After eighty years Cagli remembers what happened on 5 May 1944. It was a day in the middle of the war with the Germans garrisoning the city and the various partisan guerrilla actions that were very frequent since autumn 1943. In those days the city was in waiting for the hoped-for advance of the allies which finally took place on 22 August with the liberation of Cagli from the dictatorship of the Twenty Years period and with the end of war hostilities. But what actually happened on May 5, 1944? The last important action of the partisans took place with the assault on the old carabinieri barracks located in via Lapis, in the old convent and cloister adjacent to the church of San Domenico. An assault which took place around 4am, therefore in the middle of the night, and was also said to have been agreed upon in secret with the then Marshal Romeo Visani. It was supposed to be a demonstration action towards the German troops camped inside the Municipal Theater and carried out with the intention of blowing up the barracks door and managing to take possession of some of the Carabinieri’s weapons and ammunition without creating any fire conflict.
Things did not go as agreed and planned by the partisans. We know what happened thanks to an interview given to the undersigned in the 1980s by one of the protagonists, the one who previously, in March, led the assault to free nineteen prisoners in the city’s ancient prison. This is the Slovenian partisan Poldo Verbovesk. His story: “We just had to blow up the door and enter the first room where the weapons were and then escape. The allies had parachuted plastic onto us for sabotage actions but we were not experts in the use of this explosive, so instead to place a small dose of explosives in the door we placed the entire package. The effect was devastating as almost the entire front of the barracks was blown up and at that point the remaining carabinieri opened fire on us. There was a firefight nearby Imbriano Alessandri fell to me”.
In addition to the partisan from Caglie Imbriano Alessandri, persecuted because he was from a socialist family tradition (a street in the center was later named after him), in the attack there were others who fell inside the barracks, among these the son of Marshal Visani who was sleeping in the apartment of the graduate and two carabinieri. One was from Cagliari, Marino Copparoni. The shooting has always been the subject of conflicting versions, especially due to the fall in combat of Imbriano Alessandri who, lying on a wooden ladder, was quickly taken away by the other partisans and left defenseless in a hut along the road to Pianello, where the partisans they had their base in the nearby mountains.
The Germans carried out, probably in retaliation, a raid on the houses in the city, forcing the young people to report to the municipality. Many ran away, others hid in old sewers and underground cavities but about forty of them were deported to Germany as workers.
This is a story that is still remembered as the most important in the partisan war in the city and of Catria and Nero. Only in the early 1950s was the barracks rebuilt and with the demolition the suggestive portico of the convent also disappeared.
Mario Carnali
