In September 1943 some young men in Macchie received call-up papers from the Germans. They had only just returned from service, some in France and some in Russia. My cousin, Domenico Lannutti had walked home from Toulon. It took him two months, then two days after he got home he received a postcard telling him he had to leave again. Stefano and Donato Salomone had just got back from Russia. Many of the farmers were already up in arms against the fascist mayor over things that had been going on during the harvests, even before the war, and then we heard that the Germans, who hadn’t yet arrived in Gessopalena, had demanded that the town council provide a census of all the animals and all the food products on the farms. That way they would be able to commandeer everything. There was an awful lot of discontent. I was very young, just 16, but I went around with older people and got involved in their arguments and I shared their complaints. The most vociferous were Belindo Tiberini and Stefano Salomone. We were a group of 15-16 men and we also talked to young people from the other villages, Fini in particular. Finally we decided that we had to do something.

One morning, we set out for Gessopalena, with our minds made up. We were resolute, excited, but we hadn’t had any drink. We didn’t take the main road, as we would normally, but went through the fields. From Macchie we went to Fosso and then on to Calcare, right below the old village; then we came up the Atriena, along Cesa and finally came out on the main road below Colle de’ Grilli, by the reservoir. There was a telephone pole there and we decided to cut the wires. I climbed up and cut them. That way nobody could phone the police in Torricella. From here we moved on to the village, entering from the opposite direction from where we had started off.

With the young men from the other villages there were about thirty of us in all. First we went to the fascist working mens’ club, which was where the Bar Italia is today. We broke down the door and chucked out all the papers and smashed the radio - zi’ Peppe from Magnachela gave it a couple of whacks with his stick. In don ’Nrico’s house there was a room which served as the fascist party headquarters. We went up there and did the same thing. All the people who lived in the village followed us and said we were doing the right thing. As we were making our way to the town hall the police arrived. One of the villagers, Peppino Troilo, shouted to them: "Shoot them! Shoot the fools!", and one of the policemen seemed about to shoot, but his sergeant said: "Do you want to end up in the cemetery?" so nothing happened. So we all went into the town hall. There was nobody there except for Luigi di Mastro Michele, the bandsman. We decided to chuck out all the official papers, and we set about the job. Two or three of the group weren’t so sure we should, and Luigi Lollo actually said we shouldn’t, but we threw a couple of books at him and he quietened down. We threw all the papers over the cast-iron balcony and the people down below set them on fire. Later we realised that all this had been a mistake, but it seemed right to us at the time - we were so exasperated.