European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I was holding my machine gun on one side and the rope on the other side.

"Mirko" and the big man, Giovannone, that was the name we were calling him,

went first and then told us to do the same.

I was one of the first ones to cross the river and all of a sudden the fog lifted.

It seemed to be done on purpose:

all of a sudden you could see the street all the way up to Vetto.

There were some Germans and when they saw us they started to shoot at us,

we could hear the bullets whistle into the water, it was terrible.

On the other shore there were the partisans from Parma

and when they heard the Germans starting to shoot at us, they started to shoot at us, too.

We shouted at them not to shoot, that we were partisans just like them.

These donkies!

A few days ago I told them again, as we remembered those events,

because they killed four partisans.

The partisans kept going despite the shooting because there was no other way:

being shot by the Germans or drown in the water.

So we passed and as we reached the other shore

I talked to the commander of these partisans and told him they were donkies

but he said he'd mistaken us for Germans.

I asked: "Do you think the Germans come passing the river together with us?"