My 8^th September



It was the year 1943: the best time of my life…In spite of the ongoing war, time of enthusiasm and great aspirations…

With some 15 Airforce cadets that first had earned the flying licence, with the Saiman 202 and brought to the end the first part of the aerobatic training with the Ro.41 at the Reggio Emilia Flying School from May to the end of August 1943, on the 3^rd of September I was transferred to Falconara Marittima airport for the 2^nd period of training. The weather was still summer-like and on the Adriatic beach there were a lot of beautiful girls: that's how I, with other colleagues, came back to the base late in the evening…and the orderly officer uttered: "Three days of confinement". And we were caught, in the evening of the 8^th, by the announcement of Gen. Badoglio that threw the base in the biggest confusion... "The armistice!... the armistice!…The war is over!" we heard yelling by the troops... "Let's go home!…let's go home!" the most inexperienced screamed... Even the guarding airmen had abandoned the service and we went with the officers to the Headquarters, anxious to receive orders, but as from the High Commands nothing more had come, we retired into the barracks… in the silence of the night, sleepless and full of nightmares, the whispered song of the "Nabucco" rose: "Oh mia Patria sì bella e perduta ... "*. On the morning of the 9^th, a German motorized column stopped by, asked and obtained refuelling, and when it set off northwards, many airmen jumped onto the vehicles, persuaded to get closer to their homes. Later we learned that the King and Badoglio, after abandoning Rome, had taken shelter at Brindisi, seat of the Allied Command. A little while later, a fighter of ours landed and the pilot reported seeing "Allied" battleships off Ancona and German armoured columns travelling Northwards from South…Allied landing attempt and subsequent clash with the Germans? And we caught in the crossfire? The units had by then cleared off, even emptying the store of all sort of goods, including parachutes…Not even the poor commander could give us any instruction. I was suddenly seized by an idea, and with my friend Salvadori, we reached a hangar where our training planes stationed. "That Saiman 202 - a Sergeant fitter told us - was revisioned a few days ago and has a full tank". Mario and I gave each other a knowing look…a jump and I was in the cockpit…contact…Mario, with a push to the propeller, started up the engine and jumped in, he too, with no parachute. Throttle...and go, we ran across the airfield, risking to end up into the hangar, opening its enormous mouth on the opposite side…it seemed that the undercarriage did not want to detach itself from the grass. I pulled desperately the grip towards me, at full engine, and with the terror of the horrible, imminent crash, I closed my eyes…when I reopened them, the immense blue yonder was in front of us… we plunged into it, enthusiast and like reborn… below, the coast and the sea…behind us Falconara, with its airfield getting farther, confusing itself with the horizon that broadened more and more as much as the Saiman gained altitude…We flew over the Adriatic Coast…Senigallia, Pesaro, Riccione, on the left the Rock of San Marino, Rimini…I steered Westwards…Savignano, Faenza, Imola…and over there the great Bologna…then Modena, my birthplace, and the rich campaign of Reggio, sprangled with vineyards, among which could be seen the farms of my paternal and maternal relatives. And over there, the airport left one week before, the "Reggiane" aircraft factory, where my Father worked and from where the RE.2000, 2001, 2002 and, last but not least, the powerful RE.2005 were produced. Not distant from that, beyond the railroad, I saw my house. I would have landed, but all around the field the Germans, our allied till the day before yesterday, had already placed some armoured vehicles. How would they welcome us? As traitors! I preferred to steer northwards, over the countryside, but where could I find room to land? Vineyard lines pretty everywhere…any research was no good. There, Correggio, …the villa of Uncle Prospero and Aunt Maria, where my five younger brothers had evacuated. I noticed them in the courtyard, staring upwards…a dive with the aim to greet them…an istant of carelessness…and we risked to crash against a poplar tree soaring beside the villa. We gained altitude, and grateful to good luck, we steered towards the Po…Here is it! There are Viadana, Casalmaggiore…"We are getting over Cella Dati" said Salvadori "and there we'll be able to land. There are vast meadows around my home!" And on a vast meadow we landed, and yawed the Saiman at the end of the run, not to crash against the line of mulberry trees that delimited it. There arrived many people of any age, that welcomed us like we had been aliens… But it lasted a little while: a German vehicle came, on the adjacent provincial road…Everyone ran away…including the two pilots. Three fully armed soldiers came up to the Saiman, emptied the tank and left. Two days later, on a "two wheeled" that was loaned to me, I came back to my family, at Reggio Emilia…Later, comeback into service, at the II ZAT at Padua, where I was for a while adjutant of the legendary Col. Botto "Iron Leg" and where I escaped the terrible bombing of December 1943… Then, Venaria Reale, Tradate, Albavilla and, eventually, Cascina Costa with Cap. Adriano Mantelli and Ten. Rovesti, that had been my instructor at the Gliding School two years earlier. In the end, the terrible odyssey in the aftermath of the 25^th of April, with the escaped shooting, that befell instead the Commander of Malpensa, Adriano Visconti.

50 years later i.e. "the fictional reality"
I was 22 when, defeated veteran, I could come back to my family, that in the meantime, to escape any revenge, had moved to the province of Brescia, to Lumezzane, where I was a teacher for more than three decades.
So: hear, hear! Fifty years later, one morning while going out of my home, I heard someone greeting me:
"Good morning Mr. Davoli!"
"Good morning! I don't have the pleasure to know you!"
"You, in September 1943, landed in a meadow near my home, at Cella Dati near Cremona".
I was quiet, staring at him, incredulous. "Yes. And my Father lent you a bike, so that you could come back home, in Reggio Emilia". It seemed a fairy tale to me! After fifty years! "Luckily my Father, a very precise person, further than honest, though obliged to use a special bicycle, with one pedal only because he had an invalid leg for a cannon shell wound received in the Great War, covered the whole route Reggio Emilia-Cella Dati (70 km ca.) holding the other bike with the right hand to take it back to the legitimate owner!
Otherwise, you could ask me here, now, for the refund of the expenses". And everything ended with a happy laughter and arose a friendship that lasts to this day.


*("O my Country, so fine and lost"; Choir of the exiled Jews, in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco, inspired by Psalm 137. The Italian writer Salvatore Quasimodo wrote a similar poem in the wartime years called On the branches of the willows)