The standard aluminum mess tin of an Italian soldier is noteworthy for the text written on it. It translates to: ‘Carlo Boretti - Florence - Born - 1910 - Died - 1945.’ The geographical names of the following oblasts and cities in the Balkan peninsula are listed below: Montenegro and its towns: Podgorica, Berane, Andrijevica, Bijelo Polje and others. The Serbian town of Priboj. Albanian towns including Scutari and Lezhë (known as Alessio in Italy). These are the places where the 19th Italian infantry division were active between 1939 and 1943, taking part in the Albanian occupation and the Greco-Italian war. By July 1941, the ‘Venice’ division went to Montenegro, occupied Podgorica, Berane and Kolashin, engaging in active anti-partisan conflict.

On 8 September 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Italy declared an armistice between itself and the anti-Hitler coalition. On 13 October 1943, Italy declared war on Nazi Germany. On the day of the armistice, the 19th ‘Venice’ infantry division was billeted in Podgorica. The 118th Wehrmacht infantry division planned to disarm the soldiers, however the Italians refused to drop arms. Many of the troops moved across to the side of the Yugoslav partisans at the beginning of October: on 10 October 1943, the Italian soldiers’ support for the partisans was declared. The Italians fought hard for thirteen months against the Wehrmacht forces, in the towns of Brodarevo, Murina, Berane and Kolashin. On 1 December 1943, the remaining troops of the 19th infantry division and the 1st Albanian division merged into a single Italian partisan division, called ‘Garibaldi’.

The mess tin came to the museum quite by chance. The person who had discovered it was not aware of its story. For a while, museum staff believed that the mess tin belonged to an Italian prisoner of war in the POW camp № 260, in Orsk.