European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Battle defending the Ligonchio power plant

So the Germans decided to blow up the power plants in Ligonchio

and headed up the mountains.

The central headquarters, who were afraid we would not endure one last attack by the Germans,

ordered the local commanding officer, Ramis, to mine the power plant:

not the whole plant, only the roof, so that it would fall on the machinery and preserve them.

Ramis refused and told them:

“Listen, there are 500 partisans over here”.

There was also an English officer, and we were really armed then.

We had everything: a whole load of ammunition, machine guns, mortars…

If we had to mine a power plant at that point…

We fought back fiercely, even at night.

They had made it to less than one km from the road to the Predale power plant,

but they didn’t manage to proceed any further, not one step further.

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.