European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

While the marshal was walking around to see what was happening, we solved the problem: he blew up on a mine.

We were supposed to take him alive, but we got him dead, the marshal and the soldier as well.

Then we had to back off of course.

First partisan action; arms, deportations, fear

After all these actions the Germans couldn’t allow us to continue any longer.

I guess at our headquarters they found out that there would be a mop-up.

Paterlini came to us saying “we must find something to blow up the bridge”, so that the trucks couldn’t get through.

We went there with Carretti and met with a guy working for Edison, the local electric company:

they had a cave so they also had TNT, mines, gunpowder…

We prepared the holes and then blew up a large arch of a very big bridge in Cinque Cerri.

Then we left for the mountains. From that day I was in battle.

We went to the headquarters in Lama Golese, on the Cusna mountain.

Pasquale Marconi was there, a teacher from Castelnovo Monti, who was a Christian Democrat,  a catholic anyway.

Then there were Eros, Miro, a Jewish doctor who was from Jugoslavia.

We spent a few days there.

It was a sort of recruitment, but we didn’t have enough weapons;

we were waiting for Allied air drops that didn’t take place,

so they sent four of us back to Ligonchio.

We went to Ligonchio and there really was a crowd of partisans there.

Unfortunately, not all of them were armed.