European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I started military service on March 9th, 1940.

I went to Trieste and then right off to the Yugoslavian border.

I stayed there until September 8th, 1943,

shooting and being shot at and so on.

I have been all over Yugoslavia,

I was in the 151st regiment of infantry of the Brigata Sassari.

There were only a few people from Emilia and many Sardinians, many from Calabria,

poor guys with little schooling, mostly illiterates.

In fact I became a sergeant because I had gone to elementary school,

I had some knowledge, I was able to read.

I mean, I was a bit more than a poor silly guy like them..

They were having a hard time; they didn't know how to write.

I wrote home for them, to their girlfriends,

even though I didn't know what to say to a girlfriend, that's the truth.

Then, one day, I even took a school book from a friend of mine

and taught these guys how to write and count.

I taught them in the moments in which we had nothing to do, were just getting bored.

But in Yugoslavia we fought a lot and the partisans bombed us often, we had many casualties.

I was all over Yugoslavia, from Zagreb to Croatia to Slovenia.

These are difficult territories;