San Michele, the Forgotten Battle

Book NOT FOR SALE at Mugot – Gothic Museum

Review by Daniele Baggiani

San Michele, the Forgotten Battle is a book written by Claudio Biscarini published by Centrolibro Scandicci (FI) in 2006. This volume is part of the editorial series "Radici" (roots) . This book deals a little-known chapter in history: the battle of San Michele during the Liberation operations carried out by the Allies in July 1944. The text is very accurate and the result of careful research also in foreign archives, accompanied by a photographic apparatus in which There are many previously unpublished photos. Biscarini's narrative reveals the events of that battle, among the bloodiest in Tuscany, which are often barely mentioned or overlooked in the reconstruction of the Allied operations preceding the Liberation of Florence.

The battle of San Michele a Torri was a prelude to the Liberation of Scandicci. It took place on the Roveta heights and saw the Commonwealth army as the protagonist, in particular the New Zealand soldiers, who in August 1944 died on the Val di Pesa side of the Scandicci hills, in a battle remembered among the bloodiest in Italy between allied and Nazi-fascist forces, with over 1700 dead and wounded. This battle has also been defined as the "little Cassino" due to the violence of the clashes. Two of the strongest divisions of the Allied army and the Wehrmacht fought, the 2nd New Zealand Division and the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division. For decades in Italy that battle on the hills below Pian dei Cerri was archived as one of the many battles between the Allies and the Germans, in the overall panorama of the summer 1944 campaign in Tuscany; in New Zealand the sacrifice of many soldiers commanded by General Freytag is instead remembered during Saint Michael's Day. Biscarini reconstructs the salient moments with vivid details during which the New Zealand soldiers fought the German troops for fifteen days, engaged north of the Pesa river in the "aggressive defense" strategy desired by General Kesselring to slow down the Allied advance and allow the entrenchment of the Germans on the Gothic Line in the Apennines, of which construction work was being completed by the TODT organisation. The battle was fought on the ground, even with cold weapons, and from the air, and was finally won by the New Zealand troops. At that point the Allied troops had a free road towards Scandicci, which was liberated on 4 August 1944, and towards Florence, where the Nazi-Fascists were definitively defeated on 11 August.

About 350 New Zealand soldiers who fought in the Val di Pesa are buried at the Commonwealth Military Cemetery in Girone in Florence, near the Arno, on the road to Pontassieve. To meticulously reconstruct this story in the volume "San Michele, the forgotten battle", the Tuscan historian Claudio Biscarini based himself on the data reported in the original military papers and on the war diary of the New Zealand general Freytag. An exemplary research therefore, because it is consolidated on archival research and on the stories of the elderly who experienced those war events in 1944 on their territory.

In the second edition, Claudio Biscarini's book has been integrated with new testimonies and largely unpublished photographic documentation.

The author, Claudio Biscarini, is a freelance journalist and director of the International Documentation Center "Military History". He wrote numerous essays on the history of the Second World War in Tuscany and various books.

Claudio Biscarini's books: https://www.libraccio.it/autore/claudio-biscarini/libri.html