Last week our mini bus was passing through the town of Cassino on its way to the monastery in search of WW2 stories, when we passed a statue of a one legged man waving a crutch. We were getting out anyway, to look at a Sherman nearby, and so with the most diligent of my nerds in tow, I went in search of this unique monument to see what it was all about. What we found was an almost unbelievable story of an amputee who refused to let a workplace accident get in the way of anything he wanted to do…
The statue we chanced upon in Cassino
Enrico Toți was a Roman. (His dad was apparently from Cassino, hence the statue) Born in 1882, he initially spent a few years in the navy before he followed in his father’s footsteps and worked on the railways. In March 1908, he was working between two locomotives at Colleferro station when he slipped and became trapped between gears. His leg was mangled, and had to be amputated at the pelvis. Now out of a job, Toti dabbled in inventing. He also refused to let his accident impinge on his active lifestyle. A competitive cyclist, swimmer and boxer before the accident, he continued to ride recreationally, and apparently remained a competitive swimmer against some of the best in Rome. And although he could no longer box, his upper body strength enabled him to rip decks of cards in half.
In 1911, Toti got on a bicycle and left Italy on a tour that took him via France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Russia and Poland, returning to Italy in June 1912. In January 1913 he set off again, this time he made for Africa, and from Alexandria rode all the way to the Sudan before the British authorities sent him back to Cairo for safety reasons.
On the outbreak of war, Toti had multiple applications to join the army turned down, so once again he got on his bicycle and made for the front. As a civilian volunteer, he was assigned a non-combatant role until he was sent home having been cornered by a patrol who noticed his disability. Eventually, the Duke of Aosta intervened on his behalf, and at the beginning of 1916, Toti was sent as a civilian volunteer to the Acqui Brigade. From there, he managed to get a transfer to a Bersaglieri cyclist battalion, who accepted him willingly as a soldier and presented him with an old plumed helmet.
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