Anna Rosa Filocamo shares her memories of World War II

Anna Rosa Filocamo is now 87 years and continues to live in Southern Italy. Born in 1932, she was just 11 years of age when she suffered the horrors endured by so many innocent men, women and children who experienced the terrors of the Second World war. The innocent neither supported nor condemned anybody. They simply tried to survive. Her cousin Umberto Bini lives in Garrenroe, Moyne.

This is a brief history of a short time of my life that marked me deeply. While I have rarely shared the sadness of these memories, they have left an indelible mark on me and so I now wish to leave a testimony for the young people and the less young ones so that these kinds of tragedies will hopefully never happen again.

I was 11 years old; it was January 1943 at the height of World War 2 and our family were growing familiar with having to live under the nightmare of the bombings. Every night, the alarm sounded and we ran down to the bunkers. The City of Messina, just across the canal, was bombed continuously, especially during the night, in order to block the port.

In Reggio Calabria until that moment, nothing dramatic had happened. But, at the end of the month, a few kilometres from the city, the first tragedy took place. In the villa of the marchioness Ramirez, in the town of Milito Porto Salvo, a party was taking place. Guests of Honour included the Archbishop of Reggio Calabria, Enrico Montalbetti who was accompanied by the vicar Monsignor Rocco Trapani who my mother’s first cousin.

While the party was going on and the guests were talking over the ongoing war, suddenly, a kind of Hell broke out. The villa, illuminated as daylight, attracted the attention of the English war planes that, on a low flight, heavily bombed the place, killing and destroying.

In this tragic episode, the Archbishop, the vicar, many guests and part of the Ramirez family were killed. In Reggio, people were frightened and mourned the loss of so many people and the important people involved. After this episode, a great scare spread throughout the city, for until that moment, we had escaped the worst part of the troubles. We now lived on a day by day basis between alarms and waiting for the worst. Some months had passed since the tragedy of Milito Porto Salvo when on the 6th May 1943 the city of Reggio was also bombed. In the middle of the day, the city was bombed continuously and the orphanage was destroyed. Many children died and the port and parts of the city were destroyed.

At this stage, it was impossible for families to stay and people started evacuating taking with them as many valuables as they could. My family stayed a little longer even though the air raids became more frequent and so at this point we decided to follow the others.

My father found a stable at the edge of the city in the district of Santo Spirito. There were 12 of us in the family, my parents, nine children, of which there were 3 babies and our 78 years old grandmother plus my father’s sister with her family and 2 cousins. I cannot describe the hardship we went through with 19 people living in a single large room.

One night there was a terrible bombing, outside looked like daytime, hundreds of missiles and bombs were falling and everybody was running to the bunkers. That night, a sister of mine got locked in the house, because running away to find a refuge, we did not realize that the girl was left behind. The noise of the bombs woke her up and she started screaming and with the force of desperation succeeded in opening the door and found shelter in a nearby house.

When the raid was over, we went back and found her frightened and very upset. The consequence of that trauma was a heart problem and after 6 years, November 1949, my sister Rina died. She was only 16 years old.

At that time, my mother’s sister – Concetta – was living in Rosarno, a town 100Km from Reggio. She, as well, had quite a large family – 4 children. They lived in the railway level crossing house and the place was very quiet. So, my parents decided to move there all together. It was the middle of July 1943. My father, being an employee of the Banco di Roma as cashier had to go to work in Reggio while the remaining employees were moved somewhere else.

He left us with our uncle and aunt and went back to Reggio; he came to see us occasionally enduring a lot of hardship because there was no real means of transport.

Everything again became quiet for us children, the carefree life was back and we were always outside playing. There were wonderful open spaces and great olive trees fields where we could play and find shade from the scorching heat. Then suddenly on the 4th August, a massive air raid attack was unleashed. During the morning, from Rosarno, a freight train full of ammunition was moved and stopped at the station nearby. The American war planes spotted and launched a massive air raid.

The place where we were staying was only 2Km from the station so we were directly involved. The planes, flying low, were bombing and firing the machine guns at will. We, the children, were outside and did not know where to run- we fell in a trench dug by the Germans under olive trees.

I still have a clear memory of the face of a pilot, flying very low, and perhaps seeing that we were just children did not shoot.

In the meantime, after the bombing of the train, Rosarno was a fire hell; the town did not have bunkers nor anti-aircraft guns.

My father, informed by a relative of what happened, with a bit of luck, succeeded in reaching us. He arrived in the late afternoon and found us crying and terrorised, so he decided to take us back to Reggio. But there remained the problem of how to find any means of transport.

In desperation, he took us to the main road and tried to get a lift. Nobody was stopping and listening to our cries; nobody wanted to rescue us. Finally, after so much crying and waving, a German military lorry stopped, and with signs and difficult explanation, the driver understood and agreed to take us near the City.

Our troubles were not over yet; at the check point of Gioia Tauro, just a few kilometres from Rosarno, the German driver stopped and getting out of the lorry said that his journey was over. At this stage, I cannot describe our fright and desperation because, in that place, Italians and Germans had a military base.

We found ourselves surrounded by soldiers, the little ones were crying and also the adults were desperate. A captain of the Italian army approached my father and with rage ordered him to go away from this location.

The zone was at the highest risk, countless dead bodies were on the ground, the houses were destroyed and, naturally, the captain was trying to make us understand the troubled nature of the area. At that moment the alarm sounded and the soldiers, that were nearby, picked us up and carried us into the relative safety of the nearby trenches.

Terrible and dramatic moments, a terrible dream, a nightmare without ending.

As soon as it calmed, the military told my father to make a decision to stay or go, but it was unthinkable to leave for Reggio Calabria, because there was no civilian transport.

Finally, a German soldier, offered to take us to Reggio but we had to walk under the Gioia Tauro railway bridge which, in those days, was the main objective of the American air raid to block the German troops from running away. The bridge, shortly afterwards, was in fact blown up.

Between raids, with the terrible vision of the abandoned dead bodies everywhere and all around us the destroyed houses, we arrived at the terminal which was on the other side of the bridge and as a group of desperate people we boarded the German lorry.

Along the road the war planes tormented us, and we had to stop often to find shelter. The journey was a long hour and another part of the nightmare.

At about 8pm, finally we arrived at Archi, a village which was just a few kilometres from Reggio. The driver stopped and told us to stay put.

My father did not want to hear such a strange command as his main worry was to get us to the safety of Reggio as soon as possible but the driver said that because it was almost dark, there was a curfew, and nobody could get into the city.

So we found ourselves, on the ground, tired, exhausted, frightened, hungry, not knowing what to do in the middle of an open square.

Fortunately, at that moment, a farmer was approaching to get water for his horse; seeing us in such conditions, he got so emotional that he went to the village and came back with many people who offered us hospitality. They said that in the evening they were going outside the village where they had some barracks near the shelters; they did their best to feed us and offered us a barrack for the night.

Their sensitivity and generosity towards our needs is something that I can never forget.

Neither can I forget the generosity of the German soldier who drove us. That night, all the troubles passed peacefully, so the stop at Archi was good for everybody.

The next morning, we had to reach the city. The farmers came at sunrise to help us and provided a cart with horses and, we left.

It is not easy to describe what appeared in front of our eyes when we entered the city. The first district, Santa Caterina was completely destroyed, empty streets, shops closed, debris everywhere, silence and ruins, everybody had run away. Our house had been ransacked so we had to go away again.

This time the decision was to go to Canavo, a district not far from the city. We lodged in a half-destroyed house so that we were able to survive in this cauldron of fear.

To get access to the shelters, our father had to pay a lot of money because we were a large family and it was not easy to find room for everybody.

This was the end of August and there was no bread, not even on the black market. The sacrifices for all us were enormous and resulted in much hardship. We remained 40 days without bread and basic food. Only after the landing of the Americans were we able to feed ourselves.

After the armistice of the 8th September, we returned to the city. They gave us vouchers but the amount assigned was not enough to feed our large family, so we had to buy the food at the black market where everything was bought at gold value.

Fortunately, my father’s employer – the bank - was paying well.

At this point the looting started, vengeance, abuse, the houses were ransacked particularly the ones occupied by the fascists. I remember that Christmas, my mother found some broad beans and she did her best to cook them as she prepared a cake with chestnut flour. It was a very sad time for us children.

Many episodes of such tragic times are still very much alive in my memory and remembering them I feel the pain and the suffering as if it was yesterday.

Life recommenced, people wanted to enjoy and forget, delete the horrors and the frights of that time and gradually everything returned to normality.

The reconstruction of the ports, railways and houses brought an economic boom and well-being, but I cannot forget those days when so much suffering and pain took place in our region of Southern Italy. I remember also that the people in the North of Italy had to endure such horrors for another 2 years.

When on television today I see the pictures of so many wars around the world, I feel frightened, I listen to the speakers of our governments talking about alliances and they send our youths to die in far away lands. I think they really they do not understand what “war” means.

Life is beautiful and every day we start again; it renews through new generations and my memories are a kind of baggage of a devastating experience which I hope may serve as a warning to everybody that such suffering should be avoided for the sake of future generations.