In recent days the Pro Forlì Storico-Artistica Committee has promoted various initiatives to remember the terrible Allied bombing of 19 May 1944, which shocked the city and caused over 125 civilian deaths, 16 soldiers, without forgetting the 430 civilian injuries and 25 soldiers. To this it must be added that 32 houses were destroyed and 22 heavily damaged, furthermore the companies located along the railway, the real target of the over 130 bombs dropped, suffered damage.
During one of the walks that retraced the places hit by the bombing, Walter Gardini’s children gave Gabriele Zelli the account of the day written by their father, who died a few years ago, who experienced those dramatic moments because he was working at the Forlì railway station. The testimony is very important for the reconstruction of the tragic events.
The war had also reached Forlì, but it was still thought that the bombings would have spared it, even Gardini, who worked as an external station chief and experienced that tragic May 19th, thought so. “At 9.45 am the second alarm was reported with disconcerting and unjustified delay and the piercing scream of the sirens sounded distressing as a sinister omen. The almost motionless flying fortresses stood out clear and menacing against the sky of the city ready to hit the pre-established target; at a taken, from a plane, perhaps the one at the head of the formation, a white, spherical light signal emerged. A few dramatic and terrible moments followed bombs which were falling in clusters in the station area I only distinctly perceived it when I was already safe in the air raid shelter. For us railway workers and for an entire incredulous and terrified city it was a terrifying and cruel baptism. It was a rather heavy raid. Dozens and dozens of bombs were dropped in two successive waves, bringing death and destruction to the railway yard and the surrounding areas, the volume of roars and explosions it was so strong that it almost prevented thinking. It was the first unequivocal warning to the city, it was a terrible and disturbing warning”, Gardini recalled in his unpublished writing.
Then the story upon leaving the shelter: “The station square was littered with craters, from metal beams and twisted rails, the shelters of the second and third platforms were almost completely destroyed, the metal beams of which were dangling from the load-bearing structures. Here and there, uprooted and lying on the ground, support poles for the railway signs, a hydraulic column torn from the ground and thrown away. Rubble, wreckage, ruins scattered almost everywhere, on the tracks used for the freight service, overturned, gutted, semi-destroyed carriages fire flashed quickly and suddenly from some wagons loaded with artificial fibres, dense spirals of acrid and irritating smoke moved slowly in the air. The passenger building, only grazed by the bombs, had some walls chipped in on the north side, a short distance away, in the square. of the High Speed train, a splinter protection embankment had been completely destroyed. After an understandable period of confusion, we railway workers also joined the firefighters, soldiers and volunteers in the sad and pitiful work of recovering the dead and helping the injured. It was a cruel tragic outcome – Gardini said -, about ten dead or missing. Four were railway workers with whom I had had working relationships only a few hours before, two, a shunter and an auxiliary, depended on the Forlì station, the others, a train driver and his deputy, depended on the Rimini Locomotive Depot.”
“The proximity to the railway station, the presence of factories and establishments were perhaps the triggering cause of the bloody and violent bombing that also hit our neighborhood, the San Pietro district. Dozens and dozens were dead, numerous injured, groups of houses completely destroyed, imposing piles of rubble and ruins where previously there were shops, offices and homes. The bombing had erased the traces of a highly productive civilization. Fortunately, my house was unharmed and my family was safe and sound.”
“I tried to forget that day, I tried to erase from my mind the memory of my voice pleading for help, but, defeated, my heart sank the roots of suffering into the arid and indifferent earth. Today, like many others, I am a free man , but my soul, I feel, is still a prisoner of the past”, concluded Gardini in his testimony, a fundamental piece for the reconstruction of those tragic days.
