I got married in June 1942 and in September my husband Carmine left for the army. He came home on September 28 1943. Then, as now, we were living at Picianesi. I remember coming home a few days later and finding nobody home. A neighbour came in shouting: "They’ve all gone! The Germans are at the Morgia! They’re aiming a cannon at us!" I felt hopeless, I didn’t know what to do and later I fled towards Piana Mazzetta where I found everybody from my area, and I found my family at San Basilio. Not even my husband had been able to give me any warning.

Once that day was over, we were able to go back home to Picianesi. But now we were always in fear. My father-in-law had bought two calves at the fair at Castelfrentano. A week later the Germans came and took them. "If you want compensation, come to the station at Palena", they told us. But nobody went.

The young men had dug a cave to hide in. In my father’s house there was a cellar which was a bit like a cave: from the ground floor you went down into two dark underground rooms, one above the other. In the lowest room we hid the bed, and all around the house we buried all the most useful things: potatoes, corn in sacks between layers of straw, and other things. In November we were sowing corn at Piana Mazzetta, about 15 of us, when Nicola Turchi arrived shouting: "Run! The Germans are here!".

At the beginning of December we watched as the houses in the village were blown up. My husband went to join the patriots, but he came back soon: "I didn’t have the courage" he said. One day we killed a pig that belonged to my father. We were cooking it when four Germans appeared. My father ran off and hid up an oak tree. We had a watch-word for these occasions: "Put the dumplings on!" The Germans sat down to eat with us. Then they got the photos of their families out, pointing to their children and their wives saying: "Kaputt!". Then they wept.

In our house there were twelve refugees from Torricella, from Santa Giusta. We often ate polenta. When the events at Sant’Agata took place, the patriots came from the village and asked Carmine to go and look. That was when my husband decided to give up being a partisan.

Some time later a group of us women was at the mill at Ciclone, which is where the lake is now. We were grinding corn when three or four Germans appeared. They told us to go with them. We were scared and one of us was almost out of her mind. They just made us peel potatoes and prepare vegetables and onions to make soup. They even gave us some. Then they took us back to the mill and gave each of us a little salt. Our men got angry with us, even Carmine was mad because I had gone with the Germans. But they hadn’t touched us. They treated us with respect.

When all this was over, we went to dig up the bed and all the other things we had buried; but the potatoes, the corn, the meat were all rotten and we were unable to salvage anything.

The first night we slept in the bed (I was three months pregnant), we heard shooting from the Morgia. We wanted to run away, but we ended up staying put. We were tired of running away.