European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

in a restaurant in Prampolini Square, where we had… a thin soup.

We were poisoned by all the cheese we had been eating.

We had eaten cheese and bread or bread and butter for months,

even though I was luckier since I was always moving around, on the hills, in the lowlands.

We would be eating with the families then, and that meant enjoying a totally different meal.

During the night we set up an outpost in Santo Stefano,

with our headquarters at Pecorari’s, a bicycle producer.

The following morning I told the others I had to leave

for a couple of hours to go to the central headquarters. It was a lie.

I went to visit an uncle who lived close by, borrowed a bicycle and went home.

Near the Via Emilia, they had known about the Liberation before.

When I arrived at home, in Cella, it was 9:30 or 10, and they had just found out.

I was one of the first partisans who had come back.

It was a disaster.

I couldn’t stop crying since I had always been very sensitive.

My father was telling people to let me go: “He didn’t die in the mountains, do you want him to die here?”

Afterwards I went to the well,

washed my face with some cold water and straightened myself up, then went back to Reggio.

By then all the young girls in Cella had formed a column and were walking towards Reggio to march into town.

They arrived in Reggio, together with those from Pieve Modolena, Cavazzoli, etc.