A unit is made of men before it is made of designations and numbers. In this section we tell the story, one at a time, of the regiments, brigades, divisions, corps and armies that faced each other between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945: from the advance from Rome to the Albert Line at Lake Trasimeno, through the fighting around Arezzo and in central Tuscany and the liberation of Florence, to the assault on the Gothic Line, the breakthrough at the Giogo Pass and the long war in the Apennines.
For each unit we reconstruct its origins, organization, commanders, battles and losses from war diaries, divisional histories, archival documents and eyewitness accounts, always citing our sources and flagging what remains uncertain. With the same method and the same respect we cover the Allied units (American, British and Commonwealth, French, Polish, Brazilian, and the Italian units of the Co-Belligerent Army), the German units and those of the National Republican Army of the Italian Social Republic, and the partisan brigades. Not to celebrate, but to understand who the men who fought in our mountains were, and to keep their memory alive in a spirit of reconciliation.
