Summary Of Emilio Lusso's A Soldier On The Southern Front

Emilio Lusso’s A Soldier on the Southern Front, initially published in 1939, was re-released by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. in New York, New York in 2014 to commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of the Great War. Translated by Gregory Conti and featuring an Afterward by historian Mark Thompson, it is a memoir in which Lusso recounts his experience as part of the Italian Army facing the Austrians in the Northern Mountains of Italy. Lusso wrote his memoir in France in 1936 and 1937 while on exile after clashing with the rise Italy’s fascist regime in the 1920s A politician, Lusso wrote his memoir as a historical account of soldiers on the southern front, but his passion for democracy and fury towards fascists overtaking his

country cannot be ignored.
In his epigraph, Lusso explains, “This is not, therefore, a work with a thesis: It is intended merely as the account of an Italian witness to the Great War.” Lusso claimed to have written the book only to tell the story of an Italian soldier, a rare voice amongst the British, French, and German Great War narratives. In the Afterward, British historian Mark Thompson surmises that Lusso could never escape his fanaticism for democracy and that his book was “saturated” with the Italian conviction of the war’s political significance. However, American Historian Andrew Bacevich interpreted the memoir differently. He saw A Solider on the Southern Front as apolitical, and believed the theme is how “Subalterns, not senior officers, exercise the leadership that matters.” I see the political intention Thompson saw in A Solider on the Southern Front. Lusso chose to write his memoir of a past war, with leaders he found incompetent and inhumane, on the eve of a war with Italy under the control of an inhumane regime. Bacevich alluded to the relationships of common soldiers and officers as the focal point of Lusso’s narrative, and are not most concerns of politics and governments defined in the relationship between leader and civilian, which parallel the ties between a conscripted soldier and a career officer? Lusso wrote to Italy in his memoir to remind them of everything that was wrong with the Great War but also to remind them of the humanity of the infantrymen, the citizens of Italy who were more worthy than their leaders of respect and praise. Decisions about the war should have fallen into the hands of soldiers and lower-ranking officers if one looks at Lusso’s stories. These recollections allude to the importance of democracy and the importance of citizens choosing their nation’s path. In the greatest of tragedies, Lusso’s book was published in 1939 in France, but would not be available to Italians until 1945, in the throes of war.
Lusso, if qualifications for autobiographers existed, certainly would earn his place as a veteran with a right to tell his story. Lusso speaks little about himself and his background in the memoir. He dedicates simple sentences to his personal promotions and accolades in his writing, instead committed to honoring his peers, his company, and his fellow infantrymen. Perhaps he was fearful that to include any personal triumphs would be an insult to his fallen comrades or would remind readers of senior officers who would often give themselves awards. For instance, the case of Lieutenant Colonel Michele Carriera he recounted in his book, who proposed himself for the silver medal of Valor in the middle of an operation while his soldiers died around him. Luckily, Thompson executed a full summary of Lusso in the Afterward. The man was decorated for Valor four times, was loved and often idolized by his men, and was known for his calm even in the face of disaster. Lusso’s courage appeared off the battlefield, as he twice contradicted his superiors in the face of execution, Thompson reported. Lusso spent four years in the war, and one must surmise that the stories he chose to recount for his memoir must be the most important.
Lusso was only wounded once, at the end of the war, and seemed to leave the front for respite rarely.

From May 1916 to May 1917, Lusso fought in Northeastern Italy against Austro-Hungarian infantry, and it was this year he chose to recall in his memoir. He witnessed the clash between tradition and technology, the alcoholism that pilfered the sense from men, and most often and with the most detail, the failings of the army’s leadership and their indifference to their soldiers. Tradition and Alcohol were often forced upon soldiers by the senior officers, and both turned out to be detrimental to the well being of men. General Leone, a maniacal man whom the soldiers, Lusso included, hated desperately, gave eighteen men Farina cuirasses, an updated version of traditional Italian body armor. In the scene Lusso described, everyone knew that the body armor would be useless defending a soldier against a machine gun, but the general insisted the men leave the trench to cut the enemies’ barbed wire. Just as the general proclaims that Romans became emperors because of their armor, all eighteen men were mowed down by two Austrian machine guns. Though the soldiers around him looked on in horror, General Leone continued to talk about the usefulness of the cuirasses and the attack that was to go on as scheduled, even though the men would now be facing yards upon yards of barbed wire. Tradition made the forward attack that followed so gruesome that Lusso recalled the Austrian soldiers ceasing their fire and calling “Basta!” as if ashamed to kill such easy targets. Our class has covered the woeful unpreparedness of the Italian forces in World War One extensively, but Lusso’s memoir painted the picture of how senior Italian officers followed tradition regardless and often ignored the threat of technology, like machine guns, and sent their soldiers to

die.