German Air Raid vs. British Mosquito Bombs in Valeggio, April 1945
The German anti-aircraft defenses at Uselara di monte Ogheri, aimed at a low-flying English reconnaissance plane in the Mincio Valley, opened fire; the «de Havilland Mosquito» (better known as “Pippo”), seeing itself pursued by the tracers from the German machine gun, flew at tree-top level over Valeggio dropping three bombs. It was a thunderstorm. Followed by three loud explosions at Crosagna on Via Italo Balbo.
The ordnance hit: the storefront of the Hotel all’Angelo (today Angel Bar), Titari Benaglia’s house, and the courtyard of Mrs. Luciana Freschini. There were damages and injuries, but no deaths. It was 9 PM on April 21, 1945.
Master Ernesto Barbieri, then wearing shorts, was drawing on the kitchen table just moments before the aerial bombing, depicting the devil himself with horns and an infernal beard. “My mother Ida Gardumo in Barbieri“, he recounts with lively freshness after many years, “scolded me, saying: ‘Ghet altro da disegnar?'”. He didn’t finish her sentence before “Pippo” rumbled low and dropped its bombs.
Instinctively, I abandoned the drawing and ran to the basement, where I heard the second explosion that tore down Titari’s house—opposite mine, which was riddled with shrapnel. “I saw my courtyard fill with fireworks of all colors,” continues Barbieri. “None of my family was hurt. Neither was the tinsmith Titari, who, though terrified, managed to escape under the porch of the entrance.”
The damages and the injured
An errant shrapnel struck a pilot of the «Diavoli Rossi», already in bed at the nearby Palazzo Guarienti (he was to recover), used as a barracks. Beneath the palace was the shelter, which Barbieri reached limping through the rubble, broken glass, and tangled wires on the ground.
“I nervously presented myself at the guardhouse,” Barbieri recounts again. “In the short walk, I lost a shoe. ‘There’s a wounded here!’” said the sentry on duty. “No – I reassured him – I just lost a shoe.”
Later, at his house, the partisan Antonio Murari also arrived, who helped us glue oiled paper to the windows without glass, and to cheer me up he said: “Valà Ernestino, make courage because those who can still can make it!”. Poor Toni, it was over for him instead, because on April 24, while fighting a German armored vehicle at Verler, he was mowed down by machine gun fire. It’s a small Valeggio story not to be forgotten.