I1 Three English bombers

Narrator: Rina Da Maren

My name is Rina Da Maren, I am 88 years old. I am going to tell you an event that took place at Carpenedo, a small village in the municipality of Vedelago, where I live.

It happenend on the 8th February, in 1945. It was about eight in the morning, when I was coming back home from mass with my friends. We were about twenty metres far from the railway tracks when suddenly we heard a noise in the sky. There were three bombers and from the signs we realized that they were English. They were flying at a low altitude and they were coming closer and closer.

Meanwhile on the railway a troop train was arriving. Inside there were German soldiers who were retreating. We did not have the time to realize what was happening, the planes started to bomb the train.

Immediately we took shelter in a hayloft nearby. For more than one hour we heard only the noise of bombs, bullets, and we smelled something burning. We were scared but we did not know yet what we would see.

After one hour of shellfire the planes went away. We went out and saw a slaughter: there were dead German soldiers, some were wounded, others were asking for help.

Many people in the village helped them. Some carriages of the troop train had exploded because they had contained weapons. In a house near the railway a hayloft was burning and the washing hung early in the morning now was pierced.

For a long time in that area fragments of bombs remained (some still unexploded). This was a tragical event that, just towards the end of the war, shocked our country and me. I have not forgotten it yet.