With growing disgust for Europe, Guillet asked for a posting to Italian East Africa, where another family acquaintance, the royal prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, had been appointed viceroy to replace the brutal and inept Marshal Graziani.
He echoed the views of many in disapproving of the pro-Nazi alliance of the regime and absurdities such as the anti-Semitic race laws. No longer a uncritical, puppyish subaltern, Guillet returned to Italy and Libya. But the atrocities he witnessed on both sides were a sobering experience for Guillet, who deplored what he saw of Italy's German allies during their intervention. There he suffered shrapnel wounds and helped capture three Russian armoured cars and crews. It was the first post Guillet had been offered without family influence. In Guillet's view, gas was largely ineffectual against an unentrenched enemy which could flee, and he himself was fighting with horse, sword and pistol.Īt Selaclacla, after using the hilt of his sword to dislodge an Ethiopian warrior who had grabbed him around the waist, Guillet received a painful wound to the left hand when a bullet hit the pommel of his saddle.ĭecorated for his actions, he was flattered to be chosen a year later by General Luigi Frusci as an aide de camp in the "Black Flames" division, which was sent to support Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He also witnessed aerial gas attacks on Emperor Haile Selassie's lightly armed warriors, which appalled world opinion. Instead, using family connections, he had himself transferred to the Spahys di Libya cavalry with which he fought repeated actions.
But Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 interrupted his career as a competition rider. Guillet excelled as a horseman and was selected for the Italian eventing team to go to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He spent most of his childhood in the south – he remembered the Austrian biplane bombing of Bari during the First World War – then followed family tradition and joined the army.Īfter the military academy at Modena, he chose to join the cavalry and began training at Pinerolo, where Italian horsemanship under Federico Caprilli had earlier in the century won world renown – the current "forward seat" and modern jumping saddles evolved there.
But it was the last one faced by the British Army, with many soldiers declaring it the most frightening and extraordinary episode of the Second World War.Īmedeo Guillet was born in Piacenza on Februto a Savoyard-Piedmontese family of the minor aristocracy which for generations had served the dukes of Savoy, who later became the kings of Italy. It was not quite the last cavalry charge in history – the unmechanised Savoia Cavalry regiment charged the Soviets at Izbushensky on the Don in August 1942.