European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

When I got there, I went on for a kilometre and I found the Germans already retreating.

Cows, carts, horses, bicycles, they had a bit of everything.

They stopped me. I couldn’t move on.

“I have to go”, I told them. We always found an excuse, an ill brother or telling them we lived there and had to get back.

But there was no way. They wanted to take my bicycle and forced me to go back.

I had to wait for the agreed time to meet with the other comrades,

where all got together, all those who had left to transmit the orders.

We met and then helped those who had to defend the city and those arriving.

That was the only mission I didn’t complete.

Meeting Carmen Zanti

We went to Carmen Zanti’s home in Puianello.

She was one of the leaders and had been in the party for years, together with her father, who had been in France, etc.

That famous Zanti who was shot at the Zucchi barracks.

The party had given her that duty; she was organized and already had contacts in Modena,

and she did move weapons around, together with my sister-in-law Iside Viani.

We went there and I found an agreement with her.

In the morning we went by my house, while nobody was there, because they were all meeting in a cattle-shed.

I picked up my bicycle and went back to San Bartolomeo, because I didn’t dare staying there, if somebody betrayed me.

So I left in the morning, I went to pick Zanti up and we went to Modena by bicycle.

She took me to Alfeo Corassoli,