Another beautiful piece of plastic with cloth over. In 1/6 scale. This is the second piece of my collection. An Italian paratrooper collection, inspired by my friend who was a paratrooper in the army and that brought me in the reneactor thing.

After El Alamein battle and the heroic defeat of Folgore, the Italian Army wanted to recreate this elite combat group. While drilling went on, the Savoia royal family betrayed Mussolini’s regime and suddenly, the 8th of September 1943, the King and the Italian hierarchy betrayed one’s country, fled in the hands of Allies leaving with no orders our entire Army, that surrendered to Germany Army. So two States were created, one in the north and one in the south of Italy, the former with Mussolini, the latter with monarchists.

This piece represent a Nembo paratrooper, RSI Army. You can see his dress with camouflage, the first camouflage issued on regular basis to troops in the world. This kind of mimetic colours will be used in Italian Army until recent years. Now we use a great new scheme, the “vegetata” one, that seems digital but it is a design, with a net wire on the cloth, invisible to human eyes, to blind digital spotters. Sometimes Italians do it better.

He wears a “samurai”, the bodice to transport magazines for MAB. A paratrooper has to transport independently a large amount of munitions, because he is very mobile, on enemy ground and without the possibility to supply himself. This samurai is the larger one, with the possibility to transport 12 (!) magazines and 6 bombs.

Nembo fought in Nettuno area, stopping for months the Allied forces on the beaches under Rome together with a larger number of German troops. A lot of scholars never speak about Italians in war because they think that our soldiers they were only a bunch of cowards that cry for mummy. They are racists and idiots. Italian soldiers were great in war, and paratroopers were among the best, but highest rank generals were shit, they lost the war, not the Italian soldier!

The uniform is grey-green, the particular colour that identify the Italian Army. His collar badges are with gladi, the RSI military symbol that replace the stars, the military Savoia symbol.

The 12 inches is a Dragon limited piece create for a convention. I modified it with the samurai and other minor things. I throw away the box, but real collectors never put a model outside his box…

It is dedicated to Nino Arena who fought on Anzio-Nettuno front. After he became a writer on military matters, especially on RSI topics. Here I photographed him two years ago during a conference held for the commemoration of the paratroopers fight in Castel Decima in 1944. You can see that the face is the same, even if there are some years between the two aspects…

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