Paolo Crippa

Italian tankers in the Dodecanese 1940-1945 Paolo Crippa

In the 40's of the last century, a small unit of Italian tankers was sent to the islands of the Dodecanese, the CCCXII Mixed Tank Battalion of the Aegean, an unknown and forgotten unit, of which there is very little official documentation. Despite not having taken part in the war clashes, due to the isolation to which the Italian Aegean Islands were condemned, if not the invasion of Crete in 1941, this department was touched by pain and death after the Armistice, when the almost all the tankmen were taken prisoner by the Germans and many of them tragically died in the sinking of the steamers that carried them from the Aegean to Europe, a huge tragedy unjustly forgotten.