European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Tomorrow morning the whole battalion and our brigade has to move down to Ciano".

I couldn't sleep that night,

the perspective of going down was such an emotional thing that ...

We reached Ciano

very slowly

because we knew that there were the anti-rebels squad

looking for us, ready to shoot at us from every window.

We reached Ciano without shooting.

It was a complete desert, we didn't even meet any local person on the street.

"What's going on?"

Since in Ciano there was nothing we decided to go further on to the crossroads to San Polo.

We were walking slowly,

keeping 10 meters distance between each of us because it was dangerous.

So we reached the church.

We were there, chatting, all the machine guns ready

and all of a sudden an armoured car turned up.

We thought it was the Germans

and got ready to shoot but

it was a car driven by a black man, smoking a long cigar.

They recognized us as partisans so they came to us and we hugged.