On January 1952, I docked at Circolo Speleologico Romano with Silvano Del Lungo, looking for information and advice about speleological activities, that I had spontaneously and candidly begun into the smaller caves of Mount Soratte.After a short time Aulo Baldieri, Domenico e Giuseppe Petrucci and, in the August, for the Bussento Campaign, Italo Bertolani approached the world, moreover informal with a drawing-room brightness (for a long time nobody asked us the entrance fee, even though we could use the common tools).
The events, those I’ll be talking below, divided in two the members, at the beginning in an obscure and unknown manner, and then, during the five ensuing years, always more publicly, as staff and deserving (1), distinguished from the younger members by on average of twenty or thirty years.
Perhaps, there was in the sporting aggressiveness of those young people, in the wish to fight against the war that they had suffered as unaware witnesses when they were children or adolescents; in the same way, perhaps, there was the way of life of the old people in a lazy abandon, after the sacrifices, and sometimes the hard trials and tribulations of the war. Therefore it was a generational conflict too.
An article of the Social Statute, which in a second time we in vain fought against, told the Circolo, beyond the speleological activity, performed " in parallel" tourist-recreational activity. But what we wanted? More caves, deeper, more binding, well done and quickly explored, with good surveys and correct remarks ...
A great impulse to this... how can we call it?... scouting aggressiveness, was given us by the baron Carlo Franchetti, particularly experienced by myself and Bertolani. Franchetti in those days was the leader of the Circolo, Academician of the C.A.I., wellknown mountaineer of the first post-war years; I and Italo created a myth of him (only for a few time) as the best speleologist, the man who, more then thirty years in advance, began to scouting caves in the middle Italy with a team of fearless friends, Alessandro Datti, *** Dusmet, Carlo Botti, *** Pietromarchi, scouting, surveying, trying in any case the first parts, the biggest caves of Lazio and Abruzzo and, the man who from the beginning of our activity, in ’52 at Bussento, looked like to be the "youngest" - and he was more then fifty years old... among all the other seniors, the man who pressed us to dare and he never called us back during scouting vaults, walls, sumps in the caves.
I remember how, in the whirling Bussento, he literally drew the team with water at the waist, sounding the floor with a ski pole, and the speed with he got away the belt to give me on the forearm a watertight light that could help me to reconnoitre the opportunity to advance in a quit duck, into the swallowing of Orsivacca.
Also if Franchetti was by that time dead, it is in that "store of enthusiasm" with the heart climbing over the obstacle, during the research and the scouting, that with Fausto Schirò and Marcello Chimenti, who joined us in ‘54 (the last one geology student, in a second time important matter for the growth of the Speleo Club) we found a lot of friend among the young, and those began integral part of the Circolo as aspiring members.
I mention as I remember, and without a chronological order Antonello Angelucci, Andrea Todeschini, Lamberto Laureti, Giovanni Scuncio, Giancarlo Costa, Franco Volpini, Biagio Camponeschi, Augusto Pace, Manuela Martinelli, Enrica Casali, Camillo Premoli, Giorgio Marzolla, Mario Chimenti, Antonio Assorgia, Mariano Dolci, Arnaldo Botto, Franco Pansecchi, Sandrino Spicaglia and, only for a short time, Antonio (it seems to me) Cultrera and Raffaele De Cosa: I remember, those last two, at the exploration of "Catauso" of Sonnino. About twenty young people, from which almost the one half, were beginning a long speleological activity and, in my opinion, of a good level and with serious aim.
Now look at the three matters of disagreement that were in the CSR in ’58 and that, with Italo, in those times, I believed (or hoped?) that didn’t conduct unavoidably to the scission. But now I believe that, seeing what is happened, if there was a fault, because it was, it was for our intolerance (and susceptibility), it was a "felix culpa"!
The first element was the technique adopted by the Circolo to explore the caves, that may be summed up to think of speleology and this was, in a certain sense, accepted also by a serious alpinist like Franchetti like a younger, handicapped sister, of alpinism. It was "handicapped" because it couldn’t (or must not?) use the techniques of rigging and progression of the alpinism that, just in those years, day by day, was improving looking for the more efficacious, the more safe, the more light. Therefore: the fatal ladders with wood rungs thirty centimetres wide (to have a rest sitting down on half way!) and wires with a thickness of half centimetre, hemp ropes, not to climb but for yard or for the ass, all those things were the strength of the social tools; as well as military pneumatic boats (allied) wit a rigid and very heavy bottom, rigid metallic ladders to go over the potholes and ladders - considered light for the leader team! - Azario’s model, Italian military, made by cables of 6 mm, and rung more tightly but fasted with iron percussion caps and rivets, those were cut as crop end of 5 metres, those weighed more then three kilograms!
With those kind of equipment we couldn’t do great things, and those that could be done, had just be done thirty years before with Franchetti. It’s to be added that no one did use the hob-nails (the first ones I saw were of Italo, that had attended, when he was teen-ager, a course in rock climbing), neither light anchoring wires, this fact laid to anchor the ladders only to trees, to pikes or to trunks embedded among the walls of the well, with "ropes" of different length, that crowded the store. And we hadn’t underwater suits to protect ourselves from the cold water of the underground rivers, only boots and water-tight pants for the fishers, that could be flooded from the waist, and swimmer-oil, smeared on ourselves. To tell the truth, in such a way all the speleological groups worked, but really during those years we succeeded in seeing (for the sceptical) the limits of the use of the heavy equipment in the "Antro del Corchia" (but, after all, just in the famous "Preta"!): the strong Sezione Geo-speleologica of the Società Adriatica of Natural Science of Trieste, led by Walter Maucci and by De Martini was stopped in the progression, after the "well L-shaped" not by the passage called "Zuffa" by the Bolognesi, simple passage with easy handles, but by the dreadful hard work done by the men for the brought material. Walter Maucci confided those facts to me in ’56 at Berger...
That’s so: a Gouffre Berger could never be explored with such materials and such techniques. That I understood when I was sent on its conclusive exploration by the Management Committee, that I still thank, after a nice and chivalrous selection between me, Bertolani and Schirò, in those time considered (after the first months of ’56) the most promising young lions of CSR, according to what the so vituperated "senior" said. Personally I took the place of Aldo Giacomo Segre, who had been invited by the French team because he was a geologist of clear reputation and author, eight years before, of "I FENOMENI CARSICI E LA SPELEOLOGIA DEL LAZIO", his degree thesis (on geography, I suppose), wonderful result of the work of the Circolo, with which, the author, in the near post-war period, worked hard together; a text that was, at least, the starting point for every karst research about the region of Lazio, and for this subsequently blamed by us with youthful presumptuousness, whereas it is , particularly for the general section , a basic work for the karst Italian "School". I remember that, particularly after the review of the surveys of Pietrasecca and Luppa, that Segre represented very different from ours, a squabble with our Michele De Riu in the Società Geologica Italiana made him very "cold" with us. Nonetheless a morning of ’60 I went, with Marcello Chimenti, to the Servizio Geologico asking advice and suggestions regard some caves just to him, who looked us up and down asking: "But with what cheek do you present yourselves to me?". And unflappable Chimenti answered: "With the brazen one!" We have to thank Serge who, after a laughter, "primed" us with a long chat.
The Berger was for me an unrepeatable experience, that conditioned my choices and not only the sports ones in the next years: that’s that we found there a light technique, the same that Italo and I dreamed of, with light ladders (!), nylon ropes and rivets as anchorage, to rappel! It seemed to be realistic the possibility that, developing this "theory" of the most light, in the further years the highest deepness and the longest routes inside the karst massifs would be reached.
This made me thinking, and therefore I neglected any ambition in other sports disciplines, cross-country skiing, alpinism and pentathlon - also if I just a little continued to practice - to devote, exactly in ’58, only to the Speleology.
I want to mention an event that gave me the feeling of the gap between us, the Italian speleologists generally, and the ones from Grenoble with regard to technique of rigging: I, in team with Fernand Petzl, after the first pots still rigged with equipment a bit traditional (like Holiday on Ice: even with wood poles with big nails as steps), after the first contortions in the "meander", I arrive, second after the team leader - a weakness as the top of the form! - at "a" Cassin nail driven into a cleft on the left from witch hanged down, with two small ridiculous snap-hooks, the most tiny little ladder that till that time I had never seen working: small cables thin two millimetres as maximum, steps with the diameters of one centimetre and wide fifteen. I think of a small passage, armed with what I would call a "stirrup"; and Petzl laconic announce "Puits Garby, quarante mètres!" Really thirty-eighth metres, but an enormous pot for us simple explorers from Lazio that called the twenty-two metres of the third pot of Luppa: the "big pot", jet not went down for the problems to equip it
I went back to Rome thrilled, I accepted the vague appointment to manage the social activity, noticing soon big resistances against the modernisation of the technique and of the materials. The progression into Luppa after the "big pot", finally equipped on the right with a couple of nails, uncomfortably advanced because of the cold waters on witch now we sailed with absurd Pirelli rubber dinghies (Chimenti in a "particular" day collected eighteen upsetting!) we was exhausted for the weight of the ladders carried and especially for the hemp ropes that, wet, became a tangle of inextricable eyelet. The Leadership didn’t agree to buy some new ropes made by plastic fibre ("they are expensive and they will be wear out in the same time!") and Mario Franchetti who, after the death of Carlo the father, came into the caves with us young, put magnanimously his hands in his pockets and he presented a rope of Lilion Snia Viscosa, with a diameter of eight millimetres, that was, at all, I believe the first light rope (don't say of hemp or of manilla) used in the caves in the peninsula. It was used by us for every occasion, also to have training at the practice wall of Monte Morra, where it kept my "flight" of about ten metres at the exit of the Marco way... and we trained us at the practice wall just because we were convinced of the value of the saying of Carlo Franchetti that a good speleologist should be a good climber, point of which today I’m personally still convinced. The training that trained me, Andrea Todeschini, Antonello Angelucci for the international expedition to Ojo Guarenã in ’58 was done of raids to Luppa and days to climbing the face of Mount Morra; then we were fantastically reached (by "Giulietta" car till Nizza, flight from Nizza to Madrid, "Talgo" from Madrid to Burgos, finally hitchhiking from Burgos to Sotoscueva...) Mario Franchetti trained in Cortina with his friends "Scoiattoli" but we were frustrated - I said it to the Spanish radio! - by the kind of immense but quite horizontal cave, while we were waiting for a second Berger; nevertheless we started working like modern speleologists. Four of us explored and mapped a branch of about one kilometre, later called " Sima Italia".
Also Mario Franchetti, influential person (?) on the Leadership for name and friends, understood the technical "gap" between us and the seniors, but it wasn’t very useful for us.
When we came back to Rome other events matured, that showed at all the sides of the disagreement.
Marcello Chimenti who, in the still not very attended Institute of Geology, once had hoisted on the door of his room of internal student a poster, tolerated moreover by the Professor Carmelo Maxia, with the notice "Speleological Section of the Institute of Geology" and that had attracted to activity of caving a lot of students of Geology as Camponeschi, Angelucci, Laureti, Martinelli, Pace, Assorgia, already mentioned, was now carrying out a serious program of research, made of exactitude in the mapping, of geological samplings, of reading about caves, of contacts with who at the university could teach us something. I, after the Berger, left the faculty of philosophy without graduating, although I had a good average and only one exam lacked to me (but it was with Ugo Spirito!), to matriculate at Geography in the same way I came from the first biennium of humanities, and I hastened to take all the "geological" exams that I should and I could support to find my way through the caving, and I bought the Traité de Spéléologie of Trombe!
So we two, Chimenti and I, at the beginning of ’58, were the promoters of a campaign of geological and morphological researches at the pothole of Luppa, for which we thought to ask a contribution to the National Council of Research, with a request that the President of the Circolo was reluctant to sign... witticism of the unforgettable Ettore Onorato, full professor of Mineralogy at the university of Roma and member of the Committee for the Geology at the CNR, such as to say "But what kind of president have you? He never goes into the caves, he doesn’t ask money!".
At the end Datti signed and the CSR collected the modest, even in those times, sum of two-hundred-thousand-lira, but important for us with which we thought to buy survey tools and perhaps a second rope of lilion: we never did see one coin and I still don’t know how the sum was managed. So much lack of "glasnost" (and of "perestroika"!). The members were outside from the politics and economics of the CSR: there wasn’t any well-deserving a member between us, for this none of us was Advisor (2).
And it was just now that Chimenti became to talking of going away from the Circolo and to start a new speleological group. Till that moment, in November of ’58, I and Bertolani dampened the youngest enthusiasm: we were older then the young as militancy and we had personally known Carlo Franchetti; we had hearty relations of esteem and friendship with Mario, his son, and with a lot of old members too, as Don Gaspare Lepri, Marcello Cerruti, Enzo Spicaglia…., even if "reformists", we couldn’t see any way to change the status of the Circolo. We tried to speak of this with Mario Franchetti, that didn’t understand or wouldn’t understand and who, anyway, in those times didn’t frequent very much the environment, distracted by other commitments.
There had yet been other defections that gave birth to four speleological groups in Lazio: the one of Fausto Schirò who passed to the U.R.R.I. and who worked in that environment, politically and morally more agreeing with him (from the times of Giorgio Campanella); also Arnaldo Botto passed to the U.R.R.I.; the one of Giorgio Silvestri who tore up the membership card in the seat (he told me: "I say goodbye to you as friend, not as co-partner!") and he founded in Terracina, his hometown, the Gruppo Speleologico Anxur, still alive I suppose, and then , only him, joined the Speleo Club Rome in ’63; the one of Giovanni Meo Colombo, student of geology who, full of anxiety for the scientific research, built up a short-lived companionship that was called Sezione Speleologica of the Società Tirrenica of Natural Science (like Maucci's, the caver of Trieste, group); and finally the one of Franco Consolini, very efficient surveyor of caves who, with his parachutist friends, founded the Gruppo Grotte Roma, that, for affinity of spirits and purposes, converged at all in the Speleo Club Roma in January ’61, after the tragic end of the founder in a delayed parachute drop at Guidonia. All those were signs of an uneasiness of people animated by the best sporting and scientific intentions to live into the Circolo: but it was a question of singles, it was talking of the parting of about ten members among the more industriousness ones, for the most part the expert ones, with some years of activity done at the best standard.
But what sped up the times was the deterioration of the human relations, the third matter, that threw the split: with some seniors cue after cue we didn’t feel buddies anymore and then also the youths disagreed among them. There were choices of characteriological and, worse luck, ideological sources. A little nucleus of us was oriented on the left (from the "radical-chic" to the iron stalinist, through a socialist and an anarchic...), till that time good friends with which we had light-heartedly shared beautiful explorations... but we became to met in a hard match.
A hidden gradual mutual intolerance culminated in the report of minority produced to the leadership and to the other members by Giorgio Marzolla, blaming my behaviour in the expedition to Luppa of the 1-4 November 1958.
To sum up: in the expedition had participated the more skilful members, under my direction: Bertolani, Franchetti, Marzolla, Dolci, Premoli, Costa, Volpini and, perhaps same other; the weather wasn't mild, and as the seniors prognosticated, Bertolani and Franchetti were caught in the sudden flood on the edge of the "big pot" and only thanks to their sangfroid and experience they survived... Carlo Franchetti, it seems to me, in the ’29 nearly survived to a similar flood on the last pot before the exit of Luppa.. What a strange destiny, from father to son unfortunately recurred!
Carlo Franchetti died for a car accident in ’54, Mario for another one car accident in ’74.
Recovered, after the water abated, by me and Costa, the day after, with the clear sky, Marzolla and Dolci had launched a counterattack with two rucksack of equipment till the sump and there they stayed cold (no wet suit, the only one with a black Pirelli military model was Costa) waiting the others that, after they become to get down the pot of 22 metres they were obliged to come back and to bring up Volpini with a bleeding wound in his leg... worse then so!
Well, with those events, giving me all the fault, it was cyclostyled a "libello", that provoked the indignation of all the seniors, solidly behind me, leaded by Spicaglia and Franchetti. But unusually also I and particularly all my friends, especially, of the - so-called - "non-political" front got hungry.
Some extraspeleological events, that I will not remember, were added, and the break with the left nucleus was complete.
Marzolla, Premoli, Dolci and Mario Chimenti, cousin of Marcello but of opposite opinions, were particularly unlucky because, for this quarrel, they staid in Circolo, when their training and their sports and naturalistic spirit could have certainly brought them to the Speleo Club with us. The event of Baldieri and of Pansecchi was different; they were perfectly integrated with the seniors.
So I had no delays anymore, on the contrary with Bertolani, we felt to behave "in the spirit of Carlo Franchetti" completely complying with the project of Marcello Chimenti, to create a new speleological group in Rome.
A technical element, after all the main for me, one of deputation and deliberative power, and an human one, or better a personal one, came together to reach an agreement among a group of young speleologists to realise a new and more modern activity. We became to meet in the evening in pizzerias and family restaurants different from the ones where the other members met, building up a kind of promoting committee with Bertolani, Chimenti, and Angelucci... A lot of meeting happened in our houses, particularly in the one of Antonello Angelucci that in Palestro street was in the centre, in comparison with ones of the others.
I met the president once with Chimenti and once with Costa, then it was written a memorandum to be presented to the Leadership with feature of an ultimatum, specifying the conditions that couldn't be set aside to continue the activity in the Circolo. I and Bertolani personally delivered it to the Count Datti, who took note of it trying to calm us and showing himself personally inclined to some concession. In the ultimatum it was requested the independent and economic administration of an operative team (Italo was thinking to dedicate it to Franchetti) that had to operate under mine unappealable technical direction and under the scientific one of Marcello Chimenti; the leadership couldn’t accept it, and in fact it didn’t!
We wrote the letter of resignation that was countersigned by twelve people (3), in the same time Italo had drawn the emblem of the new group, in the shape now known of the white flying bat whit a black smaller disk behind, symbolising the dark underground world, and us, with pure purposes..., decided to call it Speleo Club Roma (I remembered the big and industrious Spéléo Club de Paris), and several "piracies" were carried out as harm of the Circolo. We took away all the Cadastre from the seat of Ulisse Aldovrandi 18 street (I still had the keys as delegate of the activity) we photocopied it and then we brought all in order back to the seat. After the unlucky expedition of November, the cave of Luppa was still equipped, binding quite all the light materials (ladders Azario’s model, and same very flexible pieces done by Guy van den Steen with nylon ropes and steps done with metallic tube of mild aluminium of three centimetres of diameter, to hold the block knot) that were in the store, and Chimenti remembered that ten metres of ladders Azario’s model at the first pot were his own: in the chill of the days of Christmas we went to draw them with his Harley-Davidson that docked on the verglas of the Piana del Cavaliere, and we took away also the last pitons, so that to not make easy to the ones of the Circolo (they will be Marzolla and "friends"!) the next entry. As last tactical move, going away for last time from the seat as a member, I offered myself to detackle the cave and to bring back integral the materials that I as team leader had drown: the seniors didn’t accept, as I expected, both because they feared same deceits so that we could have kept under us the ladders and because they wouldn’t be able anymore to harness them.
Those materials, about ninety meters of ladders (now it can be somebody laughing, but this was the situation in Rome at the end of ’58) was destroyed by the floods of the spring time, after a pair of reckless peaks of Marzolla, Premoli and Dolci without explorative results; and the heavy ladder of twenty metres that we too used in the pot of twenty-two meters in the final expedition in September of ’59, was thrown away, now lacking in about the 25% of the steps, into the lake below because it was too dangerous, and we held for us the honour to use it, for the last time, going out (but tomorrow the Circolo will be coming in...). If I wish to tell you those actions not really edifying, it is to make well knowing also to whom wasn’t present, till what point our exasperation, and therefore also our polemic reaction, grew, but this polemic spirits was a good propulsor during the firsts years of life of the new group.
Particularly Chimenti and Angelucci looked soon for adhesions of qualified people in the geological environment, and it was so that we counted among our promoting members Michele De Riu and Giancarlo Negretti, lecturers at the Institute of Petrography: the friends, students of geology Maurizio Minniti and Fulvio Giammetti (this last one, as we believe, now is professor of Petrografy in Parma) joined also them as promoting members. Among the twelve people that signed the letter of resignation by the CSR only ten were among the promoting members: Andrea Todeschini, great friend of mine, who just in that year had gone in Ojo Guareña, had a jump of his Tuscan very polemic remark both for the mentality of the Circolo, and for our enthusiasm, and really he closed with the speleological activity, and Enrica Casali stayed away for sentimental disagreements with who is writing.
To Manuela Martinelli, later and till now married with Marcello Chimenti, it’s due that the statute of our Club would admit the women within the members: in-fact it was strong the tendency to exclude them for a speleology more pure and "hard"... glissons... It is a ridiculous male superstition that is still meeting in several sports circles. A young serious, but novice, speleologist, that I don’t mention, told me, after an expedition to Corchia, where he suffered a lot and it was assisted by two young ladies of the team: "we must came back to Corchia! But with a hard team: without ladies!" (?!?!?!)
And now I wont tell about the informing spirit of the statute of the Speleo Club Roma, it was drawn up with long discussions among all the promoting members during the first days of ’59. What in Circolo seemed us to be the more political monstrous crime was the prevailing of the seniors in the vote that actually, apart from the passive possibility to elect the young members, sclerosed the leadership of the group because, as it happens in every circle of this kind (sporting one, recreative one, cultural one...) the day of the ordinary meeting there were a lot of members registered only by name and who were never seen either in the caves or in the club, and who obviously voted for the members that they knew from when they were actives: for all those reasons any "new" candidate couldn’t be chosen with the votes of the active members of the moment, because the number of those last ones was anyway lower then the one of old glories of the last past ten years. On the contrary, we decided to give raise to a leadership of the members who were active, in practice a leadership of fighters over the shirkers, with a more barbarian then classic school: every years those were chosen looking at the done activity, or at services done for the group, the active members and only those could vote for the council. I explain "the barbarian one": because it was the continuous fight to stand up to the association as activity and as power: the one had done more exits in the caves and for this had used more the materials, the structures and the other members as personnel in the team, he prevailed over the ones that had done less exits. The active members of two years before, after one year of poor activity, came back among the ones without vote: it was the ritual killing of the old people of the village. In this way it was guaranteed that the control of the activity was done by the people who worked, and who reduced his strenuous "militancy" was driven to finish it at all, and to go out from the group!
Actually, if during the meeting the evaluation of the activity of singles done by outgoing executive wasn’t challenged by the friends and by some effective, it was accepted and, then also the effectives (electors) were designate by the executive; just in all the doubt cases, the shift of category was submitted to vote, it seems to me also qualified (majority of 2/3 and no more than the 1/6 of adverse votes), of the effectives in office for the finishing year, so that they found themselves to accept or to expel from their circle some colleagues, producing hostilities and polemics after effects detrimental for the working of the group.
To end, I come back to the adjective "barbarian" that really marked out the spirit of the Speleo Club Roma in its first ten years of life, as if it was a tribe of the upland or a band of guerrillas: it had a strong explorative aggressiveness, very developed friendship and comradeship between the active members and the not active ones, and it had the concept if not to be, but surely to can be the best in Rome and in the Middle Italy, with a foreign politics very unscrupulous and "of break" toward the other speleological groups, except with the friendly ones.
The analysis of the activity of the first ten years shows that this spirit was profitable, it was paying in terms both of the scientific results and of the sporting ones... also if is, as in every quick advance, behind the nucleus that led the run the rearguards had been frayed, but it was obvious and we have to remember that who makes one exit for year contributes to the activity as who exits every week, and that one day they will be partners in the same team.
And also now, twenty years later from those facts, that spirit is paying: with the strong friendship that binds the old members among them, in the same way of the veterans of the special corps, that had divided efforts, sacrifices, risks and above all enthusiasm.
