European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We reached Nironi, Vairo, Palanzano,

all those villages that we'd heard about but had no idea where they were.

If we asked people they would all say:

"No, here we don't know anything, we don't see anything,

we don't even know who the rebels are ..."

So slowly, slowly we proceeded uphill and were quite desperate because we had lost ...

We had some coins in our pocket but not many.

At night there always was a problem of where to spend the night, at some peasant's house.

But it was dangerous because the fascists would come and get you.

So we arrived at Corniglio

and we met this lady who was sitting outside her house knitting.

We asked her: "Lady, we're looking for partisans, the rebels ..."

Up there they didn't even know who the partisans were and we didn't have a proper term for them, either.

So she said: "Look, there is a house up there, there is a man with some people,

I don't know what they're doing, I don't know if they're workers or somebody else.

If you want to go up and have a look ..."

So we went to see and in fact it was a group of rebels led by that man.

We said we wanted to join them and they welcomed us.

"If you want to come out on patrol with us, otherwise you can wait here".

We said: "No, we want to come". So we did, one group here, one group there.