European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and, whenever we can, we work to tell everyone about our stories.

The tough return home

I came home by train.

We left one morning and arrived at Lake Constance, in Switzerland.

As we got there, the train stopped working,

so we had to wait two days before we found another one.

It took us one and a half days to reach Como,

because everything had been destroyed and there was only one railroad track working.

Since there was no way to get to Milan, we had to spend two more days in Como.

When we finally reached Milan

we were told that the line headed to Emilia Romagna had left already.

They were using old trucks, whatever was left,

because the railroad bridge in Piacenza had been bombed.

We stayed there two days, before someone suggested we should get on a train to Padova and then to Ponte Lagoscuro,

since trains were able to pass the Po river there.

That’s what we did: we went to Padova, then to Ferrara, and finally made it to Bologna.

In Bologna we were supposed to stay in a barrack for two days,

but I went out with two or three comrades and we managed to find a SARSA bus.

We asked the driver if he was heading towards Reggio and if we could hop up, and he happily consented.

In Castelfranco, however, the ticket inspector kindly told us that we would have had to pay the ticket fare.