Emigrants Returning to for the Great War

When, in May of 1915, Italy entered the First World War, several million Italians were living abroad, across the globe. Some 800,000 of those expatriates were men liable by Italian law for military service, under threat of being considered deserters. During the war, about 300,000 men would return to the mother country to serve, some 90,000 from the United States. The story of these men is what Prof. Daly (University College London) tells, in this rather impressive book.

Each of Daly’s ten chapters examines some aspect of experience of the men, whether they chose to serve or not, and Italy’s efforts to get these men into uniform. While providing a general discussion of all men in question, with looks at the experiences of individuals, she concentrates on four men with roots in different parts of Italy. These were living in Sao Paulo, Brazil, New York, London, and Paris, this last being Lazzaro Ponticelli, who led a particularly interesting life.

Daly’s opening chapter surveys the scope of the Italians' lives in diaspora, scattered almost literally across every inhabited continent, but primarily in Europe - most notably France, the United States, and Latin America.

Additional chapters cover the response in the diaspora to Italy’s initial neutrality in the war and then Italy’s entry on the side of the Entente, with a call for men to come home to fight. The experience of the war is covered in two chapters, one covering the Alpine Front and the other encounters with bureaucracy, society, and government. Those men – in fact the majority of the overseas men of military age – who chose not serve are treated in a single chapter. The end of the war and the initial post war experience of the veterans take up two chapters. Prof. Daly does not stop there, but devotes a chapter to the veterans' postwar lives, both in their adopted countries and in Italy, through the interwar period, the rise of Fascism, and the Second World War, in which some once again fought. The concluding chapter looks at the memorialization of these men, notably the aforementioned Lazzaro Ponticelli, who at his death in 2008 was the last surviving French veteran of the war, the last Foreign Legion veteran, and the next-to-last Italian veteran.

This book brought to mind a conversation I once had, many years ago, with Italian-born Leonard Covello (1887-1982), who had been raised in East Harlem, and recalled that during W.W. I Italy had declared him a deserter for not returning to fight, but after his service as a Doughboy in 1917-1918, had sent him a full pardon, a flag, and some decorations.

This is a valuable read for anyone with an interest in Italy in World War I or the Italo-American immigrant experience.

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Note: Emigrant Soldiers is also available in e-editions.

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