After the armistice, I went home to Lenterio. In October, we heard the guns near Atessa. The Germans were everywhere, in their cars, and we had to run and hide. One day we heard somebody shouting: "The Germans! The Germans!". They were on the move from the village heading towards Monte San Giuliano. The previous evening we had killed a pig and taken it into the woods. From the hilltop the Germans could see everything through binoculars. I went off and from a hillock I could see the house. The Germans came down from the hilltop and went straight for the wood. They caught Peppe D’Amelio. As they were marching him off, Peppe threw off his jacket and ran. The Germans fired at him but missed. I heard the shots - they were coming from near my house. I saw Peppe going past and I shouted to him: "Compa’ Peppe! What’s going on?". He signalled me to follow him and we ran off together, heading for the house belonging to Nunzio di Ilario, about 3 or 4 kilometres away on the boundary between Gessopalena, Roccascalegna and Torricella. When we got there we stopped to catch our breath.

In November we went to sow corn, by night so as not to be seen. We were sowing up at Calderari, with the cows and the plough. One night a German plane flew over and dropped a flare which lit up the whole area.

By this time, the British had taken Roccascalegna and the Germans were in Torricella. They fired shells at each other right over our heads. You could say we were right on the front line. So none of the refugees from Gessopalena came to stay at our farm - it was too dangerous. Just one family, from Torricella, lived for any length of time in the farmhouse belonging to Peppe D’Amelio. One day in January a British foot patrol came by. My father spoke to them in English, and they asked him if I could go with them up Monte San Giuliano, where they had a command post in a farmhouse belonging to Alfonso Troilo. The next day I took them into the village, to the command post at Cassio. One day around then, an Allied lorry pulled up beside me and the soldiers asked me where I was going and why. I told them. They also asked me who the mayor at Gessopalena was. I told them: "Scipio Casari".

One morning, Nicola De Gregorio, who was hoping to marry my sister, discovered the body of an acquaintance, lying in the road, not far from our farmhouse. He came to get me and I went and saw the body. Nearby was an axe covered in blood. He went to Monte to get the man’s relatives, who came down in a terrible state. We called in the British.

Mother was ill, and one day a German patrol arrived. They asked mother to provide a bedroom. They stayed there for one or two days.

They didn’t do anything bad. They were nice people. Mother was suffering from nephritis. In February we called in the doctor from Roccascalegna, don Casano. He prescribed some medicines for her but they could only be got from Colledimezzo. We had no way of getting there. In the village the Police (the force set up by the Allies) were in charge. There was only one place the Police didn’t go: Ciccuccio, on the River Sangro at Piane d’Archi. There the railway bridge had been blown up by the Germans, but the railway tracks were still there, hanging in the air. I set off on my own and got to the bridge. The river was full. I stretched out along the railway tracks and started to slide across. Half way across everything began to sway. I began to lose my nerve. I stopped, but then I went on. I told myself: "I’m not coming back this way tonight". I went up the river as far as where the Lake at Bomba is today and then set off towards Colledimezzo. I went to the house of Gigiotto, the postman, to rest up a while. I went to the chemist’s and got the medicines then set off back home. I crossed the river below Bomba, holding sticks in my hands to measure the depth of the water. A couple of yards from the opposite bank, my measuring rods told me the water was deep. I made up my mind, threw away the sticks and made a dive for it. I got out the other side. I got back to Pennadomo, where I stopped and had a couple of large glasses of marsala.