In the meantime Paolo Primo had been promoted to Colonel and had to serve his period of command under a Regiment of Infantry. It is necessary to specify that at that time the officers of artillery, which my father was, after having completed the School of War, were admitted to the Corps of Major State, effectuating in the Infantry the command of Battalion and of the Regiment, a thing which no longer exists because each remains in the Army to which he belongs.
Paolo Primo was designated to the 5th Regiment of the “Aosta la Veia” Infantry, stationed in Ascoli Piceno in la Marche. After that appointment and after Paolo Primo had presented himself to the Officials of the Regiment, he surrendered freely the Command of the Grenadiers Regiment with a seat at Rome, a very desired command because it was designated to the best officials and Paolo Primo was asked if he would like it. Paolo Primo, who had expressed to the Officials of the 5th Infantry Regiment that he was amenable to the designation to that Command, did not want to delude them as he desired to remain faithful to the declaration he had made that he wanted the designation to the 5th Infantry.
From St. Petersburg to Ascoli Piceno the difference was great, but as we shall see, the period of Ascoli Piceno was one of the best. Paolo Primo was in the prime of his life, tall, very handsome, with mutton chops separated by a lightly grizzled chin, a good cavalryman, an excellent speaker, love of responsibilities and certainly not anchored to plans and regulations; decisive and active, prepared as few are both militarily and in the field of the general culture, he carried in the Command of the 5th Infantry a distinctly personal note, a wide viewpoint, all of which were unusual during that period in the Army. To characterize his period of command perhaps is worth more than all the following anecdotes which, naturally, to be of help in comprehending the personality of Paolo Primo, must be framed in the period and in the mentality of the times in which they were produced.
When Paolo Primo assumed the Command of the Regiment he found the troops quartered in Ascoli Piceno in an old monastery entirely inadequate to their needs and especially unhealthy in its lack of water and air, which was the cause every year of epidemics that were dangerous to the lives of the soldiers. By contrast in the same city of Ascoli Piceno, a very modern barracks had already been built for the 5th Infantry, which while having already been finished for some years at that point, remained closed due to a bureaucratic controversy in progress, between the Commune that had supplied the area and concourse to the construction with funds, and the Ministry of War that had also put up funds for its construction. The controversy hinged on a difference of a few million (lira) on the cost of the facade of the barracks that the Commune had matched to the architectural style of the city. But the soldiers in the meantime, through an issue that needed at a certain moment to find a logical solution, continued to get sick in the old unhealthy Monastery and the warnings and remonstrations of the preceding Commander of the Regiment to the Superior Authorities had not sustained any effect.
Paolo Primo, to exit the “impasse,” obtained from the Mayor of Ascoli Piceno, Garzia, the keeping of the keys of the barracks, to have them delivered personally; he had arranged in advance the transfer of the troops from the monastery to the new barracks and he carried it out without any delay. This having been done he made a communication by telephone and then wrote to the Brigade to inform it of the move that had happened and … he waited.
The Ministry opened an investigation, the issue, after threat of serious sanctions, died down and finally the soldiers could stay and live in a healthy and decorous environment. Paolo Primo had a rebuke written that began thus: “In the praiseworthy intention to care for the well-being and the health of his soldiers, it happened that …. Etc.”
From another aspect, the following is another episode:
During the period of exercises there had been planned ahead a maneuver between the 5th Infantry Regiment and the 6th Infantry Regiment that together form the Aosta Brigade. The 6th Infantry had to move on Ascoli Piceno to conquer it, while the 5th Infantry, that guarded the city, had to fight off the attack. The city of Ascoli Piceno is situated in a basin which can be accessed only by three mountain passes through at least one of which the 6th Infantry had to serve in clearing. It was clear that the 5th Infantry defending the passes would have resolved their problem. But the maneuver had been combined in a way that did not permit such an easy solution, establishing the circumstances of the maneuver so that the 6th Infantry would already be near the passes, which were about 12 km distance from Ascoli when the maneuver would have begun. For the 5th Infantry it was however impossible to make it to the passes in time to defend them and so they had to resign themselves to confronting the adversary in the open field of the basin of Ascoli Piceno and as such in conditions of grave disadvantage. At least so thought the director of the maneuver who wanted to embarrass the 5th Infantry and its Commander. Instead Paolo Primo did not resign himself to not defending the mountain passes. He called to his Command a young Lieutenant known for his athletic background and asked him if, in his opinion, it was possible to find in the Regiment about 150 soldiers capable of riding a bicycle. At his affirmative response, some non-commissioned officers were unleashed on the city with orders to requisition at least 150 bicycles. They formed three platoons of 50 men each and every one on a bicycle. The Lieutenant assumed the command of the three platoons that were placed there thanks to the young, ardent, non-commissioned officers. At seven in the morning, the determined hour for the beginning of the maneuver, the three bike-transported platoons scattered in the three directions leading to the passses which they reached in only twenty minutes, that is before the avant-garde of the 6th Infantry had been able to transit them. There the 50 men of each platoon entrenched themselves promptly and waited.
The troops of the 6th infantry met them there shortly after, who were marching in a column on the predetermined street, without any measure of security since, by the calculations made based on the time of the maneuver and the distances, excluded the possibility of encountering the adversary at that distance from Ascoli Piceno. So they got a big surprise when entering the pass, the troops were met with the first rifle shots, for which they had to stop, arrange themselves in a random order, and prepare themselves for the attack, after having recovered from the surprise. Paolo Primo’s bicycle initiative was completed by sending along with each platoon a homing pigeon for the rapid communication between the three advanced platoons and the the command of the regiment back in Ascoli Piceno with the main part of the troops, waiting for precise news about which pass the adversary had chosen for their passage, and [waiting as well] to move themselves rapidly against them with cognition of the cause.
Naturally the commander of the adversary’s troops tried to invalidate Paolo Primo’s method of action citing that he had made use of irregular means such as the bicycle and homing pigeon, means, however, not foreseen by the regulations. The General Commander of the Brigade found the complaint consentient, but the Commander of the Division General Escard was of the opposite view: he remembered that in war surprise must be sought by all means since very often it is surprise which decides the fates of a battle; he cited the Austrian Generals who affirmed that Napoleon yes, won, but won against the rules and in the end that Council of Roman History, Commander of the Legion, who having the need to confront his enemy with a the greater number of forces, dispensing with only those cavalry troops that could reach the favorable battle site in time, placed two soldiers on every horse instead of only one, so that the enemy found itself in front of double forces, moreover unexpected, and was defeated.
I have dallied over this episode because in my view it indicates well the inventive and initiating spirit of Paolo Primo that never surrendered in front of situations however difficult and apparently desperate without first having researched whether all the means had been employed for them to cope. As we shall see these gifts, this tenacity, the capacity to simplify situations, to find solutions in the most difficult moments, shone during the first world war when he had command of the Great Unity and commands of great responsibility.
There is finally a third episode that I wish to recount, with which I wish to bring into the light the sentiment of honor that Paolo Primo conceived and that, if it was a prerogative of the period, was however in him very profoundly ingrained not to mention that this could be discussed either to find extenuating circumstances or hesitations.
One day, while Paolo Primo was held away from home for service, he was called on the telephone by the Adjutant Major who warned that that same morning the Captain Adept of the Office of Registration of the Regiment and the Captain of Administration after having been insulted and reciprocally offended for futile reasons in the presence of their inferiors, had gone out into the street to fight each other, so that their same inferiors had to intervene and break them up.
This happening was serious and injurious to the prestige and honor of the grade of Official. Paolo Primo decided right away; the two officials had to duel that same evening and the duel would last until one of the two had been wounded. The Adjutant Major said that a special code regulated these issues and that further the military regulation prescribed in cases of this type, the assembly of a jury of honor by whose decisions the incriminated officials must abide; to proceed in a different manner would have been arbitrary and would infringe on regulation. Paolo Primo responded that he knew the provision regarding this, but that he could not believe that two officials from his Regiment after having been insulted, beaten, and humiliated in the presence of inferiors, would not also at least have the dignity to fight like gentlemen, rather than to end that which with little sense of honor they had committed; therefore he wished that they fight right away, before the evening, so closing the incident. He waited therefore for another telephone call before the night that would inform him that that which he had prescribed had been executed. So in fact it occurred; Paolo Primo after all knew, he had a write-up for not having attended to regulation; the incriminated officials became great friends and everyone knew that there are things which cannot be done because honor cannot be tarnished, nor offended.
The period of the Command of the Regiment was for Paolo Primo a truly happy period, a period during which it was possible for his qualities as one who understood men, of character, of commander to shine. Naturally he had enemies; after all he began to have them since 1897 when he was appointed Count, he had a silver medal of valor and a political-military book (L’Europa attuale e la prossima guerra), written and published by him, and had reviews in Italian and foreign newspapers.
Nor could it be possible to expect anything else from an environment based on a restricted mentality, even if bound to hard sacrifices and where the possibility of great flights was completely exceptional and therefore strictly observed and surveilled. But if that was inevitable it must overall be remembered that there were many colleagues, superiors and inferiors who gave to Paolo Primo proof of their affection, of solidarity and of admiration.
At his death there were found among his papers, letters from his dependents with expressions of great affection and letters from superiors among which the illustrious names of Rogier, Commander of the Armed Forces; of Cosenz General of high resonance and Senator of the Realm; of Morra di Lavriano, General and therefore Ambassador, all of whose direct superiors spoke of him with accents of benevolence, esteem, and affection. Friends and enemies naturally grew with the his rising grade up to the highest levels, but also of this I will speak in its time when the career of Paolo Primo in my exposition will have reached these peaks.
Paolo Primo was always a promoter and stimulator of energy and as such not only in military aspects, but also in those of art, of poetry, of literature. It was he who “launched” the current Marshal of Italy Messe, it was he that as I will recount in its time stimulated and almost imposed upon Locchi to write the “Sagra di Santa Gorizia” as he was a great friend of Pastonchi, with whom he loved to descant, and of Novaro with whom he had a lively exchange of ideas proposed by his book, Il fabbro armonioso (The Harmonious Blacksmith).
The current Marshal of Italy Giovanni Messe, was Sergeant by career in the 5th Infantry Regiment when Paolo Primo commanded it. Very young and a volunteer in China in the war against the Boxers, Paolo Primo noticed him right away for his vivacity of intelligence and temperament, for his strong physique, and for the enthusiasm that he put into things. Considering that he had all the traits to become a good official, Paolo Primo tempted him to study to then enroll in the Military School of Modena that reserved, according to a recent and revolutionary arrangement, a certain number of places for non-commissioned officers. Messe objected that difficulties in his family, of the financial type, would according to him impede him from fitting into the category of Officials. Paolo Primo won over this reluctance only when he placed Messe in front of the peremptory order to study for his exams and to present himself to them in the coming competition. And, as is known, the modest and simple Sergeant became Marshal of Italy.
If during the years of Ascoli Piceno, the cares of the Command of the Regiment were those that mostly occupied his time, still he did not neglect the insertion of his officials into the mundane life of a citizen, giving receptions and balls and, for harmony with the citizenry, restoring concerts of the military band in the main piazza (that which is named del Popolo) during the hours of the evening walks.
From the family point of view, the years at Ascoli Piceno were those in which were born Olga and Alessandro followed then at a brief distance by Nora who was born at Turin.
Olga was welcomed with great joy after 10 years’ pause since the first children. She was a very fine and sensible child and when she was a little bigger she demonstrated herself to be very intelligent. Succumbing to an ear infection at the age of 7 which the surgical technician did not know how to treat, was fatal for her. My father and mother suffered much from this; it was certain a great sorrow. She is buried in the Cemetery of Turin; after 15 years her little bones were put together in a chest which was placed in a dovecote.
Alessandro also had a tragic end: he died at 27, an aviator, during an experimental nocturnal flight. The plan was to take off when it got dark from Orbetello and touch down in La Spezia by night, then to depart from La Spezia again by night and touch down at Orbetello by day. On the canal of Piombino there was fog; what happened no one knows. Two equipages of the three that parted from Orbetello, did not reach La Spezia; they slipped into the water and and only a little debris was recovered. The body of Alessandro rests at sea. In his memory was conferred the Bronze Medal of Military Valor with the following motivation:
“In the execution of an experimental nocturnal flight, he found a tragic death in the sea, immolating his young life, with a living sense of duty, in the completion of the task entrusted to him.”
Skies over la Spezia, April 27 1936.
Alessandro was a very handsome young man and was very jovial; he knew easily how to conquer sympathies. He also enrolled in the Military College of Rome and then attended the Aeronautical Academy of Caserta from which he exited Lieutenant of Aviation, navigational role. He was 27 when that disgraceful flight truncated his young life.
At Ascoli Piceno, Paolo Primo rented a vast apartment in the Palazzo Mari on Via Tito Betuzio Barro, in the highest part of the city and all its periphery. The apartment was spread over two floors with an internal staircase; on the ground floor there was a lunch room, the kitchen, the servants’ quarters and a vast room that Paolo Primo used as a winter garden having the walls decorated with a landscape and with the small columns of a balcony. The first part of the room elicited a veranda with columns of wood and little Moorish-style arches. In every house he lived, Paolo Primo always made some innovation or some improvement even if the works were at a loss of funds. He had a sense of the beautiful and also had the ability to find objets d’arte, preceding in that field the fanaticism for antique objects in our time. At Ascoli Piceno he bought various ancient canvases some of which are still in my house; others were sold at a great profit during the period after the First World War in which salaries were not revalued and Paolo Primo did not want to eat into the capital to live. The majority of these canvases belonged to a collection of a Monsignor of Ascoli Piceno; his inheritors had offered the canvases to the Municipality, but having received too low an offer, preferred to sell them to Paolo Primo. He got a great deal on a little group of bronze of exquisite manufacture that he found among the frippery at a rubish sale near the Vatican in that part called the Borgo and which was demolished during Fascism to make room for the current Via della Conciliazione. The acquisition was made in 1909 for a few hundred lira and Paolo Primo resold the little group in bronze when, during the move from Turin to San Remo he sold part of the furniture, very beautiful, in 1919. The sum offered to him by the antiquarian was a good 30,000 lira and, if in the meantime there had been a certain devaluation, it was not however such that it would make a difference in the price.
If Paolo Primo certainly had an ability to acquire these and other ancient objects, it must above all be recognized that he did not have an extremely refined taste in other things and that rather certain times he fell into gaudiness. Then my mother would intervene, who had far more sense than him of true elegance and succeeded in mitigating my father’s rushes in the wrong directions. The house, with my mother, and our life, assumed a rhythm more refined and international. My mother was always instinctively “Signora” and in all the events of her long life always bore a note of courtliness and of distinction in every way natural and that she imposed upon herself through continuity and spontaneity.
At Ascoli Piceno, since I was by then 13 or 14 years old, my father began with me a more masculine and virile education. It was at Ascoli that I learned to mount a horse under the very brash and enthusiastic instruction of Paolino (Paolo II). Often my father consigned to me a topographical map with an itinerary to run on horseback, fixing me with a meeting place, and often he left me for hours to take care of the two horses (his and mine) which were two very beautiful Irish horse, Gemmo and Vampa, while he held conferences with the officials on the ground. During our horse rides he generally chose the topic of mathematics, where he was very capable, and proposed problems that regularly I did not know how to solve since unlike him, mathematics was not my forte.
After Ascoli Piceno Paolo Primo was transferred to Florence in 1910 as Head Colonel of Major State of the Armed Forces commanded by General Della Noce. Also there my mother and he made a very mundane life and since Rina was at home and a little older than twenty, they took part in the parties and balls of Florentine society. As already said Rina married in Florence and the marriage constituted a mundane event outside, even with the unusual religious function of the nuptial ceremony.
In Florence we lived on Via San Gallo 33 in the house of the Signora Modigliani Rossi, widow of the great actor. The bedroom of Giorgio I and I was above the locale occupied by a printing press where a large rotary press was put to work at 7 in the morning the noise was rather deafening, but Giorgio and I habituated to it and it did not wake us any longer.
During Paolo Primo’s stay in Florence the Italo-Turkish War began for the occupation of Libya. A little after it had begun, he was charged with accompanying and directing a group of Military Attachés and of foreign missions to whom the Italian Government permitted to effect a visit to the front. The Missions and the Military Attachés embarked on the ship “Bosnia” for a visit that was prolonged for some months. The office that Paolo Primo had to perform was rather delicate and he exacted diplomatic sense joined with energy. In fact the foreign officials were interested to know particulars of the war and of our armament that instead it was not convenient to provide for them, but it was necessary to regulate oneself regarding them, with tact. Paolo Primo who had the necessary experience with missions of this type to have been made Military Attaché at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg and with the other Military Attaché spectators of the operations of the Greco-Turkish War and of the Russo-Japanese War, he immediately clarified that he would seek in every way to satisfy the requests and interests of everyone, but he obviously reserved the right to decide when this or that would be possible, also based as well on the Italian necessity to safeguard other secrets and aspects of the war. He also made it clear that it would be considered a grave discourtesy to try to obtain news through other avenues. The visit turned out with the satisfaction of everyone and only one time, with the Germans, Paolo Primo had to make an act of force. There was planned a visit that the Germans had wished to be extended also to sectors that instead it was not the case to visit. Paolo Primo adduced various reasons for making them understand that their request could not be fulfilled, but the Germans first with insistence and then with arrogance, continued to insist instead until Paolo Primo cut them off, warning that any further insistence would bring the complete cancellation of the planned visit. The case was then closed; the other Military Attachés expressed their regret for the “indelicacy” of their German colleagues, and the same German officials were among the most enthusiastic in Paolo Primo’s line of command.
In 1912 Paolo Primo was appointed Major General and Commander of the Basilicata Brigade with Seat at Turin.
The family, by now composed only of Paolo I and of my mother, Giorgio I, Alessandro and Olga and the governess Signorina Luisa, took lodging on Via Papacino 2, in a modern house on the last floor. There Nora was born in 1912 and there died poor little Olga in 1913, as had already been said. I was in Military College at Rome; Rina, married to Lischinsky, in Warsaw, and Lola married to Baron Rosen in Monaco di Baviera.
The Command of the Brigade gave much satisfaction to Paolo Primo; he was still young, in his fifties; extraordinarily handsome and youthful in his comportment.
I remember that one day on the field of Oulx, in Val d’Aosta, where the Brigade effected their summer exercises and where I also found myself because my father had taken me with him, a little group of villagers, among whom there was the young Signorina Buffa di Perrero, daughter of a talented superior officer of the artillery, who assisted in Paolo Primo’s entrance on horseback, at a little gallop, in the field where the Brigade was lined up. Commenting on the brilliant cavalcade, the aforementioned signorina said to me, whom I had then met: “That general looks young; provided he doesn’t dye his mustache!” Imagine her confusion when I told her that I could assure her that rather I was the son of that General.
One year before the First World War broke out, Paolo Primo combined the Command of the Brigade as well as the office of Chief of Major State of the 1st Armed Corps, destined to work in case of conflict in Trentino, commanded by General Robert Brusati.
Paolo Primo shuttled between Turin and Milan where the Officers of the Command of Armed Forces were and also at that time he had a test for how young his appearance was when a conductor, checking the tickets, wanted to make him get off the train right away, where only superior officers could travel; and my father had to make him look at his Conductor’s Book of Officers to convince him that under these bourgeois clothes, there was not only a superior officer, but an Officer General.
The Ruggeri-Laderchi Family 