Garibaldi Tour

The Garibaldi Brigades are partisan forces that arrive in a town controlled by the partisans near the end of the war and prepare to join the assault on Milan. Their conflict with the better-equipped Badoglio Brigades gives the resistance a divided character, while the joint command formed for the city’s capture shows how operational necessity can bring opposing factions together.

Arrival and Distinctive Appearance

As the German armies were routed and the Fascists scattered, partisan brigades gathered in the town, waiting for a signal from Radio London before departing for the Milan insurrection. The Garibaldi Brigades arrived under Ras, a popular, black-bearded commander. Their appearance was improvised: each fighter wore a different uniform, but the red kerchief and red star on the chest marked the group as a whole. Their weapons, too, were assembled from what was available, including old shotguns and submachine guns taken from the enemy.

That uneven appearance set them apart from the Badoglio Brigades. Those forces wore khaki uniforms resembling British dress, blue kerchiefs, and carried new Sten guns. They had received Allied assistance through nighttime parachute drops, following the regular passage of a British reconnaissance plane. In the novel’s account, these material differences make the brigades’ competing political loyalties visible in clothing, equipment, and the circumstances of their support.

Rivalry and Joint Command

Tension between the Garibaldi and Badoglio forces surfaces in their dispute over how the Badoglio fighters had attacked. Some said they had shouted “Forward, Savoy!” The Badogliani argued that the cry was habitual rather than proof of monarchism; the Garibaldini answered that it suited a charge with fixed bayonets, not movement around a corner with a Sten. Their suspicion that the Badogliani had sold out to the British sharpened the disagreement into a question of political allegiance, not merely military style.

Despite that distrust, both forces accepted that the assault on Milan required a joint command under one leader. Mongo was chosen because he led the best-equipped brigade, was the oldest commander, had fought in the First World War, was regarded as a hero, and enjoyed the Allied command’s confidence. The arrangement did not erase the factions’ differences; it put them under a shared command for the immediate purpose of taking the city.

The Assault and Return

Before the Milan insurrection, the brigades set out to capture the city. News reached the town that the operation had succeeded and that the forces were returning victorious, though rumors reported that Ras had fallen and Mongo had been wounded. Their return unsettled those reports: when the vehicles reached the main square, Ras appeared alive, seated on the front fender of a Dodge and greeting the crowd. The episode gives the Brigades a public, collective presence, moving from the divided preparations for battle to a homecoming marked by victory and relief.

The Brigades also belong to Jacopo Belbo’s remembered world of political conflict. He recalls that period as a time when the opposing sides seemed clearly marked by red and black, and when the consequences of battle appeared less ambiguous than the later stories and conspiracies that troubled him. The Garibaldi Brigades’ red markings thus serve not only to distinguish one force from another, but also to anchor Belbo’s retrospective contrast between the apparent clarity of wartime divisions and the uncertainty of the present.