On August 23, 1942 the Soviets pushed a gap between the Italian Army its flank with the German 6th Army along the River Don in the Ukraine. Into this gap was rushed the most mobile fresh unit in available, the cavalrymen of the Savoia Regiment
Sent to the Eastern Front by Italian strongman Mussolini to uphold his end of Hitler’s Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, the cavalrymen of the Savoia Regiment were a hold over from the dashing age of horse mounted combat. They still carried sabers, the 1891/38 model Carcano carbines. Although they wore steel helmets they emblazoned them with black crosses, in commemoration of the Battle of Madonna di Campana in 1706 where the regiment had captured a French battle flag. Each trooper wore a red necktie in honor of a wounded dispatch rider who delivered an important message n the battlefield in the 1790s. Their commander, Colonnello Alessandro Bettoni-Cazzago, was a gentleman from a royal lineage as were many of the units other 600 officers and men. The regiment was organised into four squadrons, one of whom was dismounted to a lack of horses during the hard campaign.
On August 24, 1942, after a day of masking movements and light skirmishing Colonel Bettoni decided a charge against the Soviet positions stood a chance of stopping them. At dawn of the next day, on a wet Ukrainian morning the regiment assembled. Mounting the charge to flying regimental flags, bugles, drawn sabers and a combined cry of hundreds of men calling “Savoia!, Savoia!” and “Caricat” (charge) the three mounted squadrons of Italians rode forward at a gallop into the Soviet lines. They transitioned through the traditional thousand year old practice of starting at a trot, then a canter then a full gallop. Supported by the dismounted 4th Squadron and the regiment’s machine gun squadron they broke the back of the 2000-strong Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment. In the victorious charge the Italians lost 40 cavalrymen (including the commander of the 4th Squadron, Captain Abba) with another 79 wounded and almost 100 precious horses but they inflicted over 150 casualties on the Soviets and captured some 900 unfortunate Siberians along with a collection of sixty mortars, artillery pieces and machine guns. The regiment, founded in 1692, by Gian Piossasco de Rossi from one of the oldest Italian noble families, won two gold medals and 54 silver medals for that day….and every old horse soldier in Valhalla shed a tear.
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