European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

They weren’t all communist.

My small group and I were.

Introduction and family; 8th September 1943; escape from captivity

My name is Pierino Beggi, battle name “Gigi”.

I was born in Reggio Emilia.

Until I was twenty years old, I lived where the Biasola Park is today.

My father was a farmer and worked on the farm that was once there.

We grew up working the land with him, until we were called into the army when we were around twenty.

I spent three years in Turin with the Engineer Corps

and then we were transferred to Bardonecchia where we stayed another three years.

On the 8th of September 1943,

General Vercellino ordered us to mine the Frejus tunnel,

since the Germans were coming through with tanks and army crews loaded on freight trains.

We carried 14 hundred kilograms of explosives inside the tunnel and blew it up.

But the Germans kept coming along the road across the mountains and were shooting at us.

We were ordered to withdraw towards Turin. We reached the city walking in the countryside for 100 km.

In Turin, we were already surrounded by the Germans. They had followed the road on motor vehicles.

Many of us were captured there.

Then we were put on freight trains, around seventy of us in each box car.

They had unloaded cattle before and the straw was still there.