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the only functional radio in the Dopolavoro, a sort of social club-bar for men. There was a general feeling of uncertainty. In a way this was a period of a monotonous life without goals because of the uncertainty of the future and of a war which seemed to weight over us like a black cloud. We young boys went back to the village life, simple, without happenings, at the traditional pace of before, but without the traditional stability of the past. Life was governed by the seasons, agricultural events, few family happenings such as births, deaths and weddings.

In the early fall of 1943 we began to see troop activities in our area. German troops, trucks, armored cars, artillery pieces pulled by trucks were a common sight on the provincial highway. Then in the fall of the same year the German troops
began to retreat from the allied troops which had invaded Italy and were pushing to the north. A group of German soldiers, some of whom appeared to be very young, came to Fallo. They took over rooms in different houses in the village and slept there during the night. Five
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German soldiers settled in the large dining room of my maternal grandfather's house. My grandfather, Carmine Di Gironimo, had retired from Palermo the year before and lived with us at this time. The German troops stationed in Fallo were rather indifferent to the villagers but not hostile. They went about their business during the day almost as if we were not there. They had piled large quantities of ammunitions all along the main road leading to Fallo. There were small artillery pieces, sacks of gun powder, artillery shells, and cases of all type of ammunition. Then soldiers began to dig or set machine gun posts on rocky hills which dominated the south-east valley below from which they expected the allied troops to come. The allied troops, as it turned out later, avoided our mountainous region of the Apennines and advanced on the coastal sides thus forcing the Germans to retreat in order to avoid being surrounded.

During this time we experienced a few visits from the SS troops which came with trucks looking for men to use in forced labor. At the first sign of their arrival the men of the village would run and hide in the countryside. On two occasions I was running with other villagers when the SS soldiers shot at us from a short distance with their automatic guns. We luckily escaped. In other villages some people were occasionally killed. Frequently there were groups of German soldiers looking for food which evidently they did not receive during the retreat.