Could I get some help with researching this WWI photograph of an Italian soldier please?

by Arctucrus

My third cousin and I are attempting to identify the soldier in the photo. We assume he is a member of our family, which narrows it down considerably to a list of possible identities, but we want to be sure. We also don't know enough about WWI and its military uniforms & style to really even know where to begin. That said, I have tried to do some basic research based on a few assumptions, and here's what I've come up with:

Because this part of our family is Italian, I assumed that the man in the photograph is Italian, and looked up Italian WWI uniforms to corroborate that assumption. That assumption would appear to be correct. For the sake of certainty, what do you all think? Is the man in the photograph an Italian soldier, or were there other countries whose military outfits looked like that during WWI? If so, what countries?
I assumed that the "74" on his cap refers to his regiment. I researched regiment 74, and came up with the Lombardia Brigade. However, at first glance, this seems wrong, because our family is from a little town in Torino, and Torino doesn't appear to be part of the 74th Regiment's Recruitment District. Furthermore, none of our relatives' names appear on that website. That said, those names all appear to pertain to folks who died in the war, and not all of our relatives who fought in WWI died during WWI. Plus, I think the list could be incomplete. Does the "74" on the man's cap definitively refer to his regiment? Could it be incorrect somehow? Could it be possible for someone from the province of Torino to have ended up in a regiment with no recruitment jurisdiction in Torino, and how? Is there someplace I can find a roster of all Italian WWI soldiers, so that once I confirm his regiment I might possibly confirm his identity?
According to this, depending on the color of the star, a single star rank either pertains to a 2nd Lieutenant, or a Brigadier General. The 2nd Lieutenant star is gold, and the Brigadier General star is silver. I assume that the man depicted was a 2nd Lieutenant at the time the photograph was taken. Considering the ranks' corresponding star colors, the fact that at the time only black and white photography existed, and that his stars appear to be darkened in the photograph by a photo-"editing" technique of the time, I'm basing my assumption of the man's rank off the conclusion that gold stars would probably have been darkened in photography, while silver stars lightened. Is that logic sound, or is there other logic that supports the idea that the man in the photo is a 2nd Lieutenant, and can I therefore consider it beyond a reasonable doubt that the man depicted in the photograph was a 2nd Lieutenant at the time the photograph was taken?

Thank you very much for any and all help you guys can give me! I apologize in advance if these questions don't belong here. If that is the case, please [if possible] direct me to a better subreddit for my research! Thank you!

Klesk_vs_Xaero

Prepare to be disappointed. I can't unfortunately clear up all your points; but I can give you something useful, I hope.

So, the picture is quite poor, even by the time standards - or at least it's worse than the pictures of soldiers I am used to. It's difficult to draw absolute conclusions. But it does look like an Italian soldier. Look here. The hat especially seems to follow this model. The shoulder pad has the tipical "sausage" added to prevent the rifle belt from sliding down during marches.

The collar appears to be white (I have usually found it to be in the same grey-green tone of the other parts of the uniform). The actual color of the add ons would give informations on the corp as you can see from this engineer uniform as would the sleeves but we can't figure out much from the picture.

White would be sign of distinction: this is a picture of Italian writer, politician and war veteran Emilio Lussu as a Lieutenant ; this one of Gabriele D'Annunzio with his very white collar.

He is wearing what appears to be the troops model, without pockets: for comparison the first two here - an engineer . Which explains the sausage shoulder pads, that usually don't go with a more elgant officer uniforms.

It must be noted that the Italian Army had to save money - and it's uniforms were less standardized that you would expect; meaning that different manufacturers would be allowed some deviation from our ideal of a military uniform in order to save money; also soldiers had often to adapt their uniform when promoted or assigned to a different corp - as they were unlikely to immediately recieve a new fancier set of clothes. So some difformity should not be surprising.

The number on the hat should be that of the regiment and the insigna above it seems to resemble the simple version of the infantry one. Which would confirm your assumption that he served in the 74^th Infantry.

But how could he be assigned to a regiment he would not be called to? In fact it is not only possible but likely.

The idea behind the peace time service was to create a regiment out of people from different regions - from five main districts plus one of complement. So for the 74^th those people - those who had passed physicals and were assinged to the 1^st cathegory - would all move to Bra (that is not that far from Turin ) for training and being assigned to their corp. Others would stay in the reserve or be reformed entirely.

Such a reshuffling of people might have been feasible during peace time but it would have been a terrible way to go about general mobilization. So, when Italy begun to mobilize people went on to serve with the regiments based where they did their physicals - or at least as close as possible. If the person in the picuture lived near Bra, being assigned to the 74^th would make sense. And this would happen for those called back to arms as well - older classes would not always go back to their old regiment but serve in the closest one or otherwise being assigned where needed.

Even if he had been assigned to another regiment, he could still have ended up in the 74^th . The 74^th Regiment was involved in various major events of the Italian war, from the offensive on the Hill of Oslavia in 1915 to that on Mt. Veliki in 1916 to the rout of Caporetto in 1917. Overall casualties were close to 10,000 men. That means that a significant turnaround was required; especially after Caporetto the Regiment was sent to be re-established like many others involved in the rout; and such a process could not be done just with new recruits, but with reformed, reserves and older classes as well.

As for your research. Being a family member - if you have at least some information on the man in the picture - you can contact the Italian Defense Ministry or the Italian Army. They should be able to provide you with a state of service. For the area of Turin you may be able to find something here, since they have a digitalized version of their archive including the men called to arms there.

jschooltiger

Hello there! As your question is related to looking for identification/information regarding military personnel, our Guide on Military Identification may be of use to you. It provides a number of different resources, including how to request service records from a number of national agencies around the world, as well as graphical aids to assist in deciphering rank, unit, and other forms of badges or insignia. While the users here may still be able to lend you more assistance, hopefully this will provide a good place to start!