LIBERATION OF ITALY: An Italian Journey

Adventures in obsession, toy soldiers, warfare, gelato and frequent diversions into ramblings about the Mille Miglia, the Great War and electrocuting Frogs in the name of advertising.

It’s mid-May, Lee Parnell and I knee are deep in a game of Team Yankee (our Berlin Battles campaign rumbles on). I’ve come back from the chicken coop and Lee calmly says ‘Mike, Mike…’ and turns his phone around to show the Breakthrough Assault review copy of the book I have been waiting years for; The “Liberation of Italy”. For a moment, the world goes quiet. 

Surely it can’t actually be it really? 

Surely not? 

But there it is. 

We scroll rapidly down the book to the Italian forces, investigating the CIL and the Gruppo di Combatimento. I breathe the biggest sigh of relief I’ve been holding for what feels like a couple of years. BF have stuck the landing.

All the jokes, the quips the banter and the laughs have been worth it. Ever since I started playing V4 during the pandemic, having been a holdout for V3 for a dogs age, we’ve joked about the Italy book never coming to fruition. So much so, two years back I ran a big Italy theatre round-robin and loudly joked about sending reports to BF weekly to get them to take action on it.

Obsessione…

So first off, where does the obsession come from? Well, to give context for it, the Italian books from V3, “Road to Rome” and “Fortress Italy”, comprised some of the coolest lists in the game. The art within them was incredible, filled with evocative photos from the actual action as well. A real triumph. It was also the war that people seemed to be talking the least about. Dunkirk, Desert, D Day, Arnhem, Berlin. It seemed even to be less of a show than the Pacific. So why on earth not? Was the kit not sexy enough? Was the endless slog up the country not endearing? There was no Great Swan in Italy, and if there was, we would have eaten it for rations.

So with the twin pronged assault in a wargame’s sense of ‘interesting and weird units’ alongside ‘infantry focused engagements’ and some of the most intense combat in the war, the wargaming side of my obsession had begun.

The obsession with Italy however… runs deep. Deep enough that I flash back to 2023. Looking up the sheer rock face of the Sass di Stria. ‘SASSO! SASSO!’ our guide Evaristo Risotto (his actual name…. what a guy!) calls as the rocks clatter past and bounce off my climbing helmet. I look down behind me to see the 600 meter drop to the valley floor. My shins are bleeding from the Dolomite rock itself biting me, as my wife’s cousin finds out at this very moment, heights aren’t sitting well with her.

We’re on the climb that Sottotenente Mario Fusetti made in 1915. It’s a calm August morning and the sun is masked by the Lagazuoi mountain.
We’re cable line locked to the climb that Fusetti’s boys took on that fateful day in late October of 15. For us, the sounds of birdsong, and the gentle breeze. For him and his crew of 60 men, the ear-splitting crack of 75mm artillery fired from the Julia Alpini artillery batteries to cover their climb. One Enzo Ferrari will later move to this position and become one of those gunners.
My boots slip as I slam into the rockface. I’m wearing a Vibram sole, designed by the Italian Alpini after a disaster claimed the lives of two climbers in the late 20’s. Fusetti and his boys are wearing cleated leather Stivali; some of them with rope bindings to aid the climb.
I’m climbing safe in the knowledge the Via Ferrata (iron way) cable line was replaced and repaired in the 70’s with high tensile tested steel. He’s doing it with rope, pitons and hammers.
And he’s under fire.
When I reach the top, with steam blowing out my ears, and sweat pouring from every orifice, it’s with a smile. When he does it… it’s into the jaws of 300 Austrians in a horrific hand-to-hand battle in the lynch point that holds this pass.

None of his crew made it.

It’s this type of action from the Great War that draws my obsession.
I’ve climbed Monte Cassino before. Stood at the bottom of it with my father-in-law as he looked up and said ‘how the hell did they take this?’. Five months of intense brutal combat, in a place where the weather itself is desperate to destroy you and where a shell can hit the ground and launch a shale fragment at 300 meters per second up to a kilometer away and rip your head in two.

How the hell indeed…

The Book

When I started to read the main body of the book and the all important command cards, it struck me the level of detail BF have put into this.

You got a favourite unit? It’s probably in here.

Want to have a special division represented and what it does? It’s broadly covered.

You want to rock that early Liberation Force of Italy where they are pulling old Great War kit out the reserves and throwing it in, It’s in there.

The book is missing a couple of things, but honestly, Vecchi Ragazzi like me can easily tweak things to suit and there’s a great detail put into the Italian forces (except for one tiny spot) to getting it right. Particular details are well explained rather than hand waived. Archers, for example, are available to be taken in an Italian force (well enjoyed along with its towed brethren by the Regia Esercito for its ruthless capacity for cutting through Axis armour from a long distance) but are automatically equipped with the SABOT round AT15 ammunition, because they were only deployed for spring offensives of 1945. (The towed variant seeing protracted use through the entire campaign).

Jam packed with superb artwork, maps, comprehensive background and the infinite levels of plate spinning of dealing with the million units represented in chaotic actions like OPERATION GRAPESHOT (Brazilians! Goums! Turkomans! Italians! A literal Bear!) it’s a real triumph of research. More than well worth the wait.

The Boards

So, with the book awaiting the physical release (not long now), we are sat in the cockpit waiting for the ‘off’. To celebrate the long awaited release of this book, the Shoot and Scoot team have had something in the planning since 2024. Something to top that year’s “Big Barn Splash”.

What if we did the Po Valley crossing?

Grapeshot takes place in April of 1945 and is the culmination of a massive endless slog up the boot of Italy.
Everyone is there, in a gigantic mess of troops thundering across the river, preceded by the last, and arguably pound for pound (Lira for Kilo?) most successful parachute drop completed by the Allies of the War; OPERATION HERRING. 400+ Italian Paras take three days to knock out 70 vehicles, take 4000 enemy captive or dead, disarm something like a hundred bombs on bridges and generally do insane things.
The Allies break the back of the Axis in Italy. 

It’s in the flat country of the Po valley so what better place for us to get some cracking terrain done for it.

Italian buildings, espevially town houses, are rare to come by on the conventional market and, despite owning basically the lions share of the old Area 9 Italy stock, we had to turn to 3D Printing.

Enter the other Shoot and Scoot patrons. Through a co-ordinated effort on our cosy wargaming Discord, Petter Therin has designed a cracking set of buildings along with some 3D files we found. Andy printed an entire Piazza for us, so we have started to build a large city to fight over.

Advertising hoardings and posters on the buildings were achieved with a lot of period accurate automotive advertising, and hoardings for classics like San Pellegrino (Italy’s largest compressed air producing company, fun fact, it’s their compressed air machines that were used for the Pneumatic drills that dug through the rock of the Dolomites during the great war. The more you know.).
I chose to include a bunch of stuff for the Mille Miglia; that most insane of enduro races.
Suspended in 1941 because… well… You know… the war. The last race being held in 1940, often referred to as the Axis Grand Prix.

I mounted a large classic blue Mille Miglia Poster on the wall to really pop the colour. Some of the posters and murals in Italy at the time really are a wonder. Magneti Marelli (still in business) hoardings are absolutely gorgeous and have some truly mad and stunning posters you can plaster over your buildings to really give that 1940’s feel to the tabletop.

Armies of Italy

With a fully painted 200pt force of Regia Esercito Gruppo di Combattimento already, I was left thinking ‘well what is there to do for me now?’
Well the answer is of course, EVERYTHING. 

First on the list is a DECIMA MAS force of frogmen. Italys elite of the San Marco marines for the RSI. I fully intend to have a crack at sculpting some chaps with their amazing fried egg berets as well. With lots of chaps armed with Beretta SMGs.

I’ve also got an entire V2 box of metal paratroopers. Broadly speaking, a LOT of this is borne from a fascination around OPERATION HERRING. So, I think very seriously, I’ll be taking a full Folgore co-belligerent force. In the actual drop at HERRING, all the paracutisti were equipped with: 37 pattern webbing, Berretta SMGs, Gammon Bombs and their Italian para jump boots. Those classic metal paras are so wonderful though, how could I resist doing the last and most successful drop of the war!

Well. There it is. Obsession. Racing. Blokes in feathered hats. What are you looking forward to most in the book? I’ll do a write up of our OPERATION GRAPESHOT games as well when we complete them! 

Avanti Savioa!

Mike has been joining Mike Robinson and Lee in going over the “Liberation of Italy” book over at “Time of Day“

Also, the Shoot and Scoot team have their own take on the books.