European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Staying with a family of peasants living in Saliceto San Giuliano, where I stayed 5 or 6 months, I felt like I was at home.

They didn’t even know where I was from.

They thought I was coming from the mountains near Bologna.

Only after the war did they find out that I came from Reggio.

Military actions

We had drawn together most of our forces in the lowlands around Reggio, around Limiti, Soliera, Carpi.

All the houses were with us.

There was actually a time when that area was called “free zone”, because nobody could get in.

However

the Nazi fascists had also been looking at that area, just like us.

At a certain point they decided to do a mop-up to free the area.

They were going to do it with such forces, machine guns and heavy ammunition.

They would have more or less destroyed our whole organization.

We met at the headquarters and decided we had to leave.

As usual it was the dispatch-rider who had to face this battle,

in order to go and inform all our comrades, otherwise they would have been slaughtered.

If they couldn’t be ready in time, they could at least withdraw before they all got killed.

At a certain point I declared I would go.

I already knew the area. I had gone there often.

We had many families of peasants there, wonderful families.