The Alpini still fought wonderfully, bravely, and heroically. In yet another classic case of how the Germans treated their allies, they were left behind by the Germans, and ended up holding the lines and doing the fighting retreat whilst the Germans ran away.
If anyone wants to know more of this, I'd highly recommend this book for a moving (at points almost to tears) account of the alpini at Stalingrad:
Sacrifice on the Steppe: The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942-1943: Hope Hamilton: 9781612000022: Amazon.com: Books
Tis simply a wonderful read.
For picture, I shall post the cover of the book, as it's image is two photos of the italian death march away from Stalingrad. In total, of 235,000 men, the Italian Army in Russia suffered 23,000 killed and missing, 34,474 wounded and frostbitten, and 84,000 captured or missing (It's hard to say how many were captured, as the Russians didn't number them up until reaching the POW camps, and thousands died in enroute. Of around 54,000 they actually registered, 45,000 died in the camps).
As the Italian weapons had frozen completely solid and were unusable in combat, the Italian troops resorted to knives, bayonets, and shovels during assaults on Russian held towns which blocked their path to freedom. So if anyone insults the bravery of Italian troops in WW2, just remember to bring up how Italian soldiers, half frozen, starving, and exhausted, were assaulting Russian held positions with nothing but bayonets. At the Battle of Nikolayevka, the Italians at long last broke through the encirclement, led by the remaining combat-capable men of the Alpini- 4000 men of what had been 30,000. Behind them came the last 36,000 of the army, and the italians, with a few Germans and Hungarians that had joined with them, managed to finally reach Axis lines again. After that, all but a few rear line units were pulled out of Russia, and the Facist regime in Italy tried it's best to hide them from the public due to their appaling physical state. This of course didn't work so well, and many of the returning soldiers went on to become partisans or join the Co-Belligerent Army after Italy switched sides.
