num_pages: 104
description: Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one and already a battle veteran at the time of the World War II disaster he describes in The Sergeant in the Snow. In July 1942 three divisions of Italian Alpini troops, specially trained for winter warfare, began retreating - entirely on foot, with no supplies, at temperatures of 30-40 degrees below zero. By the end of the march, 90,000 men were missing or dead and 45,000 frostbitten and wounded.This narrative, together with his novel The Story of Tonle and several other works, paints a broad fresco of Italy's history in this century, chronicling social and political change so radical and profound that it has touched even those in such secluded provincial communities as that which Rigoni Stern has so masterfully described.
language: English
title: The Sergeant in the Snow
titlecomplete: The Sergeant in the Snow
characters: Giuanin, tenente Cristoforo Moscioni Negri, tenente Nelson Cenci, Antonelli, Mario Rigoni Stern
genres: Historical, Biography, War, Italy, Nonfiction, Classics, Italian Literature, Russia, History, World War II
ratings_count: 2948
places: Russia
publisher: Marlboro Press