Did Mussolini volunteer for his army during World War 1?

Answer 1

He totalled about nine months of active, front-line trench warfare during which he contracted paratyphoid fever. His career as a soldier ended in 1917 when he was wounded by a mortar shell in his trench leaving at least 40 shards of shrapnel in his body.

Answer 2

Yes. Mussolini's father was a Socialist, and as a young man so was Benito. The Socialists of that time were always squabbling over what the position of Socialists should be, but for many years all agreed that working men of every nation had more in common with one another than with the ruling elites in whatever land they happened to be born in. It followed that working men should not allow themselves to become cannon fodder fighting for whatever cause might make the national ruling elite go to war. If all working men refused to fight, there could be no war. One Socialist famously said "a working man has no homeland". Young Benito, freshly qualified as a schoolteacher, went to Switzerland in the early days of the 20th century, in part to escape the obligation of compulsory military service in Italy. In Switzerland he wrote for a Socialist paper and agitated for a general strike. Eventually he went back to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty proclaimed for deserters, of which he had been convicted in absentia. As part of this amnesty he served for almost two years in 1905-06 in the army. Though a committed Socialist at this point Benito did have a strong streak of nationalism, something many Socialists scorned. When WWI came along, Mussolini argued for Italian intervention on the side of the Allies, for which the Italian Socialist Party expelled him. He argued that the war had made national identity more important than class identity, at least for that time. (Italy had a Treaty of Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Central Powers, but did not honor it. Italy coveted land, with Italian speaking inhabitants, which was part of Austria-Hungary, and eventually joined the Allied side angling to gain this territory). Mussolini once more joined the Army, served about nine months at the front, was promoted to corporal for his zeal, uncomplaining nature, and fighting qualities, survived typhoid fever, and was badly wounded by a grenade or the accidental explosion of a mortar shell in his trench. After recovering from this blast he was discharged in August 1917 as a result of his wounds, with about forty shards of metal shrapnel still in his body. There was little of the Socialist left in him by this time, though.