Mercy on the Italian front

A German grenade nearly killed Hugo Pedro Felisbino.

It was 1945, and he was a sergeant in the village of Porretta Terme, about 40 miles southwest of Bologna, Italy. Felisbino was fighting Nazis—6,000 miles from his hometown in Brazil.

The explosion from the grenade, lobbed by a German combatant, killed six of Felisbino’s comrades and injured another 17. A piece of shrapnel from the device hit Felisbino’s neck, narrowly missing an artery.

The Brazilian soldier credits God with saving his life that day. Now 105 years old, Felisbino is one of the last remaining veterans out of nearly 26,000 Brazilian troops who participated in World War II. Feb. 21 marks the 80th anniversary of the troops’ taking of Monte Castello, a strategic military position in Italy’s Apennine Mountains that gave the Allies an important advantage in their fight against German forces.

The Brazilian troops’ little-known story is one of inexperienced young men from the tropics fighting experienced combatants in freezing temperatures in Italy. In Felisbino’s case, it’s the story of one man’s capacity to act mercifully even to cruel enemies.

On his first day in the Brazilian army in 1941, Felisbino suffered an insult from a German-Brazilian sergeant in charge of the draft in the heavily German city of Blumenau, Brazil.

The sergeant, speaking in a heavy German accent, warned everybody in the surroundings to watch their belongings because the young men of Tijucas (Felisbino’s largely non-German city) were unreliable. Felisbino was offended, and the feeling of being treated unfairly stuck with him.

Three years later, 24-year-old Felisbino had just married when he embarked on the first ship with Brazilian troops headed to Europe. “We knew we were going to the war, but had no idea of where we would be deployed,” he recalled in an interview this month at his home in Camboriú, in southern Brazil.

Brazil had joined the war partly as a response to Nazi attacks against Brazilian ships, and partly because of the influence of the United States. The Americans had convinced Brazil to permit the use of its coastal city of Natal as an air base for the Allies, shortening the distance to North Africa.

The Nazi attacks on Brazilian vessels killed 971 people and galvanized anti-German sentiment in Brazil. Nationalist-minded young men like Felisbino were even more outraged. On the long trip to Europe, together with more than 5,000 fellow Brazilian soldiers, he was anxious to fight the Germans.

Felisbino and his comrades ended up embedded in the United States 5th Army in Italy. There, the Allies had for months tried to push German forces north. The grenade attack, in January 1945, nearly cut short Felisbino’s time in the battle. He spent 30 days at a hospital before returning to the front.

A few weeks later, the Brazilians achieved their greatest victory in Italy—the conquest of Monte Castello. Winning it was crucial because, from the hill’s elevated position, Brazilian troops could dominate a large radius and force the Germans into retreat.

About 7 miles from the epicenter of the battle, Felisbino saw the constant movement of the military planes over his head. The Brazilian troops had tried repeatedly to conquer Monte Castello but were repelled by the Germans. Climbing a steep snow-covered hill with heavy military equipment under enemy fire was difficult. But after several attempts, they finally succeeded.

Two and a half months later, the Brazilian-American coalition would enter Turin, in the north. Of the nearly 1,000 Brazilian military members who died in combat in World War II, 478 lost their lives at Monte Castello.

Hugo Felisbino Photo by Gabriel de Arruda Castro

In Felisbino’s telling, the Brazilian soldiers demonstrated a “Christian spirit,” reflected particularly in their compassion for local Italians.

“The Brazilian soldiers shared their food with the starving Italian civilians,” he said. “Sometimes, we were supposed to occupy houses and kick out the family, but nobody did that. We stayed with the family.”

After seeing his comrades killed in battle, Felisbino felt no sympathy for the Germans. Yet near the end of the Italian campaign, an unexpected circumstance would test his own ability to show mercy.

Italy’s Fascist regime had collapsed. The Germans, however, still occupied much of the peninsula, and anti-Nazi guerrilla groups known as Partigiani also had a military presence in parts of the country.

One day, while looking for supplies in a small village with a fellow Brazilian, Felisbino met the local leader of a socialist Partigiani group. Excited, the guerrilla told him, “I have something to show you.” 

The “something” was a group of 50 starving, wide-eyed German prisoners, scheduled to be executed the following day.

Felisbino looked at the prisoners, then told the guerrilla, “We want to watch it. These lowlifes killed so many of my people. Make sure you don’t shoot them until we arrive.” 

In fact, Felisbino was bluffing. He hoped to save the prisoners. The next day, a group of 40 Brazilian soldiers returned to the village. After much reluctance from the guerrilla commander, they succeeded in taking the Germans with them.

“Those men were already arrested and unarmed. They were harmless and had no strength to do anything,” Felisbino explains.

Until 1953, Felisbino was Catholic, like 93% of Brazil’s population at the time. Then he became an evangelical Christian and attended a local Assemblies of God, where he served as an elder for decades. 

His faith, he says, helped him during difficult times. Felisbino experienced the death of his first wife and son, the lack of support for war veterans in Brazil, and a serious COVID-19 infection.

From war to pandemic, you could point to a thread of mercy in Felisbino’s life—whether the mercy’s he’s shown to others or the mercy that’s been shown to him.

As Felisbino says, “I’m alive solely because of God’s mercy.”