8.57pm – Monday 17 June 2024
This afternoon in the Marangonerie room of the Buonconsiglio Castle, Brigadier General Roberto Riccardi, Commander of the “Trentino Alto Adige” Carabinieri Legion presented his latest literary work entitled: “The Flame and the Eagles”.
The book retraces, from the first chapters, the history of the Carabinieri in this Region, focusing on the relationships created between society and the Institution and defining the beginnings of this experience as a “pioneering adventure in a new land”.
The work is a “story from below”, in which the centrality of the men who are the true protagonists is exalted. It begins with the entry of the first Carabinieri on 3 November 1918 in Trento, led by Captain Filippo Caruso. We also retrace what was the first real investigation conducted by Lt.Col. Gino Poggesi aimed at identifying and recognizing the body of Cesare Battisti and of which there is a living testimony in a letter that the wife of the irredentist hero addressed to the Officer, thanking him for having returned the body (of her husband) to the affection of the family and to the adoring admiration of Italy.
Finally, we come to even more recent stories, such as that of the Carabiniere Vittorio Tiralongo, who arrived in Trentino from Sicily and who, after an initial period spent in Trento, where he met a woman with whom he fell in love and who made him a father, was transferred in Selva dei Molini (BZ). As fate would have it, on the very day his daughter turned one, he was held in the barracks and fell into an ambush treacherously set for him by some members of a South Tyrolean separatist organisation.
The presentation was moderated by Prof. Giuseppe Ferrandi, General Director of the Trentino Historical Museum Foundation and also saw the intervention of the President of the Autonomous Province of Trento, Maurizio Fugatti who thanked the author for the attention he intended to give to these territories.
The sale of the work will help finance forms of assistance for orphans of the Army.
