ABSTRACT
After Italy secretly signed the armistice at Cassibile, the Italian military High Command fled to Brindisi together with the Italian royal family and left the armed forces without orders. This irresponsible act caused the disbanding of the army both in Italy and in the occupied territories of Greece, France, Albania, and Yugoslavia, and turned the Italian withdrawal from war operations into a large-scale collective tragedy, the sum-total of a great number of tragic experiences suffered by individual and groups, soldiers and officers, which historians have not yet reconstructed in its entire scope.1
