Not all ‘presepi’ – Italian Christmas cribs – are pretty, traditional types depicting shepherds and their flocks, picturesque village houses and old crafts. In 2001, for example, I saw the following presepe in Bagni di Lucca:

This most poignant representation was set in Ground Zero and was installed in what is now the Banca di Roma building in the market square.

It must be remembered that just over three months had passed since the greatest peacetime atrocity against civilians had been perpetrated by Muslim extremists. Again, for Christmas 2011, that crib was recreated in the church of the Crucifix in Lucca – a very beautiful church once on the list of buildings at risk, but now thankfully being restored. It was called “Ground Zero ten years ago-ten years after” and was again created by the scene designer, Alessandro Sesti, who dedicated it to the tragedy of the Twin Towers in New York City, an event which truly changed the world.

An incredibly poignant presepe is the one we visited a few days ago in the former chapel of Saint Elizabeth, in the ex-Franciscan monastery of Borgo a Mozzano. It’s titled ‘Un Natale in Trincea’ – a Christmas in the trenches – and relates to one of the greatest tragedies and ineptitudes in the annals of military disasters: the Italian campaign in Russia of 1941-3 in which, out of a quarter of a million troops sent to the front, almost half never returned.

The presepe is strong meat to take emotionally, especially when one looks at the photographs of the abortive campaign which are displayed in a narrow trench-like corridor one has to pass through before reaching the actual crib itself.

First are the triumphalist pictures and propaganda of the ill-prepared Italian brigades setting out, largely on a Mussolini-inspired (Hitler didn’t ask for any Italian troops) one-way ticket, to the Russian front. Just gaze at the farewells between the young men and their sweethearts….

Then, after battles in which the Italians actually received praise for their bravery from the enemy Russians  – the Italian cavalry charge of Isbuscenskij still stirs the memory here..a sort of mediterranean equivalent of the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade – the terrible sufferings of the soldiers’ retreat with cardboard-thin boots and uniforms totally unsuited for temperatures which reached below forty centigrade. The photo of the brigade band below is almost absurdly unviewable.

The presepe was prepared by the Misericordia of Borgo – the voluntary ambulance and first aid body without which Italy’s medical services would be ineffective – and is dedicated to Borgo a Mozzano’s eighty victims of the Russian campaign . The idea was to create a dream of an Italian Christmas crib as imagined seventy five years ago by the starving, frostbitten soldiers on the Don River front when thinking of home.

The majority of the soldiers were Alpini, the famed Italian mountain troops, and the crib has the patronage of the National Presidency of the Alpine Association and the Municipality of Borgo a Mozzano. If one asks what alpine troops were doing in the vast Russian steppes the idea was for a quick blitzkrieg victory and then head for the Caucasian mountains and secure the oil fields for the Axis powers. As we know, this never happened and the lightning war degenerated into trench warfare stalemate until the overwhelming Russian victory at Stalingrad.

The display includes what the soldiers had to endure in the endless expanse of white snow and ice on the Russian plains, along the great river Don, during the Christmas of 1942. There are photos of the campaign during the advance and propaganda posters of the time, as well as the dramatic photos of the retreat.

A bit of background: since 1941, Italy, already present on several battle fronts of the Second World War, had been, alongside German, Romanian and Hungarian troops, inadvisedly involved in the attack on the USSR and, in 1941, had sent there a first contingent of 62,000 soldiers, part of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia (CSIR). In July and August 1942 other soldiers were sent to that front and the Italian contingent reached 230,000, formed in ten divisions. These included three Alpine divisions (the Cuneense, the Julia and the Tridentina). The whole was called ARMIR (Italian Army in Russia), also termed the eighth Army.

On Christmas day of 1942 the Russians began a strong and decisive counter-offensive against the invading armies. It was a Christmas which, for Italian soldiers, was the dramatic prelude to the beginning of an immense tragedy. On January 17 (feast of St. Anthony the Abbot) the order of withdrawal of Italian troops and those of the Axis allies was given. And so began the retreat across the endless steppes of the Don. It was a tragedy that concerned, above all, the Alpine Divisions. It is estimated that there were 85,000 Italian soldiers who did not return to their homeland throughout the Russian campaign. About 25,000 died in battle or in summary executions resulting from surrender, 70,000 were captured and, of these, only 10,000 were repatriated in the years following the end of the war.  Even as late as 1958 there were still 60,000 men unaccounted for. They probably disappeared in the snowstorms and in the suffering of the prison camps.

Among these were also the eighty men from Borgo a Mozzano, to whom the crib is dedicated. In this crib there’s a flower for all those soldiers who never received anything on their unmarked burial places. ‘Dispersi in Russia’ is a phrase that appears with monotonous regularity on Italian war memorials including the one at our nearby village of San Cassiano.

The heartrending crib is made even more poignant by its sound track of alpine songs. It would be an obvious statement to say that I was close to tears when I emerged from the ‘Presepe Della Trincea’. The pity of war indeed!