The Brazilian Expeditionary Force, nicknamed Cobras Fumantes, was a military division of the Brazilian Army and Air Force that fought as part of Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II. It numbered around 25,900 men, including a full infantry division, liaison flight, and fighter squadron.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas aboard USS Humboldt, during the Potenji River Conference, with Harry Hopkins, Chairman of the British-American Assignment Board (left), and Jefferson Caffery, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil (right).
General Mascarenhas de Morais (back seat, right), Brazilian army officer and commander of the FEB, with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II.
Brazilian soldiers greet Italian civilians in the city of Massarosa, September 1944.
Soldiers of the FEB during the second assault of the Battle of Monte Castello on 29 November 1944.
The spring 1945 offensive in Italy, codenamed Operation Grapeshot, was the final Allied attack during the Italian Campaign in the final stages of the Second World War. The attack in the Lombard Plain by the 15th Allied Army Group started on 6 April 1945 and ended on 2 May with the surrender of German forces in Italy.
Allied Spring Offensive April 1945: Note that 21 ID NZ is actually the 2nd New Zealand Division
Men of the Jewish Brigade ride on a Churchill tank in the Mezzano-Alfonsine sector, 14 March 1945.
5th Army offensive, April 1945