On the morning of December 4 we were due to make bread. We got up very early and were sitting by the hearth waiting for the baker to come and tell us it was time. I was 11 years old, and we lived in Via del Popolo. Instead of the baker, we heard lots of people talking outside. My mother went to the door and Nicolino del Gesù told her: "You’ve got to get out!". Mamma wrapped all the dough in a table cloth. She got a sack and filled it with linen (don Pietrino had always told us to keep an empty sack handy just in case!) and we went out. Mamma locked the door and gave me the key.

We ran round to grandma Michelina’s, where they were throwing things down from the balconies. The next few hours were mad. Uncle Roberto gave me a mattress and a bundle and told me: "Go to Benigno’s", but I knew my family was at Canala, the opposite direction. So I just stood there, staring at the stuff they’d thrown down into the street, and at the two little children, Michelina and Riccardo.

We went to Canala and hid in a barn with some other people. Aunt Licia and I decided to go back to pick up some more things, a pair of shoes, but we were hit by a blast of bricks and rocks. Then we heard the explosions and saw the houses being blown up. It was a shambles. I took my shoes off in the barn, because they’d got all muddy. We were starting to get hungry. Grandma Michelina took a loaf of bread and started to slice it up. Mamma said: "And what will we eat tomorrow?". Grandma said: "Let’s just think about today. God will provide for tomorrow!". Using the dough mamma had brought with her that morning we had enough food for a week.

The Pellicciotti family were with us: Antonio and his wife and their children, Giacinto, Gilda and Renata. The Totò family too, the mother and her sister Immacolata. After it got dark we went to Calcare. We used the dough to make pizzas and cooked them in a terracotta oven.

A week later, the Germans started shelling from Torricella. We were hiding in caves. One evening Rocco Curci lit a cigarette and the British up in the Old Village shot at us with machine guns. It was a miracle that we got out alive. Very slowly and in total silence we went back to the farmhouse.

The British issued an order that we were to stay at least three kilometres away from the village centre, so we moved to Valloni near the Morgia. Fifteen of us slept in a single room of the farmhouse. Aunt Felicia was there too, using her shoe to kill the mice than ran over us. If somebody had to get up during the night to go to the toilet, they had to climb over everybody else, waking them up and making them curse. We started to think about going home, though uncle Roberto, who had gone to Macchie to escape, was frightened and never went back. And finally we all decided to go home. It was February 23. Grandma Michelina’s house was still in one piece so we moved in there. Our house wasn’t there any more. I still had the key in my pocket.