Winter 1942

Almost a quarter of a million Italian troops have been sent to the Eastern Front, to the Don River, tasked with protecting the German VI Army stalled at the gates of Stalingrad.

In December 1942, the Red Army begins its winter offensive, cutting through the Italian lines and, in a matter of days, the Italian Army finds itself in a sack.

Abandoning everything except what they can carry, these men must now walk 500km, in temperatures that never rise above -45C, to reach the new Axis lines.

Before them is nothing but the endless ice and snow of the Russia winter. Amongst them are spies and assassins and saboteurs. And behind them is General Moskalenko and his merciless army of battle-tested veterans. To surrender is to die. To fight is to die. To survive comes down to one battle. One moment of heroism and folly in a town named Nikolayevka.

Only 100,000 Italians will somehow stagger out of the sack, frostbitten and broken, after eleven days of horror. Just 70,000 out of the quarter million will ever find their way home.