European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We did this for our GAPs, the SAPs did the same for their SAPs.

Others came down from the mountains, and they also had places to liberate.

We stayed up all night to prepare this,

this advance strategy to throw the Germans, the fascists, all the soldiers and armed men out of Modena.

I had to go to Paganine

to transmit the orders, since it was always dispatch-riders who had to do this.

There was no other way. We had no telephone.

So I left with my orders.

I had to go because we could already hear bombing in Bologna

and then some bombed around us too.

In Modena this didn’t happen because we told them,

but they bombed Reggio, and Cavriago, where the German headquarters were.

I left and headed down Morane street to Paganine,

a village towards Bologna, towards the mountains.

When I got there, I went on for a kilometre and I found the Germans already retreating.

Cows, carts, horses, bicycles, they had a bit of everything.

They stopped me. I couldn’t move on.

“I have to go”, I told them. We always found an excuse, an ill brother or telling them we lived there and had to get back.

But there was no way. They wanted to take my bicycle and forced me to go back.

I had to wait for the agreed time to meet with the other comrades,