Legacy of Sorrows

LEGACY OF
SORROWS

LEGACY OF
SORROWS

The Witness
The Devil's Bridge

ROBERTO
BUONACCORSI

Legacy of Sorrows
The Witness – The Devil's Bridges

THAMES RIVER PRESS
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC)
Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press (
www.anthempress.com
)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by
THAMES RIVER PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road
London SE1 8HA

www.thamesriverpress.com

© Roberto Buonaccorsi 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78308-241-4

This title is also available as an eBook

T
HE
W
ITNESS

Foreword

B
ecause
of my husband's Italian background, he finds it quite natural to write stories based on recent Italian history. This is one of them. His other book,
The Devil's Bridge
, is also based on a true story from that time.

I encouraged him to use his background and knowledge of those times to write these books which tell the story of events that should be written about lest we forget the horrors that war can visit on us.

Elizabeth Kim Buonaccorsi

Author's Note

T
his
book is dedicated to the memory of the Italian civilians massacred in the mountain villages around Monte Sole by units of the 16th Waffen SS under the command of Major Walter Reder during the period of 29th September to 3rd October 1944.

Even though this book is a work of fiction, it is based on historical facts and it highlights the brutality and savagery committed by the SS in the Italian campaign during the Second World War.

The massacre of Marzabotto was the biggest massacre of civilians in the western European theatre of operations to take place during World War II.

One thousand eight hundred and sixty three Italian civilians were murdered during this operation, including forty-five children under the age of two.

To this day, the mountain villages still lie in ruins, uninhabited and overgrown with vegetation.

Prologue

I
still
find it impossible to tell people what it feels like to lose all the members of your family in one day. It's not that I don't want to talk about it; I really don't think that mere language can convey the intensity of these things. I lost my parents, my three brothers and my sister. I also lost my uncle and aunt, along with their son, my cousin. These were people that I loved and shared my life with on a daily basis. As if that was not enough, I witnessed my immediate family being murdered by the SS and my mother being raped before they killed her. I was also present when the women and children of Marzabotto, my home village, were herded into the local cemetery and mown down by machine gun.

After the massacres, I lied about my age and joined the Partisan resistance in Bologna until the war ended in 1945. I still find it difficult to make friends with people. I suppose it's a throwback to the horrors I witnessed when I saw the majority of my friends cut down in their prime.

Even though I am an old man now, I was not always so. I was once thirteen. That was when my childhood ended on the green slopes of Monte Sole.

When I close my eyes and day-dream, as all old men are prone to do, I can still see the flames reaching high into the blackness of the night sky. I can stand that. Flames are only flames. What I cannot stand are the screams of terror and the cries of the children pleading for mercy that still fill my mind, causing me to tremble as I did on that mountain so long ago.

Some of the killers were Italians; followers of fascism and Mussolini, people who spoke our language and shared a common culture, religion and heritage with us. Whatever entered their mind and spirit that night belonged to the pits of hell. How could they have done this to their own people, to men women and children who had never harmed them?

The other voices I heard that night were foreign, with harsh sounding clipped accents. I had never heard German spoken before and, after the killings ended, I was told that was it. Even to this day, when I hear a German voice I experience a myriad of emotions.

I have been told that, as I am the last survivor of the massacres, I should commit to paper what I saw and experienced. I've tried before and failed. What words can you use to describe such things? The only way I can put myself back into that horror and come out the other side of it sane is to tell you the whole story of my life and, when I come to the black awful, shadow that lurks in the depths of my mind, I will remember the joyful and happy life that I had there on Monte Sole with all of my family and my young friends.

Chapter 1

M
y
name is Bruno Verdi. My friends on the mountain call me
Naso
on account of my Roman nose. It was common for all of us to use nicknames instead of our given names, but never in front of our parents. I was born in the village of Marzabotto, which lies about 10 miles south of Bologna on the wooded slopes of Monte Sole. I live in a three-bedroom terraced house just outside the village with my with my parents Moreno and Carla and my three brothers, Ricco, Benito and Gianpiero, who we called Pippo. I also have a little sister, Lisa, who is not quite two years old yet and is my father's undoubted favourite. My father is the village cobbler, and thankfully, there is enough work for him mending shoes and repairing other leather goods for the local people to provide for his family. Most people paid him in chickens and vegetables, so at least we always had shoes on our feet and food in our bellies.

Pippo stuck his head round my bedroom door, ‘Are you not up yet Naso? Come on, it's eight o'clock and we've got our football game today.' I was lying daydreaming in bed when I suddenly remembered that we had a match with the boys from the other villages down in the meadow outside Marzabotto. ‘Sorry Pippo, I forgot. Give me two minutes,' I said as I jumped out of bed and reached for my trousers. I hurriedly dressed in my oldest clothes, ran into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of bread off the plate on the table. Mum saw me and pretended to aim a slap at me. ‘Bruno, you'll be late for your own funeral,' she shouted to me as I ran out the door to join my waiting siblings. Pippo was my oldest brother at sixteen. Benito was fourteen and I was thirteen. Ricco was the youngest at twelve, and, as usual, was busy protesting to anyone who listened that he was fed up with wearing our old cast-off clothes.

The other boys were all waiting on us to start the game. It was September 1944 and the war seemed a long way from us. We all knew that the Stella Rossa partisan brigade was not only active on the mountain, but also in charge of our whole region and were looked upon as the guardians of the area, so we all felt safe from the war raging in the towns and cities close by.

The date was Thursday 28th September 1944 and little did I know that I would never play football with any of these boys again.

Italy had won the last two world cups before the war; in 1934 and 1938 and, like all small boys, we wanted to emulate our heroes. We selected our two captains by popular vote and then got down to the serious business of selecting the teams. Pippo, who was one of the captains, always picked his three brothers, and the other team captain, Marco, who was from Monzuno, always chose his two brothers. By the time the bargaining, shouting and manipulation was over, there were usually two teams of about twenty boys each. Marzabotto had about twenty boys playing today and the nearby villages of Monzuno and Grizzana supplied the rest. We ran around and played for hours with all the energy and enthusiasm of the young, happy and oblivious to the darkness that had descended on the outside world. Our only concern was to score a goal and if necessary, cheat to stop the other team winning.

It was about midday when we eventually stopped playing. We were all exhausted with the exertions of the day and with the afternoon sun at its highest and fiercest we said
ciao
to our friends and slowly wound our way back home to our own villages. We knew that our families would want us to help them with a few of the chores that all country boys were used to.

We had just arrived at our house that Mamma appeared at the door. ‘Pippo, go and help your Papà with the handcart and take some shoes and boots over to Monzuno. I've got a list here of people expecting a delivery. Make sure that old Graziano who runs the market stall doesn't try to pay you with rotten vegetables like last time.'

‘Oh Mamma, can't Benito go this time? I'm too tired to push the cart.'

‘No, Benito has his own chores to do, so get your lazy backside moving and get home in time for supper.'

‘What about our lunch Mamma?' Mamma handed us all a salami panino, ‘Eat this as you do your work.' Pippo sullenly headed over to his Papà's workshop muttering to himself whilst taking a bite of his panino.

Mamma carried on giving out her orders just like all Italian
mamme
were used to do. There was no doubting the fact that Mamma was in charge of the house and ran it like her own little empire.

‘Benito, go over to Aunt Lisa's farm and give her a hand with some jobs. She promised to pay you with some fresh eggs, so don't crush them or fall on the way back. Do you understand?' Benito smiled at this. He always enjoyed going over to his Aunt's farm. When all the work was finished, his Aunt Lisa would set the table for him and his Uncle Luigi, and give them a real man's meal. It was so different, he thought, from his own house where he had to guard his plate and keep a wary eye on his food in case his thieving brothers tried to steal some. His Uncle Luigi would always give him a glass of his homemade red wine during the meal and sometimes a cigarette after he had finished. As Aunt Lisa was heavily pregnant with their second child and found the heavy farm work tiring, Mamma had offered the boys as help for her during this time.

Mamma carried on with her orders. ‘Bruno, go and get the axe from the woodshed and chop up some wood for the stove. Don't make the cuttings as big as last time, when they wouldn't fit into the stove and I had to do it myself. Understand?'

I felt my face going red at the sarcastic comments my brothers were shouting at me, so I moved quickly down the path to the woodshed.

Mamma turned her attention to young Rico. Next to Lisa, he was her favourite and he knew it. ‘Rico, my little lamb, go to the edge of the woods and pick up some more kindle for the stove. There's a bag in the kitchen with a shoulder strap you can use.' She ruffled his hair as she spoke. Rico smiled, with the angelic smile he knew his Mamma loved. ‘Make sure you don't carry too heavy a load,' she said, ‘I don't want to see you struggle.'

‘Okay Mamma, I'll be back as soon as I can.' He picked up the wood bag and headed for the door. As he stepped outside, I stuck out my leg and tripped him up. Rico fell to the ground, dropping his panino in the process, and crying as if the roof had fallen in on him. ‘Mamma, Bruno tripped me and I fell.' He yelled out at the top of his voice. Mamma came running over and picked him up with one hand whilst, for the second time that day, aimed a slap at my head.