The Sweet Hills of Florence by Jan Wallace Dickinson

Author:Jan Wallace Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Florence 1944

June 4

We had word that two days ago the British sent in parachutists to help with Radio CORA. Thank God they finally realise how important the radio is. Things have changed since we became official. Carlo, Enrico, Maria Luigia and the others could not go on alone for too much longer. I wish I were there to help them.

All quiet. Outside the tightly sealed windows, Piazza D’Azeglio baked in the heat that only a city like Florence, nestled into its basin, could generate. Inside, the air was fuggy with humidity and tension. Hunched over the desk, sweat dripping from his chin, Luigi Morandi spoke in a low clear voice into the microphone, reading from a long, handwritten list on the desk beside his pistol. The others worked quietly at their tasks and kept watch at the door to the apartment and out the window for telltale vehicles with an aerial, but in the piazza nothing moved. The transmission was almost finished when the door crashed to the wooden floor.

Luigi spun about, his pistol already in his hand, and the first of the Germans through the doorway took the bullet in the centre of his chest. He was followed by dozens more, all too big for the small space. The room filled with cordite and bullets and shouting and the stamping of boots, and Luigi folded to the floor, crimson leaching across his chest, his pistol silent. A German soldier kicked it from his inert hand. The other five fought with the courage that had seen them through every day of their clandestine broadcasts but their pistols were no match for the Germans. They were overwhelmed within minutes.

Enrico Bocci, Carlo Campolmi, Maria Luigia Guaita, Giuseppe Cusumano and Franco Girardini: the list of those carried off to prison. Shortly after, Gilda La Rocca was arrested. At the same time, in another part of the city, Captain Italo Piccagli of the Italian Air Force handed himself to the fascists in exchange for the others. His valour was useless. After five days of torture, he was taken into the woods and executed with the four Allied paratroopers and an unknown Czech partisan. With them was Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti, who had been held and tortured in the Villa Triste and then Le Murate, but who had not betrayed her brother, a member of the CLN. Unable to capture him, they contented themselves with executing her. By now, they did not care as long as the numbers increased.

That vile man Pavolini has taken over the Excelsior Hotel as the headquarters for his new bunch of killers. The Black Brigades. They look like the SS. Florence is no place to be. We do not know whether Pavolini was involved in these murders. So many murders to remember. Gilda and Maria managed to escape. Escape from the Germans, but not from their nightmares. They killed the British parachutists too. All dead. All gone. If I had been there, I would be gone too …

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