If enlistment represented the initial encounter with military life, training constituted its core. For those aspiring to serve as officers during their mandatory military service, it meant facing months of study, discipline, and physical and psychological tests that shaped not only the soldier, but above all the future leader.
The “week of fire”
Piero Pastorello recalls his first days at the Artillery School as a true “week of fire”. Shouting, commands, continuous running, the strict rule never to drop a shell, and the need to raise one’s voice above the roar of the guns. A harshness whose purpose lay in the safety and discipline essential in an environment where a single mistake could have fatal consequences.
Marches and mules: the apprenticeship in the Alpini
The account of Mauro Depetroni adds an important element to this path: the specific training of the Alpini officers. Beyond marches, they had to learn how to manage mules, indispensable companions in the pack mule units. Caring for the animal, saddling it, loading the pack: all were part of the training, since at the time animal transport still played a vital role. A form of instruction that may seem distant today, but was then essential to ensure logistics and mobility in mountain environments.
Living like the Alpini
Fabio Ortolani, born in 1944, recounts his period as an AUC Sergeant: four months spent side by side with the Alpini, sharing backpacks, marches, hardships, and life in detached posts. A form of training that eliminated the distance between enlisted men and officers, based on shared experience and esprit de corps, with the mountains serving as the true training ground for endurance.
The Naval Academy of Livorno
Sergio Kocevar takes us inside the Naval Academy: polished corridors crossed at a run, constant study, and strict discipline. Punishments—from climbing up and down the mainmast shrouds on the training brig to laps of the parade ground, up to days of internal confinement—were an integral part of training. Study, sport (especially sailing), and continuous selection defined a path in which only the most determined reached the goal.
Pilot training
The account of Antonio Cattarini sheds light on the elite training of Naval aviators. In 1970, at the flight school in Alghero, he began a “shocking” training course: out of twenty cadets, only six completed it. Flying older propeller aircraft—demanding and unforgiving—required absolute precision. The metaphor is telling: flying a propeller aircraft is like sailing, while a jet is a speedboat. The environment was less formal than the Academy, but instructors were uncompromising in their technical assessments.
Conclusions
These testimonies present a mosaic of different experiences, united by a common thread: discipline, shared hardship, selection, and personal transformation. Training was not merely technical or theoretical, but a true trial by fire that left a deep mark on those who experienced it, preparing men to command, to decide, and to withstand fatigue and stress.
