- As I was saying, I was born and brought up during the Fascist regime: from 1922, the year in which I was born, until… Let's say I had a thoroughgoing experience of it. It was what they taught us at school, and being enlisting as a member was considered something compulsory. Even our school report cards had to bear the number of the membership card issued by the party or by the juvenile association. Then in 1940 war was declared against the Allies and in support for Germany, and voluntary recruitment was called for. This affected the group composed by those who were born in 1922, and who would then have had to go to the French Front; and, quite naturally, I therefore offered to be recruited. They sent us on foot, calling it "The Youth March", up to Liguria, to Pegli in the outskirts of Genoa. When we got there, considering that we had indeed managed to arrive, the war on the French had already ended! For a period of time we remained encamped there… Nowadays… Today's young soldiers would certainly mutiny if they had to live such conditions: we slept in the tents, lying down on the straw, and whatever horrible stuff they had then fed us on doesn't quite come back to my mind now. All I know is that our principal occupation consisted in going out in search of tomatoes, which we would then cut into pieces in order to prepare vegetable salad.

From here we were then sent back - on foot once more - and we arrived in Padua. In Padua they put us up at the fair - encamped inside the fair - and it was while we were here that they decided to dissolve this youth group - all of us had the same age since we were all born in 1922.

They sent us to Udine as recruits of the King's regiment. I had already had enough by the time I got to Udine. I intended to finish school and still had the final year to go. It was then that my sister came over to bring me a few clothes to change. As a matter of fact, I had been granted the right to choose, and could decide either to remain in the army or go back home. Eventually I preferred going back home, but was then forced to leave my uniform behind, and that is why they had had to bring me another set of clothes.

Having got back home, I was able to complete my remaining year of school, and then later on in… the beginning of 1943 - because in 1941 it was… June 1941 - that was when I had left. Then from the end of 1941 all through 1942 I did my final year at school. I obtained a diploma as a long course Captain, and then in January 1943 I left for the officer's course which I was supposed to have done with the navy at their Academy in Livorno. However, the Academy had been bombarded, and as a result I was sent to Pola, in Istria, where I was then able to attend the course which, in its turn was held aboard the school-ship "Amerigo Vespucci".

I spent six months aboard the "Vespucci" doing an Officers' course - at the completion of which I then would have been allocated to a submarine. Of course, life had been rather difficult even aboard the school ship; but maybe owing to the fact that we were only twenty-year-olds then… it was all fantastic, everything was simply fun!

We had to wake up at five o'clock in the morning! It was then necessary to have a shower, fold and tie-up our hammocks, and see to it that they were properly put away into the closets provided for this purpose on the upper deck. This was because the same cabins, let's say, in which we slept were also used as a study room and as a refectory. Therefore, it was only in the evenings that we would then take out the hammocks, stretch them out, securing their loose ends to the walls, and proceed to sleep. Naturally, the hammocks then also came in quite handy for a number of good jokes - such as finding oneself on the floor in the process of jumping into bed, just because somebody had untied one of the loose ends of the hammock, or others like "making the sack"; that is, folding the bed-sheets into a half such that one wouldn't be able to stretch out his legs when he would eventually try to pull the sheets over his head! Well, childish stuff, that's what it all was!

After I had finished the course they sent me to another place in Pola, to Scoglio Livi, where I received specific training about submarines. In July, after having completed this training session, I was then able to come back home; but five days later I was ordered to go to La Spezia, so that I could then proceed to get on board my submarine which was at Ajaccio, in Corsica.

La Spezia: even here I had to spend a few days, and was offered lodging aboard a ship which was being used as a barracks. Then I boarded the destroyer "Artigliere" and went to Civitav… I beg your pardon, to Bastia, in Corsica. From Bastia I took a train that was going to Portovecchio in southern Corsica. For reasons that I couldn’t explain, the troop train I had taken kept stopping all along the way: and it was during this journey that I actually had my first experience with the prickly pear. I had noticed, as a result of the insatiable hunger and terrible thirst we were suffering, that the other soldiers would get off the train to gather prickly pears whenever it stopped. And so at the following stop I also jumped down from the train and helped myself to the fruits. But since they pricked so badly, I was then forced to use my handkerchief both to pick them from the plants and rid them of the peel. Well, it happened that after having finished my meal I then decided to use the handkerchief to wipe my mouth clean, and this is how I ended up having my face covered with prickles: it was my first misadventure of the war!

I eventually arrived in Portovecchio. Here I was expecting to find the means that would have taken me to Ajaccio. Well, it goes without saying that even the French partisans here were against us, and as a result everybody here was very cautious. Quite luckily for me, I was able to make acquaintances with a family… I then said to them… Of course this was a French Family that had seen me there as I waited to go to Ajaccio. The man said, 'Look, we happen to be going to Ajaccio tomorrow, would you like to come with us?' And so I went with them, and the only thing I then did was to inform my Command. I said to them, 'look, I have been offered a lift up to Ajaccio.' At which they replied saying, 'What! You really must take care because things here… look, it is quite dangerous,' and so on. Anyhow, to me they seemed to be well meaning people and so, well, I travelled with them from Portovecchio to Ajaccio aboard this… in their car; and what is more is that we were even able to stop along our way to gather some grapes!

I arrived in Ajaccio smartly dressed in my summer uniform: a blue pair of trousers and a white jacket! I then reported to the barracks, let's say to the place where the submarine crew was lodged, because aboard submarines… when the submarine is in a port the crew do not remain aboard but go to a barracks since life on board is rather uncomfortable. They have to stay permanently on board only when they are at sea.

And so I reported in, smartly dressed, and asked to speak to… and so it was that the commander came out dressed in pyjamas - of course my expectation was to find him dressed standard uniform…! Anyway, it is of common knowledge that etiquette is quite out of place aboard submarines: in fact crew members were normally dressed in "orbace", a grey-greenish course woollen Sardinian fabric that was, as a matter of fact, rather too heavy.

I therefore left… and finally went aboard the "Alagi": a six-hundred-ton class submarine! And from there we departed and went to Pozzuoli, near Naples, where another submarine base was situated. From Pozzuoli we then took to the open sea on a mission.

In the naval operations of those days submarine missions consisted in waylaying. This therefore means that each mission would correspond to a specific grid reference. In fact, orders would then come from Maricossom, who in fact was the commander-in-chief of the submarine fleet, simply saying "move on to square 36-42", and there was… and since such a message corresponded to a secret code, we were the only ones who could therefore tell where exactly "square 36-42" was. And what is more, such reference had then undergone two more levels of codification, apart from the further elaboration of a special ciphering table, which was meant to make it even more difficult to de-codify. Later on when I went to the English by whom we had then been taken prisoner - this, by the way, is a parenthesis - it was quite a surprise to see that they already had all the tables; all our bloody codes and tables!

Coming back to our missions, we therefore spent… yes, about one month prowling about in the Mediterranean, in the Channel of Sicily. We also did a reconnaissance mission in Philippeville, Philippeville in Algeria, North Africa. We sneaked right into the port, situated in the bay, because according to our reconnaissance planes there should have been some ships there; but this eventually turned out to be untrue.

So, this was actually our life aboard the submarine: in all there were of thirty-six of us aboard, comprising of five officers and a certain number of petty officers, and then ordinary crew members, torpedoers and engineers. In the mornings, that is to say from dawn to dusk, we would remain submerged, normally at a depth of eighty metres, except at midday when we had to rise to periscope depth - that is to say at a depth of about twelve metres such that the periscope could surface, and we would then get tuned on the long wave radio frequency in order to listen to eventual telegraph messages transmitted to us by our Command. However the norm, I repeat, was remaining submerged from dawn to dusk, and this therefore meant having to provide the necessary propulsion for manoeuvres by the exclusive use of the electric motors. Only electric motors could be used during periods of submersion in those days because they neither produce exhaust nor consumed oxygen - thermal engines instead use up oxygen and inevitably have to discharge the end results of combustion.

And so, we would emerge to water level only in the evenings in order to remain afloat for the whole night; and at night we would cruise using only one of the two engines since the other one would be used for charging up the batteries - the accumulators that would then be used for electric propulsion when we were submerged. We also quite obviously didn't have hot meals: this was possible only at midnight, because at midday - well, only cold food since it was impossible to cook anything. Every form of combustion, in fact, absorbs oxygen, and during submersion we really needed… we couldn't afford to waste oxygen! And therefore during submersion it would become sensibly hot. And as officers we were personally charged with duties, each one of us, on a "four-and-four" basis - that is to say, four hours of service, depending on the type of duties one was charged with, and four hours of rest. We officers had… the commander had a berth; do you know what a berth is? Well, he had a bed all to himself, while we instead had… there was only one for every two of us: for instance, I who was the navigator, and the lieutenant who was my second-in-command, shared the same bed; and so did the chief engineer and his second-in-command. When one went down below he would have to pick up a towel and wipe dry the sweat of the previous occupant before settling down to sleep. Anyhow, I repeat, we had… I was young then, and as a matter of fact we all were young - the eldest among us, the commander, was thirty-three years old! As a result it wasn’t really anything more than having fun for us: we used to laugh quite a lot!

At the surf… during the night, however, there were us, the officer on guard… doing his turn, a petty officer, and two crew members. We would be in the turret – up in the open, that is to say - because each one of us would be equipped with a pair of binoculars and charged with monitoring a specific sector of the sea around us. Of the 360 degrees that there were, every one had their own 90 degree area to sweep, and had to report anything that he would spot to the leader; the officer on guard who was actually there with us. And whenever the object sighted represented a threat or was altogether difficult to identify clearly, an alarm known as "the crash-dive" would be sounded from down below… and even with four men outside, it would only take about thirty seconds to change from navigation on the surface: the four outside would literally use their dead weight to get down below, after having rapidly closed the port… it wasn’t really that important to ensure that the port was properly closed - it was sufficient just to pull it shut as quickly as one could, since the pressure exerted on it by the water from the outside would then have kept it closed anyway.

And so this is how we would submerge: in just thirty seconds we would switch from cruising on the surface with two thermal engines running, to a depth of up to thirty metres in submersion; with the thermal engines shut down, the exhaust valves sealed closed, the electric motors fully activated. We were submerged, cruising forward under the water surface at a depth of thirty metres, and all this in the record time of thirty seconds! Undoubtedly, all this was the result of a very severe training process.

Then there was this siren, "the crash-dive", which would quite obviously wake up everybody – that is, everybody except the person currently speaking, who sometimes would manage to remain asleep even… And everyone had, in the place where they slept or where they rested, something to be done: closing a valve, opening a valve, et cetera. Therefore whenever one would hear that specific signal, consequence of a severe training, he would then get busy closing particular valves and opening others so as to flood up the submarine and render it… neutralising the positive thrust and replacing it with a negative one so that it would go down towards the bottom.

As a matter of fact, having to stay up in the open was quite advantageous thing: the only time when one could smoke was in fact when the submarine was afloat. However, since there wasn’t any kind of shelter outside you simply had to bear with the weather, no matter if it was good or bad, or whether the sea was rough, and so forth. You were… it could even be pleasant when the weather was good, but when it wasn’t… you were always soaked with water, by the waves; and so… Personally, I would always do… I suffered very much due to lack of sleep – I believe all young people enjoy sleeping – but then working for four hours of rest and… four hours of work and four for resting: the four for resting included meal times… it really wasn’t that one would sleep… Well, so I would feel sleepy even when we were submerged: In fact when I was in service doing my turn I would be seated, and was charged with helping to maintain the trim; which means constantly keeping the submarine at an established depth. The commander in fact would say, ‘keep her at eighty metres!’, and I had to keep her at eighty metres by either flooding in or pumping out water from the side-tanks, and by helping the steersman with the helms – it was actually the two helms, one "vertical" and the other "horizontal", which kept the submarine at an established depth. And every time it would become impossible for him to manage the tillers… the helmsman would have to let us know so that we could do something about, about… the quantity of water that had been shipped in.

Well, in a nutshell, for me it was always the usual struggle to stay awake! And up outside, when I was on guard, on the surface, I could but position myself like this with the binoculars since it was necessary to constantly… constantly keep the sector under surveillance. I would lean myself like this, close my eyes and take a little nap, ha, ha, ha…! And so we were able to do something!

Then on the 8^th of September we were arriving in Naples because we had an average and we were in need of having it repaired. We had then asked to come back and they had told us we could come to Naples. We were now about to arrive in Naples, and to be precise we were just off Ponte Imperatore in Ischia, when the telegraph operator - I mean the radiotelegraph operator - through the intercom… I was on the bridge, and the commander was there too. We were at the point of arriving, and arrivals were particularly dangerous then: it was always necessary to follow specific courses that were constantly swept clear of mines, and therefore things often became rather difficult manage. As I was saying, the commander was there, busy issuing instructions, when the voice of the radio-telegraph operator suddenly broke loose through the intercom: 'Hey Commander, the war is over!': this actually corresponds with the time the armistice was signed.

We therefore got to Naples, and once we were in the harbour they sent one of the motor patrol boats belonging to the Navy to tells, 'Look…' - these were actually the operation orders they were bringing us - and they said, 'the Americans are due to arrive here any time from now, and therefore you have to go further north' - the Americans as a matter of fact had already landed at Salerno! The patrol boat had also brought us a few other items - some safes containing secrets - which were then taken aboard, and no sooner had this been done than we set out to sea again.

We were supposed to go to Genoa, stopping over at Civitavecchia and La Spezia: navigating by night and entering the ports only during the day. The following morning we arrived at Civitavecchia, and it was while we were approaching the port that we suddenly realised there were three patrol boats manoeuvring to intercept us. At the beginning we were convinced, quite erroneously, that they would belong to our group, and only later did we even begin to occur to us that they could as well be German. Well, as soon as the patrol boats were able to bring themselves alongside, they said to us, 'come along into the port!' and so we went into the port.

Now, it so happened that we hadn't actually received the last message sent to us by the High Command of the submarine fleet which… As it were, it was really that we hadn't actually had sufficient time to de-codify it - given that it necessarily had to go through the double de-codification and special ciphering table procedure! Whenever we were navigating on the surface, it was normally the chief engineer who took care of this necessity, I mean to say the de-codification. On this occasion, however, we not only were already in the port by the time he was through with it, but - and this is worse - the message itself was actually warning us to keep away from the ports of Civitavecchia etc… since these had fallen into the hands of the Germans! The message, in fact, instructed us to dive immediately to eighty metres, remain put at that depth for some time, and head for Bona in Algeria once it was dark.

Too late! We therefore entered the port, where of course they didn’t wait to tell us how we had betrayed them, how they themselves were instead determined to carry on with the war, etc. Then they said to us, ‘You can chose to either disembark from the submarine, and come down the whole lot of you, or else surrender your arms to us and continue your journey in a convoy for Toulon this evening.’ ‘You must allow me to speak to the High Command,’ our commander had then insisted, and so they decided to fulfil his wish and he was accompanied to land. After about an hour he came back aboard, and having called us together said, ‘boys, this is the situation: either we proceed with the convoy, or we surrender the submarine and accept to go to land.’ In the latter case we then most probably will have ended up in a concentration camp – and by the time we didn’t even know what a concentration camp actually was! We therefore said, ‘Commander, whatever you decide, we…’ and the commander had replied ‘Alright, we will leave with the convoy.’ Nevertheless, he had then also turned to the German who was there and said, ‘We will need to do some repairs because we have a breakdown, the same problem that had actually forced us to return to Naples; and so we have to repair it otherwise we won’t be able to proceed.’ Well, they believed in what we were saying; whereas we on our part then did all we that could to make sure the repairs would go on for many hours, such that the night would already have fallen by the time we finished.

What is more, we had also handed over to them the breech-block for the canon, which is the appliance that makes it possible for a canon to fire, along with the torpedo pistols, that is to say the device without which a torpedo wouldn’t be able to explode. Well, the truth here is that we had managed to trick them: in fact what they didn't know was that we were actually equipped with German-made torpedoes which carried two pistols each! We had six torpedoes, and on this basis decided to hand over only six pistols, whereas… Consequently we were left with three torpedoes complete of their pistols - since we effectively would have had to hand-in twelve of them. The only weaponry that they willingly allowed us to keep were instead the machine-guns.

In the evening we left. With us in the convoy was an old merchant ship, and then there were these four patrol boats at a very long distance from us, and also heading North towards Toulon. At midnight - it happened to be a very dark night - we closed up everything and submerged… No, not really… at midnight we decided to change course, taking advantage of the fact that we were sailing so far apart from one another that we couldn't even spot each others lights: we therefore turned southwards and headed off at full speed.

We later on noticed that the patrol boats was trying to search for us - we had actually had our submarine painted black because we knew this would make us invisible at night. Well, since they were looking for us we then decided to submerge. We remained submerged for quite a number of hours before submerging… I mean to say re-emerging, and then we proceeded for Bona.