European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

That was it, but the ones that were paying less attention to these instructions or were distracted

got into trouble because they took advantage of this.

And when someone was to do surveillance duty: keep your eyes open and don't sleep,

because during military service you do surveillance like this.

But then again, you could find partisans doing surveillance and sleeping.

If you're tired, ask for a change, you stupid,

because I sleep quietly if you're keeping your eyes open, but if you sleep, too ... ?!

And in fact these things happened, I'm not going to talk about it because they're too tragic,

but it happened that the Germans came in and did a massacre

because the guard wasn't paying attention. They had no experience.

Another episode happened to me near Parma.

One day we crossed the river Enza

and three people drowned, one from Rivalta.

So we reach the other shore and I went to the partisans of Parma

and asked them: "How many are you here?" and one said:

"We have one team here and one there",

so I said "Let's do the guard tonight". I was leading a big group,

more than 50 partisans and he had a little team.

So I said: "Shall we do the guard team with one of your men and one of mine?"

and he replied: "No, we will do the surveillance tonight,