European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

it was hard for me, too.

Training a group of sappers

The ones I was working with weren't trained.

Once, they were on guard duty and an accidental burst of fire occurred.

They fled, leaving me alone.

So I told myself I had to form a group of sappers under my command.

I went to put forward my idea at the headquarters of the 26th Brigade, and I told Luigi:

“Listen, I want to set up a team of sappers, I can train them”.

We would have been under direct orders of the Brigade.

The headquarters agreed, so I trained this group.

We were able to take care of three or four actions at a time in a group of 12 men.

At the same time we reduced the risk, unfortunately some of us got killed at times.

If I was killed there would have been nobody left.

We did the course and it was successful.

Building up of „Fiamme Verdi“ brigades

From the day of the first air-drop to the end of July

we increased from around fifty to more than a thousand men.

There just wasn’t enough time to organize ourselves.

For example they set up a detachment and position it in an area, without knowing who these partisans were. That was a problem.

They decided to set up a unit called “Fiamme Verdi” (green flames),