Before going up to the mountains, I was a soldier, in Yugoslavia, in Gorizia, in Triest, in Croatia. I came home for a number of reasons after 8th September, as is known. In my family, my uncles were anti-fascists, and they were in charge of a group of anti-fascists. At the time, there wasn’t any reason to go up into the hills, the mountains, but then in ’44, when we got called up, those of us born in 1921/22 (they called up everyone for military service in the province of Modena) I was with some friends of mine from Modena, Mirandola and Cavezzo, and I said: “Look lads, if we go and join the army now, we’ll just get taken to Germany and we won’t even know when we’re coming home – wouldn’t it be better if we went up to the mountains?” Unfortunately, there were two plain-clothed fascist militiamen listening and they took us to prison. We spent three months in prison, there were seven or eight of us, my brother and Taglini, the one that died in the street, and Berselli. Ugo, the one that used to play on the sports field in Sassuolo. Anyway, after three months, we got out of prison – after everything that had happened in prison, and all the people they killed. After that, in May, they put us in the army, which at the time was the fascist army, and we were sent to Nonantola for 20 days and then 20 days in Carpi, I think. Then after that, after another two or three months, I decided to go up to the mountains; you could go to the mountains then because there had been the Montefiorino uprising. We waited another month or two in the army, and then after that I ran off to the mountains. [...].