In the past years, many times we children saw in our cities some young men in uniform with a strange red headdress from which a light blue pom-pom hung: the adults told us that it was Bersaglieri. At that point we understood that an aura of adventure, heroism and glory surrounded those soldiers. Adventure, heroism and glory that began on 18 June 1836 when the captain of the Sardinian Army Alessandro Ferrero della Marmora presented to King Carlo Alberto the proposal to set up a light infantry with avant-garde, exploration and connection tasks between the departments. Thus was born the Corps of the Bersaglieri whose main characteristic was, from the beginning, the speed that still remains in the military parades faced at a charging pace and to the sound of an enthralling brass fanfare. To better identify them, Captain Ferrero della Marmora gave his departments a strange round headdress, with a wide brim on which to rest a tuft of capercaillie feathers. The particularly accurate training, the avant-garde armament (they were the first to equip themselves with breech-loading rifles), the boldness in joining trumpets and feathers in the wind immediately characterized them as an elite Corps. Being a bersagliere became in a few years a point of honor for the soldiers of the small Kingdom of Sardinia. They distinguished themselves from the beginning of the Risorgimento wars. On 8 April 1848 they had the baptism of fire in Goito, in the First War of Independence, which ended with the unfortunate battle of Novara.
In 1854 they were part of the expedition that took part in the Crimean War: they did honor in the battle of Cernaia. Such was the admiration of the French allies that the Zouaves gave the Corps the red fezes that we boys admired during the hours of free exit. In Crimea the Besaglieri gained international esteem but lost their founder: Alessandro Ferrero della Marmora died of a cholera infection in distant Russia. The victorious II War of Independence saw them as protagonists in Palestro on May 31, 1859, but perhaps the image we all know of the Risorgimento wars is the entry of the Bersaglieri into Rome through the breach of Porta Pia: they were the first to bring the tricolor in the Eternal City on September 20, 1870. They could not miss the colonial wars: East Africa and Libya. On the eve of World War I, the Bersaglieri Ciclisti specialty was established, always to go faster. One of the most shining figures of the Corps belongs to this specialty: Enrico Toti. A Roman populace who, despite lacking a leg, wanted to reach the most prestigious department of the Italian Army in whose ranks he died heroically in the surroundings of Monfalcone, earning a Gold Medal for Military Valor. On 3 November 1918, once again first, the Bersaglieri entered Trieste, disembarking from the destroyer of the Marina 'Bold'.
The German soldier amazed the world: the bersagliere amazed the German soldier
This sentence of Field Marshal Rommel can be the synthesis of the activity of the Bersaglieri in World War II. Present in all the most important war fronts, the blood of the Bersaglieri has been shed in Russia, in North Africa, in Yugoslavia, continuing to arouse admiration in allies and adversaries. The 1943-45 civil war saw Bersaglieri departments deployed both with the Southern Kingdom and with the RSI: fortunately they had no way of clashing with each other. On both sides of the front, the Bersaglieri placed themselves at the service of the national community. Even today, the Bersaglieri do not fail to intervene both in defense of the security of the territory in the event of natural disasters, and where they are required for Italy's international commitments. Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan have known the helmets with capercaillie feathers which after 182 years remain a sort of identity card for the Italian contingents abroad. What remains in the hearts and feelings of all Italians is the military parade on 2 June when the long Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome gradually empties, making a space for them. From under the Colosseum you can hear the sound of a brass fanfare and then the Bersaglieri appear, feathers in the wind with their bold running pace that began in 1836 and nobody wants it to end.
