Partisans without a party, soldiers without stars. The essence of the Maiella Brigade can fill this entire sentence. A few words to grasp its uniqueness in the complex panorama of partisan bands that fought against the German occupiers and republican fascists from September 1943 to April 1945.
April 25, 2025 will mark the80th anniversary of the Liberation , and rereading the pages written by the Abruzzi partisan formation, known and celebrated from the Mother Mountain all the way across the Channel, will reknit the threads of its uniqueness.
Starting with the last thread, the golden one. Yes because the Maiella Brigade is the only partisan formation that can be awarded the gold medal for military valor to its flag.
And then the others: the Maiella is an autonomous formation that you can enter but also leave voluntarily.
Although commanders Hector and Dominic Troilo are socialists, the Brigade is nonpartisan.
His men wear British khaki uniforms but on their lapels, instead of army stars, the majors have chosen to sew two tricolor ribbons.
Fighters
From the moral and honor pact with which Ettore Troilo, a lawyer from Torricella Peligna, binds 15 men to offer themselves as volunteer fighters to the British command, in a very short time the maiellini become 350 and between January and February 1944 with a mixed force of Abruzzese fighters and British soldiers under the command of Major Lionel Wigram, the so-called “Wigforce,” fought bitterly against the Germans until they liberated Colle dei Lami, Colle Ripabianca, Quadri, Torricella Peligna, Lama dei Peligni, Fallo until the attack on Pizzoferrato in which Major Wigram died.
After these successes, the Allies recognized the valor of the Abruzzi fighters, who became a full-fledged military unit. In the spring of 1944, together with the Allies, the Maiella Brigade liberated Campo di Giove, Pacentro, Cansano, Rocca Caramanico, Caramanico Terme, Sant’Eufemia, Popoli, Tocco da Casauria, Bussi sul Tirino, and Pratola Peligna, and the Maiellis were the first to enter free Sulmona.
By the time, with the help of Italian troops, the Allies entered Chieti, Guardiagrele and Pescara, Abruzzo was totally liberated from German occupation, and the Maiella Brigade now numbered as many as 1,500 personnel.
Those men who had helped restore freedom to their land could have gone home instead decided to continue fighting alongside General Anders‘ Poles.
Together with them they went up the peninsula helping to liberate many towns in Marche,Emilia Romagna and Veneto. The photograph of the Maiella Brigade entering the city of Bologna first on April 21, 1945, remains etched in our eyes until everything ends on May 1 in Asiago and the Brigade is officially disbanded on July 15 in Brisighella.
The long journey cost the formation 55 dead, 19 prisoners, 151 wounded of whom 36 were maimed. Half of the fallen were peasants, the other half students, merchants, laborers, ex-military, artisans. Once the work was “done,” those who managed to save their skins returned home to be lawyers, farmers, students, merchants, workers. And so the moral figure of these young fighters comes out in all its strength making them precisely partisans without party, soldiers without stars and above all free men.
