European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The villages were full of people, the inhabitants had asked us to go take him.

Caretti ordered us to wrap up our shoes with some bags in order not to make noise,

but it didn’t work because the villages were full of shepherds and they had dogs.

The dogs heard us and started barking.

At that point the marshal came out with a soldier to see what was going on,

why the dogs were still barking.

We had put some mines on the road,

so that if we had to fight, the soldiers who came down from Nismozza would walk into the mines.

While the marshal was walking around to see what was happening, we solved the problem: he blew up on a mine.

We were supposed to take him alive, but we got him dead, the marshal and the soldier as well.

Then we had to back off of course.

First partisan action; arms, deportations, fear

After all these actions the Germans couldn’t allow us to continue any longer.

I guess at our headquarters they found out that there would be a mop-up.

Paterlini came to us saying “we must find something to blow up the bridge”, so that the trucks couldn’t get through.

they had a cave so they also had TNT, mines, gunpowder…

We prepared the holes and then blew up a large arch of a very big bridge in Cinque Cerri.

Then we left for the mountains. From that day I was in battle.

We went to the headquarters in Lama Golese, on the Cusna mountain.