The ground was wet and the air noticeably cool for a late August morning in 1942. The men of the Italian Savoia Regiment were likely nervous. In the midst of a Russian counterattack than had driven a wedge between the Italian 8th Army and the German 6th Army in the Ukraine, the Savoia had been thrown as a last-second, stop gap measure. Facing them were 2,500 men of the Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment. With bugles blaring and cries of “Savoia!” and “Caricat” (charge!), the Savoia Regiment galloped into the record books.
It was the last cavalry charge in military history.*
Actually the second-last cavalry charge followed a few days the Savoia Cavalry one. In fact on August 27 1942 the 5° rgt Lancieri di Novara took the day with a victorious charge in Jagodni, Russian front.
The very last cavalry charge, victorious and bloody, was by 14° rgt Cavalleggeri di Alessandria in Poloj (Yugoslavia) against Titoist partisans on October 17, 1942.
Anyway, the major “last” cavalry fact remains that of Savoia Cavalleria.
The regiment was the 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalleggeri (Cavalry Regiment), one of oldest and last actual combat cavalry units in any of the major military powers by World War II. Founded in 1692, by Gian Piossasco de Rossi, one of the most powerful Italian noble families, the Savoia Cavalleggeri carried forward a number of ancient traditions to the modern battlefield. The unit’s helmets were emblazoned with black crosses, in commemoration of the Battle of Madonna di Campana in 1706 when the unit captured a French battle flag. Each of the 700 men wore a red necktie in honor of a wounded dispatch rider, fallen after he got the mission, by a bloody wound on the neck – from the 1790s. And last, but not least, the units still carried sabers. Sabers that were drawn on August 24, 1942.
As the Axis advance on Stalingrad commenced, the Russians attempted a counter-attack at the River Don. Focused at the point between the Italian 8th Army and German 6th, the Russian found themselves able to separate the two Axis forces. No organized force stood in the way of the Russians being able to get back behind the German or Italian line – and thus the Savoia Regiment was quickly dispatched to block any Russian advance at the small village of Isbuschenskij.
As August 23rd gave way to the 24th, the Italians skirmished with elements of the Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment. The Savoia was already outnumbered, 2,500 to 700, with all but one squadron on horseback when the regiment’s commander, the aristocratic royalist Colonnello Alessandro Bettoni-Cazzago gave the order to charge. Bettoni-Cazzago, assuming that the longer he delayed an offense action, the worse the Italian position would be, attacked. In an age where cavalry divisions were made of steel, not flesh, and fed diesel, not oats, the Italian charge seemed destined to match Lord Cardigan’s ill-fated “Charge of the Light Brigade” against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.
The move completely took the Russians by surprise. One squadron flanked right against the Siberians’ left flank before wheeling around again to press the advantage from behind, hurling hand grenades into the quickly disintegrating enemy line. The another squadron attacked head on and the battle wore down into brutal hand-to-hand fighting, many of the Savoia having dismounted. Supported by a machine-gun squad, the Italians amazingly took the field, suffering only 32 killed and another 52 wounded (to say nothing of the 100 horses lost). In return, the 3rd Dragoons killed or captured over 1,000 Russians.
