European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I want to mention the only thing that I didn’t manage to do, as the liberation came right after.

We stayed up all night to prepare a map,

illustrating where the units had to leave from, the squads in our area, where the various GAPs were.

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.