Italy's armed forces in WW2 are often overlooked and even trivialised by some but I've just been reading an article about an Italian force called Decima Flottiglia MAS which really impressed me. Apparently they were the original naval special forces frogmen. Italy pioneered the use of frogmen to attack shipping scoring several outstanding successes against the British in the Mediteranean. So impressed were the British that they formed their own, now famous, SBS in emulation of them and soon other countries followed. Credit where it's due - these men were a real menace and greatly admired by all the services that followed their example. http://www.comandosupremo.com/Decima.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decima_Flottiglia_MAS The war crimes against partisans takes the shine off their reputation a bit though.
Yeah, a real downfall from the elite to a uncontrollable gang. You can see this also with the US marines. During WW2 they were the best of the best, an elite corps with valueus like honor and sacrifice. Today, it's just a normal army unit, no more an elite. Once you start with accepting men that have no honour, no pride for the unit and no respect, you get an unstoppable downfall. Ate least, that's what i think. Still, La Decima was very good, until Italy surrendered. Some of the captured memebers cooperated with the allies after the surrender. They did an attack on La Spezia where they set explosive charges against italian heavy cruisers that were internated by the Germans. Thus preventing the germans of using those ships.
