Between Expectation and Reality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2025
Chapter 5 reveals the numerous specific challenges experienced by emigrant soldiers and explores the coping mechanisms they employed. Compared to other soldiers, they experienced additional difficulties related to sending and receiving letters from abroad, in finding their preferred brands of foreign cigarettes and, for those without close family in Italy, in using their infrequent periods of leave. In addition to such practicalities, integration into the Italian Army was often challenging. A significant obstacle was their weak grasp of the Italian language and the fact that they were often treated as foreigners by others. There was no widespread recognition of the need to consider the emigrant soldiers as a distinct cohort within the Army and the men often felt forgotten and disregarded. Within a few months of Italy’s entry into the war, intense feelings of regret surfaced for most of the emigrants, even those who had previously been patriotic. While feelings of being Italian may have increased for many non-emigrant soldiers, the opposite was true of large numbers of those who had returned to Italy from abroad and many of them found their feelings of national belonging severely weakened as a result of their military service.
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