European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We figured out that the Germans

had put a lot of ammunition under some trees.

They even had the Italian sub-machine gun ammunition we had been looking for everywhere.

We had the weapons but no ammunition. There were also machine guns, a bazooka and other weapons.

We never caused any retaliation by the Germans, who would burn down civilian houses.

We opened the trunks with a screwdriver, took out the ammunition and weigh it

and filled the trunk with a load of earth. In the end the Germans took off with trunks full of earth.

Assault on the base of test pilots

The school in Codemondo was a base for 400 airmen, as well soldiers as pilots.

The Germans had moved their test pilots

and the Caproni factory itself from Milan to the airfield in Reggio Emilia.

Reggio at the time had become an aviation centre.

The school in Codemondo was the base for this 400 Caproni airmen.

We weren’t organized yet. We were sending people to the mountains.

But we didn’t have many weapons, as the Allied hadn’t started airdrops yet.

Still we devised a plan. We wanted to take the sentinel by surprise, while he stood guard.

He was a soldier, and we did not want to harm him, only keep him silent.

Four or five of us went inside the dormitories with their guns, telling everybody not to move:

“Don’t move and we won’t shoot. We’re partisans, we just want the weapons”, the same old story.

Outside four or five SAP teams helped us carry away everything, boots and the like.