In November 1943, two fugitives - father and son - from San Remo, ask if they can stay with us. They become part of the family. They are waiting to cross the front line, but the Germans have occupied Gessopalena and Torricella Peligna.

We’ve hidden some of our furniture, but not too much so as not to arouse suspicion. Early in the morning our two guests go off into the fields and don’t come back till nightfall, just like the other men in the family. I stay home with a couple of men, over 80, and my mother-in-law. I’ve been married for just a few months. Every now and then the Germans pay us a visit: their boots echo through the house. They need a stove, so they take ours; wine - we open our cellar for them.

We are hoping the British will come. They’ve got as far as Casoli, 16 kilometres to the south of Gessopalena, and we’ve asked them to come but they don’t move. One morning the Germans mine the road at the entrance and exit of the village then withdraw to Torricella Peligna. Now we thought we’d be free. Our guests, with the help of some people from the village, cross the border at Atessa and head for Bari. Before leaving they tell us that the father was a political prisoner who had escaped from the concentration camp at Capestrano. What a fine risk we ran!

The British still don’t come. On December 4, we’re woken at 5 in the morning by a big racket. The Germans have told the mayor to have the village evacuated within two hours: all the houses are to be razed to the ground.

First we get the old men to safety and we leave them in the fields. Then we go back to save whatever we can from the house. What should we take first? Corn, oil, linen? Some people are crying, some shouting, some running, some calling, some hiding.

Our house has a large and impressive doorway, a large entrance way where the carriage used to stop. An SS soldier comes in and demands containers: boilers, buckets, pans. I scraped together 18; other SS soldiers, wearing gloves and camouflage, their faces yellow from gunpowder, arrive and fill the containers with dynamite, then line them up in the entrance. We were still in the building when we heard the first explosion, not far away. My husband, my mother-in-law and I ran down the cliff, which is so steep and frightening that every time I see it these days I think: how on earth did we manage? Another boom, and then another, lots of debris rains down on us, a shutter lands just inches away from me. I can hardly walk any more and I want to give up. The explosions come one after the other and then there’s a big cloud of dust and the houses are no more. Our building has walls two metres thick and it looks as though it’s still standing because we can still make out the Belvedere, a turret which stood out above all the other houses, but the mines are still exploding. Smoke, dust, debris everywhere.

It rains, and then snows, through the mud we tramp, with the old men, and get to a farmhouse where they will put us up (all six of us). There’s a curfew and we can’t go back to the village. For two days, the Germans carry on blowing up the houses, one by one. They burn the cow sheds and the furniture. The village is a pile of rubble, even our building has fallen down, only one side of the turret is left standing and that has to be knocked down immediately.

The debris is as high as the first floor. All the beautiful antique furniture has been destroyed. The looters see to the rest. The family chapel has been saved, but the door is open and the church is full of bricks and rubble. There’s no point crying: we’re alive, so we’ve just got to get on with it. We move into a farmhouse we own. During the daytime my husband and I go back to search in the rubble to recover what we can and often we hear German shells passing overhead from their position behind the cemetery at Torricella. We don’t consider the cold, or the discomfort, or the hunger: just having bread and oil is something. On Christmas Day, a Yugoslavian political prisoner turns up at the farmhouse. He’s a man we helped a few months earlier, providing him with civilian clothes and food. To show his gratitude, he’s come to help us to get to Casoli. We don’t even finish our meal. The Germans could come at any time and deport us to the north. It’s a sad Christmas: rain, wind, snow, mud: tramping across the fields with blankets over our shoulders, finally we arrive in Casoli. This is where most of the refugees end up. They arrive daily from the surrounding countryside, clothed in sacks, with no shoes. A heartbreaking sight.

One day a group of brave young men from Palena and Torricella arrive in Casoli and ask the British for guns: they got them, and that’s how the Majella Brigade was born.

We stayed in Casoli till late spring: next door to the chapel was a big room that had been gutted but it was tolerable and provided enough shelter.

With courage that came from desperation we started to put our lives back together, making sacrifices that would be unthinkable today, with our attention fixed on those who had managed to save their lives and their good health throughout all the troubles.

The Old Village has been abandoned, but the Tozzi house has been rebuilt, with state aid, on the site of another ruined house, in the middle of the square.