I16 Trying to save a boy

Narrator: Ester

I was 25 years old and my life was so hard. My husband did not smoke and when he served in the army he got some money back for the cigarettes. He saved the money and when he came back home he bought a bicycle (a “Frera” which cost a lot).

A doctor, who lived at Villa Frova at Cavasagra, a village near here, had a brother who was a partisan. One day he asked me to go and take a boy to Resana. The poor boy had fallen in a ditch crushing his chest on some pieces of chopped wood, so he was seriously wounded.
I had two children, an old man to look after, two more were children left to me because their mother had died.

I put in my bag gauzes, alcohol and medicine. If I had met German soldiers they would have killed me. I left by bicycle when I saw members of the SS. They were frightening. I knocked at the door of the local bar door, but it was closed. I knocked at the windows but they told me that hey would not open to anyone because they were in mourning. So I asked where Mr Alfonso Mason lived.

When I got there I explained that I wanted to take home a boy, but we did not know how to do that. Mr Mason had a horse and a cart, so we went through the fields and by means of two long wooden boards we managed to cross a wide ditch. The Masons had dressed the boy with their son’s clothes and we got to Albaredo, to my home. He was in bad conditions. During the night we took him to hospital and he was operated. There were also his mum, grandfather and his sister with us. His father was imprisoned in Germany. The boy died because he was badly injured. Under a porch there were loads of bodies of German soldiers, in a mess.

The funeral was celebrated on the 12th or 13th of May. I went too, of course.