The military in my house
One day (toward the end of 1943) my mom and I went to some farms that were toward Ronchidos in an attempt to buy some eggs and/or some flour.
My father and brother stayed at home at the “Poggio.” This was the time when hunger was beginning to be written with capital letters.
On our return, with empty bags, we found three or four German soldiers in the house, toward whom my mom did not show cordial hospitality.
But my father, spreading his arms wide, made us understand that they were the ones in charge.
They took quarters in one of our rooms on the ground floor, closed the inner door and began to install a radio receiver.
A long copper wire coming out of the window, went to place itself at the top of a large tree of the “Poggio” farmers, after crossing at a considerable height the road leading to the nearby cemetery.
And so the radio began to work.
I, always looking for trouble, silently leaned my ear against the inner door, however, ready to move away when I heard the soldiers begin to walk toward the door.
I listened without understanding what those phrases being broadcast meant.
Then I decided to memorize several words that were frequently repeated and then run off to the adjoining house inhabited by my uncle, to repeat them.
My uncle had worked as a farmer in Germany and therefore knew the language sufficiently; he took notes, but good-naturedly “ordered” me to be very careful, because if I was found out, it was trouble for everyone.
Clearly I kept disobeying and reporting to him what I heard from behind the door.
I remember that the most frequent word, resembled the name of the Swiss city Zurich (Zurùck = back off).
During the months of June/July 1944 , German soldiers were searching houses in the village, capturing all the men they could catch, believing them to be partisans and robbing what they could find.
One day a soldier pointed the barrel of his machine gun into my belly and with that pushed me into the house, shouting “”BROT , BROT “” (= bread, bread).
But I resolutely, in my poor German language, replied “” NICHTS BROT FUR ALLE “”(= no bread for everyone).
Then in the first decade of October 1944 , as a result of the Nazi reprisal in Ronchidos, we felt we had to flee quickly from the dwelling of the “Poggio.” We closed the front door and abandoned the house.
Many months later, when we returned, we were informed that a Gaggese man of our good acquaintance, during the time we were present in our house in Granaglione, had broken open the double-leaf outer door and had seen fit to appropriate anything that might interest him.
One day when I was in Granaglione , towards late afternoon, I heard that the PRACINHAS were celebrating in the streets, very noisily.
Several armored cars of the “Segundo Pelotãon de Cavalaria Blindada” had returned: I ran to see and my curiosity was satisfied.
In fact on the back of one armored car was tied the long metal road sign indicating “”Gaggio Montano“” which for them meant that they had been in direct contact with the Germans.
Inside the three-axle (six-wheeled) armored cars the bullets from the .38 m/m cannon had run out, there had been a hard fight, so they told me.
And so with them I partied too, shouting to everyone - and hugging them - that I was from Gaggio Montano.
Then, back in Gaggio, we found still tied to the chimney on the roof, the white flag with the red cross in the middle.
The neighbors told us that the American doctors had for several months used our house as a first aid station (First Aid ) and in fact our various mattresses were soaked with the blood of the Brazilian wounded.
There was a wooden box in the house with many booklets inside : they were Bibles printed in English.
There were round tin boxes about 10 cm. in diameter with something inside that looked like “boot grease”, but which I later learned was soothing ointment.
There were small metal spikes, believed by me to be gramophone pins, but since the gramophone was not there, they remained a mystery, clarified only when in later years I had to sit in a dentist's “”chair“” with drill pins in front of it.
Then many American magazines with beautiful double-page color photos and illustrating the war in the Pacific Islands and also many sheets of paper with the header in red : American Red Cross.
But the mystery that remained unsolved for some years was determined by the presence of empty bottles, of a strange molded outline, about 25 cm. high, still containing several drops of an unknown dark liquid, which I sniffed but did not understand: then I tried to find a brave volunteer willing to taste the remainder of that liquid.
There was an absolute unanimous refusal.
To all of us it was a dangerous medicine.
Moreover, the embossed writing on the glass of the bottle: “Coca Cola” convinced us more and more that it was a hospital product.
Years passed and bottles of “Coca Cola” also arrived in Bologna and then my laughter lasted a long time.
The last soldiers to stop at my house in Gaggio Montano, were the Brazilian postal censors who, in the second half of April 1945, as they left, embraced us all, (um abraço) as was their custom to say goodbye, but left us with an affectionate memory and a lot of “SAUDADE.”