Tag: Allies
Major Amedeo Quillet- Badass of the Week
Posted on August 20, 2019August 20, 2019 by walt313	Leave a comment
Italians have been the butt of many a joke. "Why are Italian rifles so expensive? Because they've never been fired and dropped only once." Not so Major Amedeo Quillet who may well be voted "Badass of the Century".
Lieutenant and Major Quillet
Born into Italian aristocracy on February 7th, 1909, young Amedeo led a pampered life and became an excellent horseman. He was to have been part of the Italian Equestrian Team for the 1936 Olympics, but Italy's war with Ethiopia in 1935 quashed those plans. Using family connections, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and raised a force of over 2000 African cavalry. After several successful engagements with Ethiopian forces, he was asked to join the Black Flames. This was a unit of volunteers sent to fight in support of France in the Spanish Civil War.
Quillet then accepted a posting to Italian East Africa and planned to have a quiet life. This ended abruptly when Italy joined World War Two as part of the Axis.
Surrounded by British forces, the Italian Army fought a defensive campaign. Quillet was again commanded a force of African calvary "Gruppo Bande a Cavallo". Using sabers, rifles and hand grenades , once again he led horseback attacks successfully against his enemies. His exploits led him to be named The Italian Lawrence of Arabia, The Knight from Another Time and the Black Commander.
The Black Commander
THE BATTLE OF CHERU (Keru)
His most legendary battle occurred January 1941 as Italian forces were in full retreat. In a rear guard action to give the Italian Army time to escape the British and regroup, Quillet led a series of attacks on the British Army. This cumulated in the last charge of Horse cavalry faced by the British Army and the last horse charge in history.
Quillet attacked with 1500 horsemen against infantry, machine guns and tanks. Flanking the heavy weapons, the cavalry cut into the British camp tossing hand grenades and slashing down survivors. The focus of the attack was the British Headquarters which was defended by a line of artillery. The panicked gun crews zeroed their guns and fired point blank into the Africans. Many shells missed the attackers and caused severe casualties among the British. Suffering heavy losses, Quillet's cavalry destroyed the gun crews, many hacked to death.
The attack left chaos and death in its wake and Quillet escaped with most of his men. The action did in fact by the time for the Italian forces to regroup. Their defensive positions held the British force in check preventing the loss of Italian East Africa and saved thousands of lives in the process. For this action, Quillet was promoted to Captain.
Despite this success, the Italian General surrendered to the British. Thousands of Italian soldiers, including Quillet refused to surrender and took to the mountains.
The "Gruppo Bande a Cavallo " suffered 826 deaths and more than 600 injured from the beginning of WW2; it had no deserters and received the gold medal in the memory of the heroic Togni, and high praise from their enemies, written on the official reports of the British High Command.
NOW IT GETS GOOD
Dressed as natives, Quillet led his horsemen in eight months of attacks, ambushes and sabotage against the occupying British. Supplies were plundered, trains derailed and bridges blow up. The British placed a bounty of Gold on Quillet's head, dead or alive. He evaded every effort to destroy his force. Reduced to be armed with only pistols and hand grenades, Quillet forced the British to divert significant forces from the main battles in North Africa.
With the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, Quillet escaped to neutral Yemen and stowed away on a Red Cross ship to get back to Italy. Promoted to Major and still not admitting defeat, he requested men and supplies from the Italian War Ministry to continue the fight in East Africa. Unfortunately, Italy surrendered shortly after his return and declared war on Germany. With the blessing of the American Army, Quillet conducted guerilla warfare against the Germans. This continued until the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Although wounded several times, Quillet survived the war having survived three wars and fighting on both sides of World War Two. Amedeo married Beatrice Gandolfo in 1944. The couple subsequently had two sons; Paolo and Alfredo. Beatrice died in 1990.
Following the war Quillet entered the Italian diplomatic service where he represented Italy in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Morocco, and finally as ambassador to India until 1975. In 1971, he was in Morocco during an assassination attempt on the King.
On June 20, 2000, he was awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Capua, which he defined as "highly coveted".
On 4 November 2000, the day of the Festivity of the Armed Forces, Quillet was presented with the Knight Grand Cross of the Military Order of Italy by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. This is the highest military decoration in Italy. Quillet is one of the most highly decorated (both civil and military) people in Italian history. In 2001, Quillet visited Eritrea and was met by thousands of supporters. The group included men who previously served with him as horsemen in the Italian Cavalry known as Gruppo Bande a Cavallo. The Eritrean people remembered Quillet 's efforts to help Eritrea remain independent of Ethiopia.
Since 1974 Quillet had been living in retirement in Kentstown, County Meath, Ireland although latterly he had spent his winters in Italy. For some years he was a member of and hunted with the Tara Harriers and the Meath Hounds.
In 2009, his 100th birthday was celebrated with a special concert at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.
Amedeo Quillet died on June 16, 2010, in Rome.
Posted in History, Military, valor, WarTagged Africa, Allies, Amedeo Quillet, Axis, badass, Battles, Calvary, Calvary Charge, Cheru, history, Horse Charge, Horses, Keru, Nazis, Togni, World War TwoLeave a Comment on Major Amedeo Quillet- Badass of the Week
My Mom's Last Story
Posted on July 5, 2018August 7, 2019 by walt313	1 Comment
My Mother went to her grave saying, "Hitler was a Good Man. He was like Nixon. He had bad advisors."
Before I get into this it might be a good idea to read this post.
I'm not a Nazi, But My Mom Was
Mom told stories to me all my life. I became a World War Two historian to prove she was a lying Bitch.
"Have another scotch Mom. Tell me another story"
One by one, I learned that she was telling the truth. She was a farmer's daughter living in Insterburg, East Prussia.
Insterburg, East Prussia
THE FIRST STORIES
She was very proud of Insterburg. They had the first panzer division. The first Stuka squadron. The first SS division. Come on Mom, how could all these "firsts" happen in your farm village. Well for one, Insterburg was a city of 41,230 people in 1933. East Prussia was separated from Germany after World War One. It was far from the prying eyes of the Versailles Treaty. A perfect place for Hitler to covertly convert glider clubs into Luftwaffe squadrons. The first panzer units were formed there. In fact the Panzer I was based on a Soviet design.
THE HARD ONES TO PROVE
Hitler had the Bomb
Mom always said the German scientists made the first Atomic Bomb. That the one dropped on Hiroshima was a German design. In 1982, Mom was dying of cancer and had six months to live. She came to see me in Texas. Through the booze and the drugs, she tried desperately tried to get through to me. One of the last things she told me was:
"Wherever you go. Whatever you do. Remember, Mein Hut hat Drie Ecke."
Sure Mom, your hat has three corners. Whatever.
This story put in the bullshit pile until Christmas 1998. My good friend Andy knew I liked UFO's and Nazis and gave me a book that combined the two. The book was "Reich of the Black Sun– Nazi Secret Weapons and The Cold War Allied Legend". Nazi UFO's, yeah yeah. Whatever. Nazi time machine, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Then I turned the page and my life changed.
Not only that but it was tested in the Baltic Sea off of East Prussia. Everyone in East Prussia had a story about how the sun came up one night. Even my Oma (Grandmother), a staunch Weimar Republic woman had her own story. Have you ever wondered why the Americans tested the second bomb and not the first? They already knew the first one worked.
All Our Ammunition was Sabotaged
When the Russians attacked Konigsberg they had to abandon the city. Mom said that they had enough troops and enough guns to defend the city but all the ammunition was sabotaged. I didn't believe this one. How can you sabotage train loads of ammunition. But then I watched "Schindler's List".
Hitler Didn't Die in Berlin
Mom used to go on drunken rants about Hitler surviving WW2. I dismissed it as wishful thinking. However, Mom was in Berlin in May of 1945 and the city was rive with rumors of Hitler's escape. In the book, Grey Wolf-The Escape of Adolf Hitler; the book concerns the allegations by its makers that Adolf Hitler did not die in his Berlin bunker in 1945 but escaped, along with Eva Braun and several other Nazi officials, to Argentina and lived six miles east of Bariloche. Hitler's escape was organized by Martin Bormann, who also fled to Argentina, and was aided and abetted by the Government of Juan Perón. Hitler died in Argentina alone, poor and mentally ill in 1962,[2] leaving behind a wife and at least one child.
While the claim is fantastic, to date there is no evidence that Hitler and Eva Braun died in the Berlin bunker or that their bodies were burned. The skull fragments and jaw that the Soviets claimed were of Hitler have been tested for DNA and turn out to be female. Today's facial recognition software has proven that the guy handing out medals to the Hitler Youth was not Hitler but a body double.
MOM'S LAST STORY
Here we come to Mom's Last Story. The biggest whopper of them all.
The Holocaust was Allied Propaganda
This is NOT about Holocaust denial. I know the Holocaust happened. I did not understand what Mom was telling me. From her perspective. Just last year, I figured it out. While researching Hitler's stolen art, I came across a video explaining that the movies and pictures of the Holocaust were made by the Allies. At General Eisenhower's direct order.
This scene is completely accurate. Faced with the dilemma of all these liberated prisoners in many different countries, the Allies were swamped and did not have the resources to simply free the prisoners. Along with the food issue many camps were infected with Typhus, Cholera, Dysentery and other deadly diseases that simple could not be allowed to escape.
After the war, the prisoners kept dying. Eisenhower's photographers took pictures as the bodies stacked up. Ike then published those pictures and said they were of Nazi origin. That this is exactly what soldiers found when they liberated the camps. The logical thing to do was to reopen the ovens but that was forbidden.
Mom was right 90% of what is taught today is Allied propaganda.
Now look at these pictures and think of what you see.
The Allies dug mass graves and buried the dead. Standard Operating Procedure. I ask you to do what I did. Go look at Holocaust pictures of the camps. Try to see the difference of genuine Nazi pictures, what they did and Post War Allied pictures. Do not be deceived when you see German soldiers burying the dead. That was work the German POW's and civilians did.
Posted in Crime, FAMILY, History, Military, Odd Facts, STORIES, WarTagged 1945, Adolf Hitler, Allied, Allies, concentration camps, Eisenhower, fact, history, Holocaust, nazi, Nazis, odd, propaganda, story, true, War, World War Two, wtf1 Comment on My Mom's Last Story