European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The local people helped us out a lot there.

Workers built the trenches while the women cooked.

That was really a perfect battle,

and one morning the Germans were forced to retreat.

In order to retreat the Germans had to cross a slope: it was easy to shoot them with the machine gun.

So they devised a plan: using smoke-bombs, they created a smoke-screen in the whole area to try and get through.

We kept firing the machine guns, in spite of the smoke-screen.

But the Germans would always carry away their casualties.

That was the last real battle in our area.

After that there were only small attacks, to trucks and so on, but that was the last big battle.

I remember there was also Carretti who was leading a detachment in Primaora, but it was the last battle.

Why should we slip away?

There were 500 of us now, and we had all we needed. There’s also an English officer with us.

We stayed there, and in the end there was this great feeling of joy.

It’s truly a great memory.

Allied airdrop with food and weapon supplies

An American colonel had crashed with his airplane and had to stay in Ligonchio for a while.

There was little to eat, and he was fed even less than the others.

So he told our captain: “If I manage to get to Florence I’ll organize an air-drop and drop you a lot of good food”.

He kept his word.