European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

My mother, poor woman, was the only one who knew how to give injections, so she was always dashing about, called on by everyone, even at night.

One day my parents told me to go look for my sister. As I got there I ended up in a mop-up.

There was also a wounded man with a shattered leg, so my sister and others told me to go with them.

We went to Quara di Toano, in the mountains, and then moved towards Modena.

But the following day I decided to go back home, because I had to go tell my parents we were safe.

There had been a big battle in Carpineti, and they had to retreat to the castle at first, but then they had to escape.

So I went back home, but my sister didn’t return home until the war was over, a year later.

I would be going back and forth.

I went to the mountains a couple of times, since my parents were worried and wanted me to go see if my sister was safe.

She was only 18 then. When she was in Parma they knew she was with a family, but at that time they were definitely worried.

I would leave early in the morning and run towards the mountains,

stopping every now and then to ask people if they had seen a partisan unit with a woman. Actually there were two women in the unit then.

Somebody finally knew where they were, taking me to Gova, towards Mt. Penna, very far away.

They had run away there because the Germans were looking for them.

She would always walk behind the rest of the group because she would take care of the wounded.

She wouldn’t carry them, there were others who would help her, but they didn’t have vehicles or horses, nothing at all,

so they would often improvise a stretcher – they called it a ladder – and put a cloth over it, if they had one.

That’s how four men would carry the wounded.

Brother at war

My oldest brother had already left for the war in 1939.