24th National Meeting of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force Veterans

Hello my friends,

There's some time since I don't post anything, but I'd like to share this with you. Last November I attended the 24th National Meeting of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force Veterans, which took place from 7 to 10 Nov, 2012, in the city of Juiz de Fora.

Well, as you may know, Brazil sent an Expeditionary Infantry Division, totalling 25,000 men, in 1944, to Italy. There, the 1st Brazilian ID "The Smoking Cobras" (Gen Mascarenhas de Morais) was integrated into the IV Corps (Gen Willys Crittenberger) of the 5th Army (Gen Mark Clark). After fighting in the Garfagnana sector until October, it was transfered to the Appenines, in front of the Castelo-Torraccia-Belvedere mountain range. Conquering Monte Castelo in February 21, 1945, while the 10th Mountain Division did the same in Monte Belvedere, the 1st Brazilian ID then covered the left flank of Crittenberger's advance to the Po Valley. In April 29, the Brazilians captured the German 148th ID (Gen Otto Fretter-Pico) and the remains of Italia ID (Gen Mario Carloni).

The meeting takes place every year, always a four-day event. Today, there are still hundreds of 1st ID veterans alive, but as Brazil is a huge country, it's difficult to reunite all of them in the same place. We had about 40 veterans attending, which is a very good number.

I made an extensive account of the event, in Portuguese, but you can translate it to English with the translation tool I put in the right column of my blog: Sala de Guerra: XXIV Encontro Nacional dos Veteranos da FEB

But here are some photos:

 

Thanks for sharing !