大象传媒

At the beginning of the war we lived in a small village on the Venice - Trieste road. My parents owned a small public house and then the war broke out and everything became silent and sad. I was 15 at the time. it was fairly quiet until 1943 when the Germans came to occupy Northern Italy. That's when the sad time began. All of my uncles had fought in the First World War and hated the Germans and the idea of them coming back. Near us there was a small depot for the Italian Air Force and the Germans took it over. The Italians had left their air force buses there and my counsin suggested we went and got the red seat leather so that we could use it for shoes. The Germans let us and quite a few other people into the camp and then started shooting. They killed 3 people. We had to leave our bikes behind which was the only transport we had. When I arrived home the SS were there with an Italian interpreter. The SS soldiers never spoke Italian. I asked if we could have our bikes back. The SS soldier barked something I didn't understand. We never got the bikes back. A lot of sad things happenned. My older brother went to war and was killed by the allies in Napels. Friends died and we had evening curfews. Everything became dark and silent and frightening although lots of the German soldiers were quite kind. It was the SS who were nasty and some of the partisans behaved badly too. They operated like crooks although there were good ones in the mountains helping the fight against the Germans. Despite all of that we had quite a lot of laughter and made our own fun. We'd sit in the dark and cold and waited to hear 'London Calling' from the 大象传媒 on the radio. The signal would get interrupted constantly so I was quite glad when the Germans took it away as it had never worked properly.
The Germans would travel at night and you could hear them marching past. It was very, very frightening. The German soldiers would give us wood for the fire and the next day the SS would come and take it away. We had winter coats made out of blankets - they were really rough. It was a dangerous time as there were lots of spies, paid by the Germans.
I met lots of soldiers of all different nationalities. Most of them were kind and they used to come to our place and get drunk on cheap wine which was about all we had. We'd have bean soup day after day with no salt as you couldn't get hold of it. The German POW's stayed on for a couple of years after the war. They were treated well and would be let out of the camp and allowed to drink in our bar. They'd work for the allies to get money and sometimes, along with the allies, would sell petrol and tyres on the black market. if they were searched they'd pass their money behind the bar for us to look after.
I married and air force man and came to England but I still go back. Everything has changed now. The pub is now a big hotel near Marco Polo airport but I don't see that, I only see our place with the grape vine and the nightingale singing.

A4504006, A5080105 and A5080349 (AMES and the Battle for Italy, parts 1,2 and 3, and A4504079 (An Italian Soldier) are also connected to this story.

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