Torricella Peligna, Ettore Troilo and Brigata Maiella are a sole identity linked to the history of Italian resistance against nazifascism. At the heart of the town, below the parish church of Saint James the Apostle, a square is dedicated to the memory of Ettore Troilo, the founder of the Brigata Maiella, the only Italian resistance group awarded with a “Medal to the Military Value”.  In the same square, a plaque commemorates 7 young people of “Maiella” who sacrificed their lives to bring Italy back to democracy.

Born in Torricella Peligna on 10 April 1898, Ettore Troilo got a University Degree in Law in Rome and in 1922 enrolled in the Socialist Party. He was among the first to understand the need to resist to the Nazi fascist merciless occupation. Early in 1943 he founded the group of volunteers called “Corpo volontari della Maiella” and he worked hardly to convince the Allies in Casoli to accept his volunteers coming mainly from the villages on Maiella to fight with them. Major Lionel Wigram realized he needed those patriots to guide the Allies along the arduous tracks on Abruzzo mountains. That is how the “Wigforce” was born, a military patrol which joined for the first time Englishmen and patriots to fight together and which became operative in the Battle of Pizzoferrato on 3 and 4 February 1944. 

The Brigata Maiella fought the Germans not only in Abruzzo, but also in other regions: Marche, Emilia Romagna and Veneto for “fifteen months of very harsh fight” and until the liberation of Italy on April 1945 “always facing overwhelming enemy forces and writing a heroic page of the history of Italy”. The Brigata Maiella dissolved in July 1945.

In January 1946 Ettore Troilo was appointed Prefect of Milan where he lived until November 1947. He moved to Rome and worked as a lawyer and there he died on 5 June 1974. Now he lays in the cemetery of Torricella Peligna, facing the Maiella, the mother mountain of Abruzzo, a silent and perpetual witness of a noble page of Italian history.

[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Laura Di Biase]