Father Odorico Tempesta and the bombing of Foggia

Father Odorico Tempesta, parish priest of the church of Jesus and Mary, thirty years old at the time (he died in 2003, at age 90), wrote a detailed account of the raid of 22 July 1943, one of the heaviest ones, some years after the war, using the notes he had taken back then:

"After holding Mass, I went to the railway station and sent a letter to my relatives, who were worried because of what they heard about what was happening in Foggia. (…) I started the walk back to the church a few minutes after 9:30. After reaching Piazza Carmine, I heard the infamous, bloodcurling noise made by the engines of the Flying Fortresses, and immediately after that, the piercing howl of the sirens (…) I urged the people who were in the square and in front of the houses to follow me inside the church, to take shelter there. I dragged with me a trembling man, from the Gargano, he was accompanying his son to the Military District. In the so-called air raid shelter of the church, the friars from the monastery had taken shelter: Father Vincenzo Blunno, Guardian; Father Ippolito Montesano, Father Giocondo Del Buono, Father Amedeo Gravina, Father Emilio Coco, and the chief examining judge Dr. Vito Maselli, his brother, the Head Chanchellor of the Tribunal Gaetano Cinese, Dr. Paolo Mantelli and some others. The thunderous noise becomes closer: it’s above us! I looked out of the entrance of the church ad I could count up to 27-30 planes from the first group (…); other groups were following; all came from the same direction: Sansevero, Lucera, Via Napoli. (…) The explosions were exceptionally violent (…) the doors and windows of the church where blown open, the panes were shattered, chairs and benché were overturned and from the outside came ever more violent explosions and clouds of dust… The church startled, oscillated, it seemed to be about to break in half (…) I wanted to see what was happening around me (…) I climbed to the terrace of the monastery. A terrible calamity had befallen our forlorn city: not just a zone, not just a district, but all of Foggia was shrouded in a dense, funereal cloud! (…) I had the impression that we – our zone – were right in the center of the attack. Both in front and behind our monastery, colums of smoke and dense clouds of dust. (…) What could I do? Stay? Wait? Who? (…) I went back down to the church, I took the holy oil; in front of the altar of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, a priest was laying on the floor: Father Giocondo: he was crying like a child! I bode everyone goobye and went out. (…)

[The first person I met] was a Lieutenant from the Italian Army. He was dripping blood; with his left hand he was holding his right arm, wounded by splinters; he angrily told me in a loud voice: “Father, here are the knights, here are the gentlemen, here are the saviors! They destroyed the station… they destroyed Foggia! The dead are hundreds, thousands. Go, go and you’ll see!”. I could do nothing to help him; he left towards Via Capozzi, in order to reach the United Hospitals. (…) I went to Via Meridiana, and I entered the first bomb-damaged house. I was anxious. Silence! In a corner, on the left, I saw some hair emerging from the rubble. (…) I removed the debris from the head, from the eyes, from the mouth; a deep breath – it seemed the breath of a dying person! – then another, longer breath… In those eyes there was a spark of life! And then: “Father Odorico” she called me (…) “this morning you gave me the holy communion! (…) I am Nigro, Elio’s mother (Elio was her nine-year-old son)”. I kept digging with my hands, with my fingernails. (…) From below the bed, where he lay half-crushed by debris and tools, I dragged out another son of Nigro, a soldier, who had arrived in Foggia a few hours earlier for a brief leave. [Another of Nigro’s sons], the good and kind-hearted Aldino, was in a desperate condition. I heard other cries for help and I felt that I could not make it alone. Therefore, I called the soldiers billeted in the Military Pavilion (in the rooms of our former monastery), who immediately came to my help. There were three of them. (…) In the doorway, beneath the lintel of the door, there was a tangle of bodies: a blind old woman, who screamed and tried to crawl away from the grip of the rubble and from two dead children, whose bodies had acted as buffer and prevented the old woman from being crushed in turn by the lintel. These boys were also sons of Mrs. Nigro, who was eventually saved by the soldiers and by her husband, who was serving at the Foggia Police Office. Aldino, instead, died on the ruins of his house (…)

I resumed my walk towards the station. After passing Piazza XX Settembre, I entered Corso Cairoli. Near Via Dante I came across two women, dressed in black, covered in dirt, with wounds on their arms (…) they came towards me; they called me: “Father Odorico!” and they cried. I had not recognized them, to the point that I asked “Who are you?” “We are Tonino’s sisters” And I: “And where is Tonino?” They did not know (…) After reaching Piazza Cavour, at the corner with Palazzo Vaccarella I barely managed to throw myself to the ground next to the wall, followed by another man who called me – an old friend of mine: professor Pasquale Ciavarella from San Marco in Lamis, just arrived from Benevento – we did not have time to greet each other, as a squadron of “Spitfires”, coming from the direction of the station, flew low over the square, strafing everything, and then turned towards the Villa, leaving death in their wake. Dead people were scattered on the square, below the Pronaos, among the flowerbeds of the Villa. (…) Several hundreds [were] the wounded among the soldiers, who had come out (it was later said, “forced out”) of the Miale Barracks, which had been hit and badly damaged, and among the employees of the state offices, of the Board of Education, of the schools. (…) The avenue was an incredible sight! Extremely wretched and pitiful. The victims were scattered wherever I looked.

(…) The raid had just ended and I immediately ran to Via Monte Sabotino, street number 2, where my uncle lived with his entire family. In front of it, the Cicolella Cinema was ablaze, and in the street there were the bodies of two men, still burning; I put out the flames with fistfuls of dirt. The gate was half open and behind it, on the left, there was the lifeless body of a woman, soaked in blood. Who was she? No sign of life in the palace. I climbed the stairs to the third floor. The door [of the flat] was wide open. I entered: gutted windows, dust and rubble everywhere, smashed furniture… I called: silence! Suddenly, I heard something banging on the floor… I immediately ran there… I heard some laments! It was uncle Donato, Mr. Bianchi, my uncle’s father-in-law, who despite his old age had managed to free himself, albeit not completely, from the ruins of the mezzanine, which were crushing him. He was bleeding from the head and from other wounds. After freeing him completely, I carried him down to the street and I laid him on a truck next to a German soldier, who carried him to the Red Cross Hospital, where his son-in-law had been admitted as well. (…)

I had made a few steps towards Via Monfalcone, when I overheard laments coming from Via Podgora. Another terrifying sight! I gave the general absolution to those who were there – living and dead –, and I reached the place the laments were coming from. It was a 18-year-old girl. Next to her, other wounded, all in serious condition, and lifeless bodies. And a heap of four, five victims! Two bodies were lying on the balcony above me… they were newlyweds, who had left the church of Jesus and Mary, where their wedding had been celebrated just before the raid. They been unable to reach the railway to leave the town in time. The girl kept asking for help (…) I heard the noise of a truck, stopped in the square in front of the station. I ran towards it: nobody in sight… I honked the horn, and a German soldier appeared. I called him: “brother”, and urged him to follow me with the truck (…) I went back to where the girl was. I had the impression that there was no life left in that fragile body. I tried to hear whether she was still breathing or not, and seized by discomfort, I asked myself: “Dead?” But I heard a whisper from her: “Alive!” I asked the soldier to help me lift her (…) The soldier helped me lay her on the platform of the truck. (…) We went to retrieve another badly wounded young man. Upon seeing me again, the young lady told me: “Father… that boy who was near me is my brother! I pray you…” I thought it would be too late. He was still alive. Half-buried in the rubble, he had his head covered in blood, due to a large wound (…) We carried him to the truck. His sister crawled till the edge to help us (…) We laid him next to her and she kept calling him: “Lino… Lino… Lino!” (…) She laid her handkerchief on her brother’s face and stood there, watching him, without batting an eye.

We went back to pick up another casualty: a police NCO, whom after I had laid him on the truck, gathered his strength to tell me: “Father, look for my wife in the next shelter. Her surname is Caserta… She must give birth. Look for her, please…” While telling me this, he handed to me his service Beretta as well as his papers and money. He was from Roseto Valforte and had just arrived with the 9:30 train from Rome, where he worked, and which he had left after the 19 July raid to bring his family to safety… I later learned that Mrs. Caserta found her husband at the Red Cross hospital and that the poor man ended his life shortly thereafter, after seeing his newborn son.

Father Agostino urged me to follow him to the shelter of the Incis Palace, where he had received news of the Sartorio family. A most distressing scene! In front of the entrance, a burned-out “Topolino” [Fiat 500 city car] and inside it, standing, the charred corpse of a man (…) We entered the shelter; among the many wounded and the several dead, Mrs. Sartorio, and her grandson, Second Lieutenant Gigino. The grandmother, old and blind, asked of her grandson, whom she loved so much and whose blood she felt on her. We told her that Gigino had been carried elsewhere (to the cemetery, having bled to death after losing a leg). The old woman, too, would end her earthly life a few days later.

From the area around the station (…) we departed for the hospital with another fifteen wounded, laying on a cart of the Railway Services pulled by two horses. From their accents, I realized that they were from the province of Bari, and had come to Foggia to buy sacks of grain, flour, beans, eggs for their families. Among the badly wounded there was a nun from Capurso, Sister Mele, in serious condition owing to a dislocated leg. After a stay in the hospital, she wanted to leave for home, where she later died.

(…) In a portal, near the end of Via Pestalozzi, there were two elderly women and a very young one, with a baby in her arms, who cried desperately calling for her little daughter Paolina. She wanted to get out and look for her at any cost. I persuaded her to desist, promising I would look for her. Atop a pile of rubble from a destroyed apartment block, in the immediate vicinity, I noticed a little hand sticking out, still warm. I rushed to unearth the little body, but it was lifeless. I tore off a piece of the blue dress and I showed it to the mother, whom upon seeing it passed out in the arms of the two old women, while I told her “Paolina’s in heaven…” She was just five years old. They had left Sicily for a safer place on the previous day!

(…) I reached Via Salomone, heading towards the Prefecture. Halfway, I entered a ruined house. I called: “Is anyone there?” Somebody answered, calling me by name: “Father Odorico, I am here, I am here! I am under the bed. I am Mario from Ascoli, the friend of Father Ezechia. We met in Sant’Antonio, when you came to preach…” And he screamed in pain. He had many wounds and his right leg was smashed (I would have amputated it if I was able). I laid him on the remains of a chair, which I dragged out in the street, so that someone could see him. The only person who passed by, and whom I stopped, was a member of the UNPA (Unione Nazionale Protezione Antiaerea, “National Union for Anti-Aircraft Protection”; a civil defense organization, roughly comparable to the British Civil Defence Service). He told me: “Father, I am going to look for my family”. (…) I left Mario on the street and went looking for somebody else. But I was stopped by a young man who told me: “Father, under that corner over there, there are many people who are still alive!” Few words, which I immediately believed. The young man kept repeating “Poor grandma, poor grandma…” so I replied “If you are mourning your grandma, let me go!” and he said “Yes, yes, Father, they are alive, believe me. They even told me how you can get there…” We had to tear down a wall between two homes – one on Via Salomone, the other on Via Parisi. So we did, and thus we opened a breach. The first sun rays showed me a tragic scene. In a corner, seven people were piled up on each other… After breaching the wall, I first picked up an elderly woman (I later learned she died in Vasto) and saw a three- or four-years-old little girl running away, despite my calls for her to stop. I helped the others to get out of there, before the ruins could crush them… Among the seven women we saved along with the little girl, were Mrs Assunta Spezzati with her niece Assunta Verderosa; then Mrs Assunta Casolari, who later emigrated to France. And then Mrs Marciello Diana, married to Mr De Stefano, the mother of Asmary, the little girl who after being freed ran away in search of light and life (several years later, I was invited to bless the marriage between Miss De Stefano Asmary and Dr Giorgio Bevilacqua). Her grandma, instead, died under the rubble. The young man who led me to the site, and helped me in the rescue, was a nephew of Mrs Marciello. I later learned that the young bricklayer Mario from Ascoli had been carried to the hospital. (…)

I reached the Prefecture. About twenty minutes had passed without further air attacks! The authorities were standing in front of the entrance of the palace. The Prefect asked me for news. I answered: “Almost the entirety of the San Pasquale and Madonna del Carmine districts are badly damaged, with many victims”. Mayor Pepe and Colonel Morrone asked me about their homes. I reassured them that they had not suffered damage. As I was seeing them off and about to go to Via Napoli, which had received heavy damage and which I had not yet visited, the Prefect asked me what should we do. As I had heard a familiar noise (the Prefect had been suffering from hearing problems since July 15, when there had been a heavy explosion near the railway), I told them that “they are coming!” And he [the Prefect]: “But Father Temp-” he could not end the sentence before the noise made by the aircraft became thunderous: it was the fifth wave! We barely had the time to get inside the air raid shelter of the police headquarters, before a hailstorm of bombs sowed destruction and fire all around us. It seemed that the targets of this wave were the Prefecture, the town hall, the Cathedral, Via Arpi, in short the old city centre of Foggia.

I left the shelter and 7-8 meters away, at the corner with Vico Tesoro, burning and almost completely levelled was the house of the canonic penitentiary of the Cathedral, Don Francesco P. La Torre, who thus saw destroyed in a moment an entire life of sacrifices and hopes. (…) voices calling for help were coming from a large ditch near the wall of the shelter, about three meters deep. Among the voices I recognized the strong one of the Colonel. I helped him to get out, and together we hauled up General Caperdoni [the military commander of Foggia; two months later he would shoot himself in the aftermath of the Armistice of Cassibile]. We could not do the same with the Prefect, as the sixth wave immediately came. More panic, more bombs! Ruins on top of more ruins! Apocalyptic moments (…)

…from Vico Sant’Angelo I saw a young woman coming towards us, her clothes in shreds, bleeding from many wounds. She refused to enter the town hall shelter: she was terrified. I noticed a bicycle abandoned next to the nearby fountain and told her to lay down on it so that I could carry her to the nearby United Hospitals, but a non-commissioned officer of the Air Force (from Bologna, passing through Foggia) told me: “Father, let me carry her, your work can be more useful to others here”. I showed him the way and he left. After traversing Via delle Maestre I reached the cathedral square, south-eastern side; I saw a crowd, people from the Apennine who had come to the city to buy provisions for the week as usual. They asked for news. I told them to remain in the shelters and only come out if they heard a cannon shot (the sirens were out of commission and the sound of the bells never reached the outskirts of the city) (…)

After traversing Corso Vittorio Emanuele, I reached Piazza Cavour. There a sergeant of the Red Cross, standing next to the entrance of the Carabinieri barracks, insisted that I should go in the shelter. I told him that I was a priest and as such I could circulate, well aware of the dangers, to help those in need. Impossible! I must get into the shelter! Fortunately a friend, Captain D’Ecclesia, hugged me and asked me what had happened to the General, the Prefect… I explained: “Nothing serious, I helped them come out of the shelter and I was going to the railway station as I’ve not been there since this morning”. The “good” sergeant, looking confused, asked my pardon and a benedizione. He was from Barletta, headed for Bologna, where he was stationed.

I reached the railway. No description would be fitting (…) The Station of Foggia, a real jewel, so full of life and activity for the huge, endless movement of goods and passengers; junction between the North and the South, the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian; so welcoming and poetic, with so many different costumes, dialects and languages that come across there, is now unrecognizable. It’s destroyed (…) Among the rubble, in front of the shelter located in the subway, lay the body of the chief director of railway traffic, Giuseppe D’Amore.

The only comfort was in seeing my dear friends the railwaymen working with true heroism, in the half-destroyed offices and among the tracks, in the still-burning workshops and on the trains (…) I pass near the convent of San Pasquale. No friars inside: all have gone in the hospitals to provide their help. Many bombs have fallen around the convent. (…) In Piazza Prefettura [Prefecture Square] the authorities, Prefect included, were discussing about what to do (…) As there were still several hours of light left, with the Captain and a group of soldiers, we decided to start the recovery of the dead from the area we had chosen: the railway. Lacking anything better, we used an Army truck, dating back to the war of ’15-’18 (every time we had to start it, the Captain had to blow through a probe into the starter motor) and we started towards the main street.

Father Agostino urged me to follow him to the shelter of the Incis Palace, where he had received news of the Sartorio family. A most distressing scene! In front of the entrance, a burned-out “Topolino” [Fiat 500 city car] and inside it, standing, the charred corpse of a man (…) We entered the shelter; among the many wounded and the several dead, Mrs. Sartorio, and her grandson, Second Lieutenant Gigino. The grandmother, old and blind, asked of her grandson, whom she loved so much and whose blood she felt on her. We told her that Gigino had been carried elsewhere (to the cemetery, having bled to death after losing a leg). The old woman, too, would end her earthly life a few days later.

From the area around the station (…) we departed for the hospital with another fifteen wounded, laying on a cart of the Railway Services pulled by two horses. From their accents, I realized that they were from the province of Bari, and had come to Foggia to buy sacks of grain, flour, beans, eggs for their families. Among the badly wounded there was a nun from Capurso, Sister Mele, in serious condition owing to a dislocated leg. After a stay in the hospital, she wanted to leave for home, where she later died.

(…) In a portal, near the end of Via Pestalozzi, there were two elderly women and a very young one, with a baby in her arms, who cried desperately calling for her little daughter Paolina. She wanted to get out and look for her at any cost. I persuaded her to desist, promising I would look for her. Atop a pile of rubble from a destroyed apartment block, in the immediate vicinity, I noticed a little hand sticking out, still warm. I rushed to unearth the little body, but it was lifeless. I tore off a piece of the blue dress and I showed it to the mother, whom upon seeing it passed out in the arms of the two old women, while I told her “Paolina’s in heaven…” She was just five years old. They had left Sicily for a safer place on the previous day!

(…) I reached Via Salomone, heading towards the Prefecture. Halfway, I entered a ruined house. I called: “Is anyone there?” Somebody answered, calling me by name: “Father Odorico, I am here, I am here! I am under the bed. I am Mario from Ascoli, the friend of Father Ezechia. We met in Sant’Antonio, when you came to preach…” And he screamed in pain. He had many wounds and his right leg was smashed (I would have amputated it if I was able). I laid him on the remains of a chair, which I dragged out in the street, so that someone could see him. The only person who passed by, and whom I stopped, was a member of the UNPA (Unione Nazionale Protezione Antiaerea, “National Union for Anti-Aircraft Protection”; a civil defense organization, roughly comparable to the British Civil Defence Service). He told me: “Father, I am going to look for my family”. (…) I left Mario on the street and went looking for somebody else. But I was stopped by a young man who told me: “Father, under that corner over there, there are many people who are still alive!” Few words, which I immediately believed. The young man kept repeating “Poor grandma, poor grandma…” so I replied “If you are mourning your grandma, let me go!” and he said “Yes, yes, Father, they are alive, believe me. They even told me how you can get there…” We had to tear down a wall between two homes – one on Via Salomone, the other on Via Parisi. So we did, and thus we opened a breach. The first sun rays showed me a tragic scene. In a corner, seven people were piled up on each other… After breaching the wall, I first picked up an elderly woman (I later learned she died in Vasto) and saw a three- or four-years-old little girl running away, despite my calls for her to stop. I helped the others to get out of there, before the ruins could crush them… Among the seven women we saved along with the little girl, were Mrs Assunta Spezzati with her niece Assunta Verderosa; then Mrs Assunta Casolari, who later emigrated to France. And then Mrs Marciello Diana, married to Mr De Stefano, the mother of Asmary, the little girl who after being freed ran away in search of light and life (several years later, I was invited to bless the marriage between Miss De Stefano Asmary and Dr Giorgio Bevilacqua). Her grandma, instead, died under the rubble. The young man who led me to the site, and helped me in the rescue, was a nephew of Mrs Marciello. I later learned that the young bricklayer Mario from Ascoli had been carried to the hospital. (…)

I reached the Prefecture. About twenty minutes had passed without further air attacks! The authorities were standing in front of the entrance of the palace. The Prefect asked me for news. I answered: “Almost the entirety of the San Pasquale and Madonna del Carmine districts are badly damaged, with many victims”. Mayor Pepe and Colonel Morrone asked me about their homes. I reassured them that they had not suffered damage. As I was seeing them off and about to go to Via Napoli, which had received heavy damage and which I had not yet visited, the Prefect asked me what should we do. As I had heard a familiar noise (the Prefect had been suffering from hearing problems since July 15, when there had been a heavy explosion near the railway), I told them that “they are coming!” And he [the Prefect]: “But Father Temp-” he could not end the sentence before the noise made by the aircraft became thunderous: it was the fifth wave! We barely had the time to get inside the air raid shelter of the police headquarters, before a hailstorm of bombs sowed destruction and fire all around us. It seemed that the targets of this wave were the Prefecture, the town hall, the Cathedral, Via Arpi, in short the old city centre of Foggia.

I left the shelter and 7-8 meters away, at the corner with Vico Tesoro, burning and almost completely levelled was the house of the canonic penitentiary of the Cathedral, Don Francesco P. La Torre, who thus saw destroyed in a moment an entire life of sacrifices and hopes. (…) voices calling for help were coming from a large ditch near the wall of the shelter, about three meters deep. Among the voices I recognized the strong one of the Colonel. I helped him to get out, and together we hauled up General Caperdoni [the military commander of Foggia; two months later he would shoot himself in the aftermath of the Armistice of Cassibile]. We could not do the same with the Prefect, as the sixth wave immediately came. More panic, more bombs! Ruins on top of more ruins! Apocalyptic moments (…)

…from Vico Sant’Angelo I saw a young woman coming towards us, her clothes in shreds, bleeding from many wounds. She refused to enter the town hall shelter: she was terrified. I noticed a bicycle abandoned next to the nearby fountain and told her to lay down on it so that I could carry her to the nearby United Hospitals, but a non-commissioned officer of the Air Force (from Bologna, passing through Foggia) told me: “Father, let me carry her, your work can be more useful to others here”. I showed him the way and he left. After traversing Via delle Maestre I reached the cathedral square, south-eastern side; I saw a crowd, people from the Apennine who had come to the city to buy provisions for the week as usual. They asked for news. I told them to remain in the shelters and only come out if they heard a cannon shot (the sirens were out of commission and the sound of the bells never reached the outskirts of the city) (…)

After traversing Corso Vittorio Emanuele, I reached Piazza Cavour. There a sergeant of the Red Cross, standing next to the entrance of the Carabinieri barracks, insisted that I should go in the shelter. I told him that I was a priest and as such I could circulate, well aware of the dangers, to help those in need. Impossible! I must get into the shelter! Fortunately a friend, Captain D’Ecclesia, hugged me and asked me what had happened to the General, the Prefect… I explained: “Nothing serious, I helped them come out of the shelter and I was going to the railway station as I’ve not been there since this morning”. The “good” sergeant, looking confused, asked my pardon and a benedizione. He was from Barletta, headed for Bologna, where he was stationed.

I reached the railway. No description would be fitting (…) The Station of Foggia, a real jewel, so full of life and activity for the huge, endless movement of goods and passengers; junction between the North and the South, the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian; so welcoming and poetic, with so many different costumes, dialects and languages that come across there, is now unrecognizable. It’s destroyed (…) Among the rubble, in front of the shelter located in the subway, lay the body of the chief director of railway traffic, Giuseppe D’Amore.

The only comfort was in seeing my dear friends the railwaymen working with true heroism, in the half-destroyed offices and among the tracks, in the still-burning workshops and on the trains (…) I pass near the convent of San Pasquale. No friars inside: all have gone in the hospitals to provide their help. Many bombs have fallen around the convent. (…) In Piazza Prefettura [Prefecture Square] the authorities, Prefect included, were discussing about what to do (…) As there were still several hours of light left, with the Captain and a group of soldiers, we decided to start the recovery of the dead from the area we had chosen: the railway. Lacking anything better, we used an Army truck, dating back to the war of ’15-’18 (every time we had to start it, the Captain had to blow through a probe into the starter motor) and we started towards the main street.

The sight offered by the main street (…) was (…) upsetting. All the new, beautiful palaces had been hit, gutted, destroyed; the Palace of the Poste, Palazzo Viola, that of the railways (…) We started the merciful retrieval of the dead. We picked up the first one at the entrance of the Phone Office: a Lieutenant of the Italian Army from Lucera, with another 5-6 dead; behind the shutter of the tobacco shop next door I recognized station master Giuseppe Giudici, sitting there, as if he was still alive: he had a gash from the chest to the abdomen! On the sidewalks and along the street lay about eighty victims. Within less than two hours we picked up about half of them and we went to the cemetery, where we found more, at least fifty, along with many people desperately looking for their relatives. Among them deputy commissioner Barbisio, looking for his brother-in-law.

On the vast and devastated station square, scattered everywhere, were mounds of what looked like heterogeneous slime: they were, instead, human remains mixed with debris, metal sheet, pieces of railway tracks and twisted pieces of iron. (…) Their removal, for obvious reasons, was postponed to a few hours later, before nightfall. This operation was carried out by using shovels, baskets, sacks provided by the state railways as well as tablecloths and curtains. As a Second Lieutenant from our group baptized an infant (whom he thought to be still alive – he was halfway out of his mother’s womb, whereas his twin had been thrown outside, dead), and I and two soldiers carried the lifeless body of a German soldier to the truck, stopped in front of the Railroaders’ Club, we heard the voice of the Captain ordering “Stop!”. The four or five soldiers who were with him had tried to get away… Why? I immediately rushed there. They were tired and depressed for the unusual work and deeply impressed by an unexpected, tragic scene. The young soldiers had seen the body of a woman, lying next to the sidewalk near the Club; she still held in her arms one of her children, two or three years old, dead, and held in hand an older child, also dead… she had been beheaded! When they had lifted her to place her on the truck, her head had rolled to their feet. (…)

A few meters from the main street (…) we found more bodies, including that of a woman, perhaps in her 40s, plump and dressed in black. She was on her knees, her head leaning on her arms, leaning on the wall. I tried to stretch her out (…) I realized that the corpse was falling apart. (…) She was in an advanced state of decomposition. At this point we decided to enter the nearby restaurants, which had already been prepared for the lunch of the German offices, and take what was there to wrap the mangled bodies in it.

Suddenly a man walked towards us, wawing his arms, pleading us to stop. “I am station master Furore” he said “here (pointing towards the front door) is the body of my wife!”. We wrapped it in a tablecloth and placed it on the truck. He wanted to see it one last time (…) The poor man kept praying us to go with him, about fifty meters from there, in the garden next door to retrieve his daughter Italia and lay her next to her mother. (…) We headed towards the air raid shelter, known as the railroaders’ shelter. (…) In the entrance of the shelter there were four or five bodies, piled up on each other. A few meters from there, we saw poor Ciro pick up and come towards us holding (…) the legs of his daughter Italia, who had received a direct hit and had been cut in half. (…) He told us that it had been his daughter who had carried the body of his wife till the front door, and her tragic end was due to the time she had spent in carrying her. (…)

At the cemetery we barely had the time to lay down the dead (…) when another convoy arrived led by Father Egidio Costantino, who was very tired and depressed. The newly arrived, the living I mean, in seeing the horrific sight of so many victims, had a collective shiver of repugnance; I saw them pale. Some passed out. (…) Identification was impossible for many victims. On the bodies of those I knew, I left pieces of paper with their names and surnames. I asked the officer to order some soldier to cut some tree branches to cover the bodies, which were in the open, exposed to the scorching sun of July. I assured him I would soon seek reinforcements. We had to act quickly, as there was a danger of an epidemic. Most of the bodies, owing to the heat, were decomposing.

More groups, meanwhile, were coming in, bringing the remains of their relatives or friends. We left the task of burial to others, and with an Air Force truck and another fifteen soldiers, we returned to our work. At dusk we laid another load of victims at the cemetery (…)

I passed near the Ventura Clinic. The professor had been urgently summoned from the hospital of Troia, full of wounded who had been sent there from Foggia. (…) A crowd was gathered in front of the Prefecture: entire families, miserable women, old men, children, all had bundles, boxes, sacks full of clothing and more; they waited to be taken to unknown places, less exposed to air attacks. It was pitch dark and we breathed a heavy air due to the clouds of dust which floated low under a black sky, which from time to time was lit by flashes caused by the explosion of unexploded bombs and by the still-raging fires."

Aerial photo of an air raid on Foggia