Bersaglieri - Today

Today

While in the past the mobility of the Bersaglieri was helped by their training in running and by the aid of bicycles, regiments currently in service are all mechanised.

The modern Bersaglieri have served, as part of the Garibaldi Bersaglieri Brigade, as peacekeepers in the Multinational Force in Lebanon, and in Yugoslav and Somali Civil Wars, and were also active in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bersaglieri traditions are still stressed. The Bersaglieri collar patches are purple-red "flames". Enlisted troops still wear the red fez. Officers wear black berets with their ordinary uniforms, but the feathered "vaira" in ceremonial uniform. They also wear black gloves, while other Italian regiments wear white ones. Each Bersaglieri unit had a band called a "fanfara", who played their instruments at the run while on parade. The "fanfara" does not contain percussion instruments. Today only the Garibaldi Brigade, Ariete Brigade and 7th Bersaglieri regiment retain a "fanfara", although brigade bands play appropriate music at the fast pace for Bersaglieri units integrated into the brigade structure.

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