This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday
Domenico Mondelli from Eritrea ,flying for Italy.
Born in Asmara, in the Italian colony of Eritrea, on 30th June 1886, Wolde Selassie was the natural son of the then Lieutenant Attilio Mondelli, who was stationed in the Italian colony, and a local Eritrean. At the age of five he moved with his father to Parma and was given the name Domenico. In the autumn of 1900 he began to attend the Military College in Rome, to start his military career. In 1913, he was in Turin, where he was apprenticed to become a pilot in the nascent Italian Air Force fleet. He was awarded his pilot’s licence on 20 February 1914.
At the beginning of the First World War, Italy can rely on only about sixty fighter planes, about half the number of Austro-Hungarian enemies. On 24 May 1915 Captain Mondelli took up service aboard a Nieuport Ni 80 G with which he carried out series of reconnaissance on the Isonzo front. With these actions in the Triveneto territories, Mondelli earned the first Bronze Medal for military valour awarded in June 1916 with the motivation: “He showed calm and courage. He was contemptuous of danger and flew at low altitudes”. After leaving the Air Force, he continued his military career in the Army, taking command of the 67th Battalion of the 18th Bersaglieri Regiment, Domenico Mondelli took command of the XXIII Crimson Flames Assault Department of the new “Arditi” speciality. At the end of the Great War, he will be decorated with two Silver and two Bronze Medals for military valor and awarded the title of Knight of the Order of the Italian Crown. In 1920 he volunteered in Albania at the head of the 9th Assault Ward and was awarded his third Bronze Medal.
professor Mauro Valeri wrote a book called Il generale nero. Domenico Mondelli: bersagliere, aviatore e ardito it was published in 2015
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