Legacy of Sorrows (6 page)

I filled a backpack with some food, put my revolver on top so that I could easily reach it in case of an emergency, and set off down the mountainside for the road below. I reckoned that I could walk the distance to Bologna without any problem and arrive there by noon. If I heard the sound of approaching vehicles, I would immediately dive into the undergrowth as I had been trained to do, and wait until they had gone before returning to the road.

When I was about a mile from the outskirts of the city, I left the road and climbed up the mountainside until I had a clear view of the road ahead. What I saw there filled me with dread. The Germans had set up a heavily armed roadblock with about fifteen soldiers and they were checking everyone's papers before letting them pass. Behind the roadblock sat two soldiers on motorbikes attached to sidecars, with their engines running. They were obviously prepared to chase after anyone or any vehicle that tried to break through their cordon. How can I get past this? Maybe if I climbed higher up the mountain I could get around them. On the other hand, if I waited a few hours they may leave.

I decided to wait and see what happened, and if they were still there by mid-afternoon, I would try to get around them. I lay back on the grass and with the autumn sunshine warming my face I closed my eyes. It was inexcusable, but I must have dozed off.

The sound of engines starting up and people shouting in German woke me up. I saw the Germans leaving and heading back into the city. I waited for a while longer before I ventured onto the road and began walking towards Bologna again. As I approached a bend in the road ahead, I saw two motorbikes sitting with their riders, parked just off the road and partially hidden by trees. They must have moved to their new positions when I fell asleep on the hillside. The Germans always left behind two soldiers to catch anyone who may have been waiting for them to leave and I had walked into their trap. I should have been watching to see if the motorbikes had left with the rest of the soldiers or if a German truck had stopped just out of sight ahead to wait on their men returning from their search of the area.

The soldiers saw me and immediately raised their machine pistols at me. ‘Stop, show your papers,' one of them shouted to me in Italian as he walked forward. I stopped walking. I had no German ID papers, only my Italian ID card showing my name and address on Monte Sole. I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. The soldier stared at it and began shouting in German to me. I didn't understand a word of what he said but I knew what he wanted. Eventually, the other soldier came over and roughly pulled my backpack off my shoulders and opened it. He pulled out my gun and showed it to his comrade. They spoke together for a moment as they decided what to do with me, before one of them turned to face me.

It felt as if my head had exploded as he hit me with his machine pistol. I fell to the ground and tasted blood filling my mouth. I was dragged to my feet and tied with rope before being roughly pushed over to where one of the motorbikes with sidecar was parked. I felt my feet leave the ground as I was lifted inside it. For good measure, they slapped me a few more times round the face and head. I never knew that blood could taste so salty.

They took me into Bologna to the Gestapo Headquarters and threw me into a cell. I lay on the floor on top of damp straw. I was very frightened. I had heard many stories from the partisans on the Gestapo's interviewing methods, such as pulling out their victims' fingernails with pliers, and I was terrified of what lay ahead for me.

When my eyes became more accustomed to the poor light in the cell I could see that the straw was not damp with water but was wet with blood. I wondered what poor creature it belonged to, and if he was still alive. I shivered, not just with the chill permeating through my cell, but with fear of the unknown. Then, two black uniformed SS men came into the cell and pulled me to my feet. Without a word they took me from my prison, one on each of my arms. They dragged me along a corridor to an interview room where I was pushed into a seat in front of a large wooden desk. They then disappeared into the shadows round the walls, although I was still very conscious of their presence. I could feel my heart beating in my chest and I resolved not to show any fear.

Sitting behind the desk was a Gestapo interrogation officer dressed in his black uniform and smelling sweetly of cologne. In Italian, he asked me my name and I answered him, ‘Bruno Verdi, sir.'

There was a long silence following this, and it unnerved me.

‘Where do you live Verdi?' He asked me in a gruff voice.

‘In Marzabotto, on Monte Sole, sir.'

‘Are you with the partisans?' he asked, looking at me for the first time. He had small beady eyes set in a soft round face. He looked like a bank clerk and probably would have been completely unsuited to proper soldiering. He resembled a vulture feeding off human flesh.

‘No, sir. I'm not.'

‘Then why were you carrying a gun in your backpack?'

I answered without hesitation, ‘I found it in Marzabotto after the
rastrallemento
there and I kept it to protect myself. These are difficult times, sir. I was alone and afraid.'

The Gestapo officer stared at me with those cold beady eyes that seemed to pierce right through you, reading what was going on inside your head. I was scared. Eventually he came from behind his desk and stood in front of me and said, ‘I don't believe you, Verdi. There has been no one living in Marzabotto since the
rastrallemento
. Where have you been since that time? How you have fed yourself and kept yourself so clean? The answer is that you are with the partisans. It also means that you know where their base is.'

He leaned over me and said in a very quiet voice ‘If you don't tell me the truth, I will have you taken from here to a nice country house where my friends will make you talk by attaching an electric current to your testicles. Do you understand, Verdi?'

My heart was pumping at a fast rate and my mouth felt very dry as I answered him.

‘Sir, I don't know anything about the partisans. I am an orphan and I have been living alone on Monte Sole. Please believe me.'

He punched me two or maybe three times in my face and head and I passed out.

When I came to, my head and face were throbbing with pain and I could only see out of one eye. I was sitting in the back of a car with an SS guard beside me. I was being driven along a country road to, I presumed, the Gestapo interrogation centre in the country. I once again began to protest my innocence to the SS guard beside me, only to be greeted by a backhanded slap across my face. ‘Only speak when you are spoken to,' he bellowed in my ear. Once again I tasted blood.

Suddenly, there was the unmistakable sound of a British Spitfire flying above us. The two SS men started shouting at each other over the roar of its engines and the car accelerated faster and faster, as the Spitfire banked steeply and prepared to make a pass over us. With a screech of tyres, the car entered a bend in the road at speed. At that moment the plane opened fire with its machine guns, raking the car from front to rear with its heavy calibre bullets and immediately killed the driver. With the driver dead the car sped out of control, skidded off the road into the undergrowth and hit a tree before overturning onto its roof. Overhead, I could hear the sound of the Spitfire's engines fading into the distance, apparently satisfied with its work. I had been thrown to the floor before the attack when the car had accelerated into the bend and it had probably saved my life. I looked round for my SS guard and saw that he had blood gushing from a head wound where he had made contact with the wooden dashboard. He was sprawled semi-conscious between the front seats. I seized my chance to escape. I crawled forward through the shattered windscreen onto the roadside, taking care to avoid the broken glass, and pausing only for a second to remove the dead driver's handgun from his belt. Once outside and standing on the road, I cocked the weapon and shot my SS guard twice in the head through the side window. I couldn't risk him regaining mobility and following me.

I looked around at the surrounding countryside and tried to get my bearings. I didn't know where I was but, according to the position of the sun and the time of day, I reckoned I was on the right side of Bologna. I painfully climbed up the mountainside for as long as I could manage, and only stopped when I was out of breath. It seemed like I had been walking for hours and the upward climb was beginning to tell on my legs. When night eventually fell I broke off a thick branch from a tree and used it as a blind man would a white walking stick. From my earliest days I had been used to the black nights that fell so quickly on the mountains like a dark blanket covering the woods, so I felt comfortable enough in the darkness, but I also knew the dangers of walking in it without a torch. After a long time walking in the pitch-black night I thought I must be pretty close to the partisan's camp so I kept walking in a straight line and sang out my name hoping that a perimeter guard would hear me. I stumbled a few times in the dark and once or twice almost lost my balance as I wandered too close to the mountain's edge.

Eventually, I came across some of my fellow partisans on patrol duty guarding the tracks leading up to our camp, and after a warm welcome and a brief conversation, two of them helped me back to safety.

I was greeted by my comrades like a returning hero, even though I had failed in my mission. Gianni debriefed me on my escapades and told me that when news had reached him of my capture and subsequent interrogation, he had feared the worse for me.

Once I was cleaned up and after a few days' rest, I felt suitably refreshed and ready to resume my duties, although I was still sporting a bruised and swollen face and stiff limbs as a memento of German hospitality. One positive note from the operation was that I now felt the other partisans accepted me as an equal despite my young age and this certainly gave me more confidence for future missions.

When Italo returned from his patrol, he made a point of seeking me out. When he saw me, he gave me a big hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘Well little tiger, I heard you have sharp claws, well done.' With a smile on his face he said, ‘Pity your memory was not as sharp as your claws, as you forgot about the German tactic of leaving two men behind.' He gave me a playful tap on the shoulder and said, ‘Good to see you back, comrade.' That was the first time he had called me that, and it filled me with a sense of pride. I was also too embarrassed to tell anyone the truth that I hadn't forgotten about the German tactics but had simply fallen asleep and hadn't been watching what they were up to.

With the Allies pushing the Germans back, it wasn't long before they took up defensive positions on Monte Sole, a natural fortress to defend. We received orders to disrupt their supply route from the north, and we moved into position for this. The fighting was furious with no quarter being given from the Germans when they captured partisans, and we reciprocated, killing every German we captured. Such was the nature of the bloody conflict we were engaged in.

Where we differed from the South of Italy was in the civil war we were fighting. Our enemy was the Fascist Brigate Nere, the Black Brigade militias. We were not only fighting the Germans, we were also fighting the Italians who had remained loyal to Mussolini's Repubblica Sociale Italiana which was based around the Lake Garda area. To complicate matters even more so, the Royal Italian Army was fighting on the side of the Allies, and was being used almost exclusively in a combat role against the Brigate Nere. It was a sad affair that Italians were killing Italians and I wondered then what it would lead to after the war. Could these open wounds heal sufficiently to give us a healthy Italian body?

On 24th April 1945, units of the Polish Independent Brigade were the first Allied troops to enter Bologna. The Poles were surprised and not very happy seeing Communist partisans in the city, and they shouted abuse whenever they saw us marching in column. We understood these feelings because The Russian Red Army was now occupying Poland, and Polish freedoms and independence were being brutally repressed there.

These units were followed a few hours later by contingents of the British 8th and American 5th Armies. Liberation had eventually arrived, and the local population greeted the Allies with jubilation. Street parties were being organised everywhere and there was a real feeling of unity and joy as the war was passing us by.

We wanted to continue fighting with the Allies, but we were ordered to stand down and disband. We were of the opinion that the Allies didn't want bands of armed communists operating at their rear. Our leaders tried to convince the Allies to allow us to join forces with their regular troops but we were ordered again to lay down our weapons. If we wanted to continue fighting, then we would have to join the Royal Italian Army on an individual basis.

We found out after the war that the British were afraid of a Greek situation developing in Italy, where armed communist fighters, the ELAS, had attempted to overthrow the Greek government with an armed coup following the German retreat in 1944. Their stated aim was to set up a communist Republic. With around 100,000 armed fighters they almost succeeded before they were put down by the British Army.

On the 28th of April, we heard the news that Mussolini had been captured at a partisan checkpoint on the road to Lake Como, at a small town called Dongo. He had been taken overnight to a remote farmhouse by another group, together with his mistress, Clara Petacci, who had also fallen into the hands of the partisans.. The following morning they were taken outside into the courtyard, put against a wall and shot. The partisans then put the dead bodies into their van and, under orders from partisan headquarters, took them to Milan for open display. They travelled up the Corso Buenos Aires, the main thoroughfare in Milan, to the Piazzale Loreto where they hung them upside down from an Esso Garage scaffolding.