European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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I received a letter from the Government stating that I immediately had to go back to Italy, since I was not supposed to be there.
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I was taken to the port and embarked on a ship whose name was Disentine.
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We stayed there three days without setting sail, apparently because there were British u-boats.
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Then one evening, from the ship, we saw that there were great celebrations in Durres,
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people hugging all around, and we decided to get off.
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It was the 8th of September, Badoglio had just declared the armistice.
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There were also fifty German soldiers in Durres:
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they took off their uniforms and celebrated with us,
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and got dressed as Germans again only eight days later.
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From that day, nobody was able to correspond with Rome.
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Even those in charge of the different services or of the orderly room could not speak to anyone in Rome: nobody would answer.
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Maybe it was better this way.
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One day, our officers in charge, such as General Mondini, from Parma, who was the Commanding General of my division,
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pulled the troops together and deliberately lied to us.
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I think they knew from the very start that what they were telling us was a lie,
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but they told us that they had reached an agreement with the Germans: they would take us to Trieste,
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where we would all be able to go our own way.
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I was quite skeptical, but we all got on the train. There were forty-two of us on each railcar.
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When we reached the border the Germans locked the railcars, allegedly because of the Partisans.
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In the morning – I had a small booklet with a map – it turned out we were in Austria.
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