European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We sent a dispatch to the Podestà Rabotti, offering to swap our prisoner Major Battaglia with Muso.

The German headquarters however didn’t consent to the exchange.

They replied that the man they had caught with a gun had to be shot.

We got together to discuss the situation. Since they refused to accept the exchange,

we had to consider capturing a German soldier.

Giorgio, the commander of the Cavriago GAP,

told us about a SS captain who used to ride his motorbike in the evening to visit a woman in Cavriago.

I told the others we had to catch him.

We hid behind a bush during the day,

in order not to be noticed by the farmers who worked nearby.

When the motorbike approached we jumped in the middle of the street

with our sub-machine gun pointed at him. He stopped the bike immediately and tried to take his gun.

He managed to pull it out, but Fiorello hit him with the sub-machine gun.

Fiorello then left with the motorbike, while we put the captain in an icehouse.

At the time we had these ice-houses: people used to make holes in the ground,

pave them and put snow in them, to use the ice in the cheese factories.

At night we headed for the mountains with this blindfolded SS captain.

We sent a dispatch to the Podestà again, telling him to inform the German headquarters

that we had captured captain “whatever his name was”. On the same day the prisoner exchange was done.

First partisan action; Cervi brothers