Brigata Majella: Interview with Domenico Troilo

You were the second-on-command of the partisan Majella Brigade, with responsibility for military affairs. The history of the brigade has already been covered in detail by various historians and by yourself in a number of newspaper articles, but what interests me is what motivated you, as a youngster 56 years ago, along with other young men of the same age, to take up arms and oppose the German army. None of you, I think, mainly because you were too young, had well-developed anti-fascist feelings.

You have to go back in your mind to September 8, and what that meant for Italy and for this region, which had become a no-man’s land.

But you weren’t starting from scratch. I mean, even though you were very young, you had already had some military experience.

I had been in Libya and Cyrenaica, so I had already done a year in Africa. As chance would have it, I was in Rome on July 25 (the day of Mussolini’s overthrow) and I lived through all the events that followed. Then my superiors sent me to Turin, which is where I was on September 8.

So you left Turin and went back to your village.

Yes, nobody was obeying orders anymore, there was nobody in authority to give orders. I realise that it must be difficult for young people today to understand this, but the situation was very serious, completely unheard of: there was no government any more.

You came back to Gessopalena using whatever means you could, just like all the other soldiers who wanted to go home. But the Sangro-Aventino area was already occupied by the Germans.

Yes, but there weren’t many, and initially they weren’t much of a nuisance. In fact you could say that the people rather stupidly treated them sympathetically: I remember the first three Germans arriving in Gessopalena, in a motor-cycle and side-car, stopping in Piazza Garibaldi under the mulberry tree that used to be there. I was there and I went up to them and invited them for a drink at Panittillo’s bar on the corner. It all seemed normal, if you could call the general situation normal.

It seems rather strange that the Germans stayed so long in this area.

The reason is straightforward: the Aventino is a particularly rugged area, just right for a war of position. The German detachment which occupied it during those months in 1943 and 1944 was not very big, but the soldiers were well trained and they moved quickly from one village to another or from one area to another.

You might also say that the Allies took their time getting here to liberate the villages.

You can understand it from their point of view. I was in contact with a British secret service officer, Lamb, throughout the early days of the partisan war. You know what he told me? To make a car takes 5 minutes; to make a man takes 20 years. They were cautious. They weren’t fighting on home territory. They didn’t make the same mistakes as the Canadians at Ortona.

Let’s go back to your first peaceful, shall we say, encounter with the Germans. How long did the apparent tranquillity last?

Not very long at all. We began to realise what was really happening when we saw villages burning at Civitella Messer Raimondo (Selva) and Lama dei Peligni (Corpisanti). We went to Piedicastello to watch the fires. We began to think that this could happen to us too. We talked about it, but that was all.

Is that when the stealing started?

Yes. After the first three in the side-car, more arrived and started raiding the farmhouses and the houses in the village. People tried to brick up their property or bury it if they were living in the countryside.

Something similar had happened about a hundred years before, during the brigand’s war.

Yes. History was repeating itself, but this time the outcome was even more tragic.

How did you young people react?

Just like everybody else: we ran to hide in the countryside. The Germans began to round up able-bodied men to go and dig trenches at Roccaraso. Like so many other young men, I went into hiding at Pastini. The farmers were terrified that their animals would be taken away so they killed them: that winter, in the countryside around Gessopalena, we ate lots of meat.

What about the fascist mayor?

He behaved well: he tried to make the Germans waste time, he drew everything out as long as he could.

What about those fateful days, December 4 and 5, when the village was destroyed. Where were you at the time?

I was living in the house belonging to Davide D’Amelio, the music teacher, at Casette. On the morning of December 4, I was awoken by Giuseppe Altobruno, who told me about the Germans. He was in a bit of a state. We set off for Colle Patacchino, as we had on previous occasions. But this time it was different. Several women screamed at us to come back. We were stopped by the Germans. We held up our hands and they searched us to see if we were carrying weapons. Then they let us go. They had given the order to clear the village within a couple of hours. I took the doors and windows down from the house and put them behind the wall which encloses the field then known as zi’ Francisco’s orchard, and which is where the post office is now. I made a shelter where we slept for a couple of nights. It was drizzling and misty. The houses at Casette had very thick walls, earthquake proof, which stood up to the Germans’ mines. Mastro Davide’s house wasn’t as badly damaged as the others because, having no doors or windows, there was less resistance to the blast of the mines.

But that day, there was a tragedy for your family. Do you want to talk about it?

On the morning of December 5, they came to get me because they couldn’t find my mother. She lived in Via Castello. I went to Piedicastello with some of my relatives. We found her under a pile of rubble. We dragged her out and I realised she had been shot: a burst from a German Smeiser machine-gun right in the face. I don’t know what really happened. Perhaps she had refused to carry out an order from some officer, who shot her. We made a coffin for her out of bed boards, and we carried her to the cemetery. We couldn’t go by the normal road because it was covered in an incredible amount of rubble so we went through the fields, towards Pila. For the following few nights, I hid at Pastini.

Was it now that you decided to fight?

I was already thinking before then that something had to be done to make things better. I used to talk about it a lot with Vincenzo Tilli, who was a few years older than me.

So how did this turn into action. In a word, how did you become a partisan?

After the village had been destroyed, one of the first to come to me to say "something had to be done" was Vincenzo Troilo, who was originally from Monte San Giuliano. This village, together with Coccioli, had been the target of German raids from Torricella, and the young people who lived there had suffered the most and were the readiest to take action. The British arrived. I went to them, with Vincenzo Troilo, and told them that we wanted to collaborate, by which we meant, go about carrying information. My first gun was given to me by a British officer. Vincenzo got a Smeiser. All the able-bodied men from Coccioli and Monte San Giuliano began to arm themselves, with hunting rifles and weapons taken from the Germans. I remember them all. We made up little reconnaissance patrols, venturing as far as Torricella which was occupied by the Germans. We often went as far as the "three borders" between Gessopalena, Torricella and Roccascalegna, but we also went as far a Colle d’Irco, well beyond Torricella, which we circled around, using the country roads. We quickly learned the Germans’ movements. They were creatures of habit and always followed the same routes.

Were you the only partisan group in Gessopalena?

Yes. In truth, in the village there was another group, from Colledimacine, under the command of a man called Salvati, but it wasn’t active.

How many of you were there?

Twenty or twenty-five, most of whom didn’t know how to handle weapons. At the start, I taught them how to work them and that they had to clean them every day. I made them shoot them often, so that they got used to the noise. Some young boys from the village also joined the group.

Did you witness the massacre at Sant’Agata?

We went to see what had happened the same morning we heard the news. The Germans, obviously, had disappeared. I remember the torment of those bodies, the smell of burning flesh.

Up till then, had there been no confrontation with the Germans?

The front here was open. The Germans moved around a lot, but they had no logistical support and no supplies. After Sant’Agata, at the end of January, they withdrew from Torricella. We went in and we were the first. The following afternoon, the British arrived. We found nobody in the village, only dead dogs, abandoned houses, doors blown in. The old part of the village was destroyed. The pharmacy was open, with medicines strewn on the floor. That first night I organised some defences, putting a guard in the bell tower and a couple of other places. The boys from Colledimacine came with us too.

But throughout this period, how did your organise your provisions?

We got by. Some brought flour or other stuff from their homes, and in Torricella we took food from wherever we found it: on the floor in abandoned houses. Later on, the British gave us supplies, but the first few days were hard: nothing was organised.

What happened in Torricella?

After the British arrived, my group was supposed to go to Colledimacine, and Salvati’s to Fallascoso. Salvati suggested we should swap: they came from Colledimacine, so the request was understandable. When they got to Colledimacine, the enemy had fled, so they mounted the bell tower and rang the bell. This was a very risky thing to do. In fact, some Germans were in Cesapiana, and they fired on Colledimacine and the bell tower. Everybody fled. Five or six of them came to join me and my group at Fallascoso, the rest disappeared. I’ve never heard from Salvati since.

Fallascoso was on the front line for quite a while.

When we arrived, we found a few youngsters wandering about in the houses: the rest had fled. From that day we arranged the occupation of Fallascoso, us from Gessopalena together with the youngsters from the village we had found there. We suffered a number of attacks from the Germans but we held out. Our headquarters was in the ducal palace, at the top of the village, but we also dug trenches on the hills opposite to prevent the enemy getting close from there.

Did you work under your own initiative?

We were always in communication with the British. Once they told us to retreat to Torricella, because this was more easily defended, but I refused. When the Germans advanced, we were always the first to shoot: the group from Gessopalena was well trained by now.

After the engagement at Pizzoferrato, the Majella partisans had to hand over their weapons to the British.

But we didn’t. My group kept their weapons, and they left us in charge of Fallascoso until April. However, it was in February, after Pizzoferrato, that we joined the Majella, and an officer appointed me second-in-command with responsibility for military affairs. From the time we spent in Fallascoso, I remember the nights we spent in the ducal palace. I slept on three chairs, but I was always ready to get up and go and check on the others: they weren’t much more than boys, with little experience, and they fell asleep easily.

You witnessed a tragic incident.

It happened one night when I was on patrol out at Selvoni di Montenerodomo (Grotta del Lupo), on the border with Pizzoferrato. A freezing wind was blowing and there was still a lot of snow around. I needed a cigarette, and I went up to a barn close by. I kicked the door open, and inside I saw a woman stretched out on the floor, machine-gunned, and by her side were her three children, all dead. She was pregnant. Some of these Germans showed no mercy for anyone.

That woman was Domenica Di Lullo. She was 39 years old, and that incident happened on March 25. It was a pointless and cruel massacre.

It served no purpose. Like war. Like all wars.

 

 

 

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