Italians in Murmansk

On 2 September 1918 the steamer Czar arrived at Murmansk with an Italian expeditionary corps on board. The British chronology of the war records under that date the landing of an Italian contingent which joined the Allied forces in northern Russia. According to the documents of the Italian corps, studied by historians of the Historical Office of the Italian Army General Staff, the ship came alongside the quay on 2 September and the soldiers went ashore a day later. General Charles Maynard, commander of the Allied forces in the Murmansk area, wrote in his memoirs of the Italians’ arrival on 3 September. The corps was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Augusto Sifola, until then commander of a group of cyclist Bersaglieri at Cortellazzo at the mouth of the Piave. According to the Italian documents the corps numbered 42 officers and 1,274 men, while other sources give round figures of between 1,200 and 1,350.

Italy agreed to send troops after the permanent military representatives at the Supreme War Council in Versailles concluded in a joint note on 3 June that the Allies must hold the ports of Murmansk and Archangel. It was feared that the Germans and Finland, allied to them, would seize the coast, and that the Germans would set up a submarine base at Murmansk. According to the note, four to six British, French, American or Italian battalions were to go north under the joint command of a British officer. On 16 July the Chief of Staff of the Italian army, General Armando Diaz, wrote to the Minister of War that Italy should provide two battalions, a mountain artillery battery and a field hospital. He himself, however, thought that one battalion would be enough, and for lack of men that was where it was left. Italian historians stress that Rome expected no economic gain in this distant country. What mattered was a seat at the table when new borders and spheres of influence in Europe were weighed after the war. There was also a plan to make the core of the corps out of “irredentists”, that is prisoners from the Austro-Hungarian army of Italian nationality who were held in Russian camps. In the north this idea failed, but it succeeded in a separate Italian contingent in the Far East.

The core of the corps was the 4th Battalion of the 67th Infantry Regiment, with a machine-gun company and a replacement company. To these were added a section of Carabinieri, engineers, telegraphists, a detachment of skiers as instructors, a 60-bed field hospital and two meteorologists. The corps assembled in Turin, from where on 14 August it left by train for Le Havre. It crossed by ship to Southampton, and on 24 August it reached Newcastle upon Tyne. There the Italians boarded the Czar, which on 26 August sailed in convoy with three transports carrying the American 339th Infantry Regiment to Archangel. Spanish flu broke out on all the ships. The first Italian soldier died on 29 August and was buried at sea. On 1 September the American ships left the convoy and sailed into the White Sea, while the Czar headed for Murmansk.

After arrival about 60 sick men were carried off the ship on stretchers to British and French hospitals. By 17 September 15 Italian soldiers, including two officers, had died of influenza and pneumonia. The corps was divided into two parts. One stayed in Murmansk; the other, with the machine-gun company and the hospital, went to nearby Kola. The soldiers had brought only the officers’ revolvers from Italy. On the spot they were issued Russian rifles, and on 11 September they began training with them under a British officer. They lived in run-down barracks, and since the temperature was already dropping to around freezing at the beginning of September, they were issued sleeping bags, sheepskin coats and three blankets per man.

Maynard called the Italians a most welcome reinforcement. At the time he was expecting a German-Finnish attack on the Murmansk railway, and the promised British reinforcements had yet to arrive. He added, however, that the local climate had told on the Italians from the start, and his modest hospitals soon filled up. Italian historians regard this opinion as a stereotype. They point out that Sifola himself complained that no one had carefully selected men for the expedition, and that some of his soldiers had only just returned from medical treatment. The corps remained in Russia for almost a year. In the spring of 1919 one of its companies fought in Karelia, and the mission ended at the end of August 1919. According to Italian figures 22 men died, three of them in action and the rest of disease.