September 17, 2009 will be remembered as one of the darkest days for the Paratroopers Brigade Folgore.
We are in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and it is 12:10 local time, 9:40 in Italy.
The patrol of two Lince armored vehicles from the 186th Paratroopers Regiment Folgore commanded by Lieutenant Paratrooper Antonio Fortunato, is near the Massud roundabout, heading in the opposite direction to the airport. It is transporting to the ISAF headquarters some soldiers who have returned from a short leave in Italy, picked up at Kabul airport.
Arriving at the Massoud roundabout, Lieutenant Fortunato's Lince blocks the road to its right to let the second vehicle pass.
A few dozen meters and from a side street, an old white Toyota Corolla slips between the two vehicles.
It explodes.
The first vehicle withstands the impact. Inside, the Lince is incandescent. The gunner, First Corporal Major Gian Domenico Pistonami, is slumped inside. He is dead.
The wounded, 1st Marshal of the Air Force Felice Calandriello and the Paratroopers 1st Corporal Major Paratroopers Rocco Leo, Sergio Agostinelli, and Ferdinando Buono are stunned by the explosion. They get out of the vehicle and are immediately fired upon: they will return fire, securing the area by erasing the frequencies set on the radios: dozens of civilians will indeed quickly approach the vehicles and the bodies of the soldiers killed in the explosion.
An exemplary behavior, the result of hard training and a modus operandi that has always distinguished the Paratroopers Brigade Folgore: composure and determination even in the most difficult situations.
Paratrooper Rocco Leo later declared in the Sky docufilm 'Veterans' that he thought only they had been caught in the explosion and that the first vehicle had managed to enter the Italian embassy.
Around the area, the devastation is total: cars, houses, and shops destroyed. The scene is apocalyptic.
The heavily armored Lince of Lieutenant Fortunato is thrown like a sheet of paper a hundred meters away from the other. The car, it will later be known, was driven by a suicide bomber and had on board, according to the ROS investigation, 150kg of explosives.
Lieutenant Paratrooper Antonio Fortunato, Sergeant Major Paratrooper Roberto Valente, First Corporal Major Paratroopers Massimiliano Randino, Davide Ricchiuto, and Matteo Mureddu die instantly.
There are also numerous Afghan dead and wounded, including five policemen.
The news immediately reaches Italy, and the tragedy will enter the homes of the fallen's families and all Italians.
The claim comes immediately, a few minutes later: a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, will claim the attack in an SMS message, stating that a man named Hayutullah blew himself up against the ISAF military convoy in the center of the capital.
This is the largest military loss on the international field since the Nassirya attack on November 12, 2003.
Condolences come from the highest offices of the state.
The Minister of Defense La Russa, historically close to the Paratroopers of Italy, will define the attackers in parliament as "infamous and cowardly".
The Paratroopers Brigade suspends all exercises in Italy, the municipality of Siena (headquarters of the 186th Regiment) postpones all scheduled appointments.
The bodies of the fallen will arrive in Italy on September 20 aboard a C-130, welcomed at Ciampino airport by grieving but proud families of their husbands, sons, and brothers.
Also present at the arrival of the bodies is the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano and other high-ranking state officials. The next day, September 21, a national day of mourning, the solemn state funerals will be held in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, in Rome.
The event, presided over by Monsignor Vincezo Pelvi, military ordinary, will be broadcast worldwide by RAI.
It is a sad day, where an entire nation gathers around six young human lives deprived of their future for having fully fulfilled the tasks assigned to them by the State.
It is a sad day where thousands of Paratroopers, with the glorious maroon beret, will invade Rome and the Basilica to honor their fallen brothers in arms.
Meanwhile, in Kabul, the Folgore continued to carry out its work with operational efficiency that will leave all coalition allies ISAF stunned.
It is precisely this modus operandi by the men with the maroon beret that has bothered the insurgents.
The military considerations on this attack are well known: the Italians, the Folgore in particular, were "bothering" the Taliban militia. The Folgore in these months of mission has not stayed in tents and has not limited itself to patrolling the centers of large cities.
The Folgore has gone further. Due to the conformity of its units (in this respect it has been defined by General Bertolini, ISAF Chief of Staff, as "unique in its kind") it has carried out an unprecedented hunt for the Taliban.
It has pushed deep, made its presence felt in the most remote places, providing security to peoples overwhelmed by the terrorist mentality.
And it has bothered. It has bothered to the point of being hit with violence never seen even in these places.
But it did not back down. Colonel Paratrooper Aldo Zizzo, Commander of the 186th Regiment, the day after the attack, during the flag-raising, will declare to his men that despite the losses "...the mission goes on. We will not leave Afghanistan even a minute earlier than planned at the beginning of the mission"
And it went on, because as always, as happened at El Alamein sixty years earlier, and as happened in Mogadishu on July 2, 1993, the Paratroopers of Italy have shown that they can bend, but never break.
Reaffirming the concept: the coward gives up, not the Folgore.
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