European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

"But how many are you here?" "No, we're not doing surveillance at night".

So I let them stop playing and called the team leader and told him:

"Now you'll deal with me" and let him do the guard shift and in the morning I left

with the Russians that were there.

We went uphill, high up, and after a while the Germans came and took them.

They killed one, one from Reggio,

whose name was given to the street that leads to the cemetery of Reggio Emilia.

They found him in bed, sleeping because no-one was doing surveillance, for God's sake!

When I led my battalion it was eight to ten of us

and everyone had to do surveillance, in groups of two. I did my shift alone,

three hours there in a hiding place, in the shadows, with eyes wide open.

If you don't keep your eyes open during the surveillance shift you're in big trouble.

The colour of the unit

Our unit was red, all communist, because we had some true communists.

The 144th Brigade was called “Antonio Gramsci”

and the commander was "Sintoni", one that had fought in the Spanish civil war, Pattacini,

the commissioner was Antonio Raisi, who'd fought in Spain, too, so all people that were political experts.

That was our line.

A priest, Don Guido Riva, once complained to us:

"You never come to mass! What’s wrong, are you afraid of the Church?"