1958, at the age of 82.