Compiled 19 November 2022, updated 9 June 2025.
Cover : Decima Beer label, which General Roberto Vannacci seems to like so much, perhaps because, like the Italian Navy, he ignores the story below.
Lately, the Decima Mas has been the subject of controversy to no end.
The name MAS originally meant motorboat-anti-submarine.
Gabriele D’Annunzio added the motto Memento Audere Semper to it, meaning ‘always remember to dare’.
With the MAS 96, in fact, the poet-soldier had ‘dared the unbearable’, becoming the protagonist, together with Costanzo Ciano and Luigi Rizzo, of the feat remembered as the ‘Beffa di Buccari’ (Buccari Hoax), a military raid carried out on the night between 10 and 11 February 1918, at the end of the First World War.
The MAS 96, used by D’Annunzio, is located at the Vittoriale.
In 1939 the First MAS Flotilla was created, which in 1941 was transformed into the Tenth MAS Flotilla, which, until the armistice of 8 September 1943, distinguished itself by heroic acts against the Allies.
The new name was chosen in reference to Julius Caesar‘s favourite legion, the Legio X Gemina. And the motto ‘Memento audere semper’ was changed to ‘For the King and for the Flag’.
Everything became complicated with the advent of the Italian Social Republic: part of the flotilla, the Mariassalto, went to war on the side of the Allies, while the “Naval assault corps under the command of Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, the X Mas flotilla, in mid-September, negotiated with the Germans the continuation of the war against the Anglo-Americans, with Italian uniform and flag” (source Mimmo Franzinelli, RSI, la Repubblica del Duce).
His battalion Lupo, trained by the German instructors of ‘Herman Goering’ fought with the 16th Panzer – Grenadier Divison Reichsfuhrer SS against the partisans, in Tuscany (source: op cit.) to name but one of the many events that saw the Decima and/or its leader involved.
Below : Junio Valerio Borghese with the iron cross of Nazi Germany.
Adding to the current history and controversy is the fact that the Navy ignores on its site the participation of the X Mas in the fighting of the Nazi-Fascists [ apologies to those who may have seen an empty page, probably removed and reopened anyway, elsewhere, on the website of the Ministry of Defence, with the contribution of the EU].
This is unacceptable because History cannot be written in half.
It would be a bit like saying that the Alpini, during World War II, in Operation Barbarossa, went to Russia but omitting the disastrous retreat, in which my grandfather’s brother, Giorgio Venosta, also participated.
The Navy gives a very bad signal because it does not want to face the reality of History, after 8 September 1943.
Among other things, all this seems to me deeply disrespectful even towards those who, in good faith, lost their lives in those years (1943 – 1945).
The Navy , moreover, does this by paying for it with our tax money.
Tackling the darkest chapters of Italian history can help to dampen controversy and also pacify this country, which has been politically torn between two extreme poles since the Second World War.
The Alpini, in the Second World War, had a more ‘linear’ and easier history than the Tenth, but if I were the Navy I would try to take an example from them.
Courage applies in wartime but it must also apply in peacetime. For everyone, generals included, of course.
It also seems to me that the topic is related to this: in Italy, freedom of the press – and of information – is increasingly ‘problematic’.
p.s.: what one reads on Wikipedia, which, as is very often the case, has artfully manipulated content, is also open to criticism:
The Xª[N 1] Flottiglia MAS (from 1 May 1944 the marine infantry part was renamed to Marine Infantry Division Xª,[1] also known as Xª MAS) was an independent military corps of Fascist origin,[2] founded following theCassibile armistice in September 1943 by frigate captain Junio Valerio Borghese with members of the previous official Regia Marina division(10th Flottiglia MAS).
Part of the National Republican Navy of the Social Republic (RSI), she made agreements with Captain Berninghaus of the Third Reich War Navy. …
