European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The Germans were already on the Secchiello bridge.

It was also quite a hard bridge to blow up.

I took advantage of the confusion, went under the bridge and set the mines.

The bridge was made of iron, but there was a rock, quiet high.

I lit the fuse and jumped off. It was a question of seconds.

However the Germans heard some noise when I lit the fuse.They shot some rockets.

I had jumped right away and hid behind the rock.

My comrades already knew that they would have to shoot when the Germans fired to give me a chance to draw back.

There was really a significant gunfight between us and them.

I slowly drew away, unhurt.

The following morning the Germans tried to reach Costabona twice,

but we pushed them back.

There were oak-trees, and we stood there with our machine guns, forcing them to retreat.

They had machine guns, armoured cars.

We had blown up the bridge so they couldn’t get through with armoured vehicles.

If it had been a question of energy, we could have succeeded, but we could do nothing against heavy artillery, ourselves having none.

At night we moved and slowly reached the saw-mill over Civago and stayed there the whole day. We got there before dawn.

The following night we walked through the Passone, next to the Cusna,

and made it to the area of the Cesare Battisti refuge, which had already been completely burnt down.

We stayed in that area for twelve days.