Mario Natta

Mario Natta, in the Italian Underground

Mario Natta served in Italy during WWII

1937

Had you ever been to Italy before the war?

Yes, in 1937 my father decided to go to Italy with my mother and we stayed for a year. Well, we got there and then after about seven or eight months my dad got very, very ill and they said he was going to die. Now, my mother wouldn’t leave, and the consul would call and say that we better get out of there because things are getting hot. We didn’t leave, so we got stuck by the war, and we were fine until the Italians decided to go with the Americans and let them go up the Boot [of Italy]. They got around the Boot and they were right around Salerno but then the Germans came down and were taking away everyone who was not an Italian, and I was an American.

My uncle came over from the city hall, and said to me that I must hide, so they hid me in a field. I was in this field all day and at night I would go to sleep in a barn, and then the Germans sent more patrols out, so the only way I could get out was to join the Partisans who were up there. Somehow they found a guy who could take me. When I got up there I was sixteen and a half, and the training was that they threw a Tommy Gun [Thompson Submachine Gun] at me with 2 clips [of ammunition]. For one clip they said go ahead and shoot, and as I went to shoot this figure that they had up there, it rolled and they said that was not the way to do it. Put the other clip in and go this way, so that was your training. That was it.

Were your parents were safe at the time because they were Italian?

Yes, they were Italian and when we went up and joined the guerrillas, my mother went up and she gave the name of an item, so that nobody knew your name, nobody knew where you came from, nobody knew anything, and because that way if they caught you, they could ask you and you could tell them it was bean, or cow and so on, and and my name was Tegelo, which was a roof tile. I gave myself that name. The thing was that all [the guerillas] did was hit and runs. We would go down and park ourselves by a highway, which normally had woods in the back, and if a truck came through, or even a supply truck, we’d blast the hell out of it and then run off because we didn’t want the Germans to destroy us. After I was there for about three months, the OSS dropped guys down, and the OSS is now the CIA. They stood in the background planning the operation, letting us know if a troop train was coming through or to blow up a bridge, shoot the hell out of them and then get out of their real quick, it was a hit and run all of the time, we never stayed to fight for long. We simply did not have the power to do so.

How big was the group that you fought with?

It was a brigade made up of about twenty men who would stick together and fight the Germans out. [The Germans) would send the Mongolians, who were sent from the Russian Front against us, and they were hard fighters. We had to kill them because if you didn’t, they would keep coming at you.

The first time we were attacked we held for about an hour and a half but they were coming pretty fast, so we started to back off. When we took off, we went deeper into the mountains, and as we were in a group lined up in a single line, all of the sudden I saw one of our guys get hit. He was sitting there bleeding like hell, he had gotten shot in the arm and I think half of the arm had come off, so I said what are they going to do. I asked they guy in front of me and he said the last guy that comes through will shoot him, because we didn’t have any doctors or anything, so we couldn’t be captured. You wanted to make sure that you did not get wounded because if you did that would be it. They did it for your own good because if not the Germans would take you and torture the hell out of you, and because we had these names that nobody knew of, they could tell them that it was Tegelo. If they asked, where does his family live, all you could say was I don’t know his name was Tegelo. They would still torture you to get information out of you and they couldn’t, so it was kind of scary. When I saw that and I am sixteen and half close to seventeen, that scares you, you look at that and say oh my God.

But, I was lucky I was up there for a total of fourteen months, and I got by and because I could speak a little bit of English, I was working between the OSS and our group. I would go up there and get information on what we had heard, while our guys would sit at the railroad station and if they could pick out some information about a troop train coming or a supply train coming, they’d feed the information to some little girl who would give it to the next town and that girl and so on, and when it finally got up to us, then they’d try to figure out where it was and where we could find a little bridge that we could blow up and shoot the daylights out of them and get out of there real quick. It was just a hit and run all of the time. We didn’t have that many wounded but once in a while we did, and that was the end of that guy.

Were most of the other soldiers young like you?

They were all young and Italian Army deserters after Italy gave up, and many young kids and any volunteer that wanted to do it, and then there were a lot of the Jewish and Americans. Also, anybody that was not Italian was up there, too. Now that I think of it, it was kind of an adventure, for a while, because you don’t think when they’re coming at you and you just keep shooting. Now that I think of it I say, boy. I came back here in ’46, and I went to college, and when I graduated from college in ’52, the Army grabbed me. They drafted me into the Army, and I said that I wasn’t going into any army anymore so I joined the Air Force and I sat in an office doing nothing for two years, I waved the flag, no more fighting.

Now what did you do between that fourteen months and when did you end?

May of ’45 we were let go.

So you were in Italy until May of 1945?

Yes, I was up there for about thirteen or fourteen months, total.

And then you were in the OSS?

No, I was in the OSS while I was there, I worked back and forth between these guys, and they were way deep and protected so you couldn’t catch them and we had radios and other equipment too. Also, we got drops almost twice a week. They would drop food and ammunition and all kinds of stuff to them because they directed the drops that would come down, and that’s how we were taken care of. As I said, it was not that bad because when you went down on the hit and run, you hit and then you ran, so they wouldn’t come into the woods after us because they didn’t know if we were going to hide and shoot. But, it was always that fear of getting wounded, and that was the fear that everybody had. You would rather get shot and killed than get wounded because one of your own people is going to come along and kill you then. That was the bad part of it, and our parents knew nothing.

There was a time when in the town that they lived, Santhià, the Partisans had come down and did an action and the Germans popped in, and killed a lot of them, and they had them all at the cemetery lying down. I remember my dad telling me that my mother wanted to go over and see if I was there in that group. My dad did not want to go but my mom insisted and she went through all of them and she did not see me so she said, well, you know, Mario is okay. In other words nobody knew anything about anybody. It was kind of a, how should I say, it wasn’t like you got mail or used a telephone or anything like that.

So it was like an underground?

It was underground, nobody knew anything about anybody, and that’s how we operated, and we were strong all over Italy.

So you were strong all along this Northern Border…

All along this border in here, yeah.

Are the Alps up in that area?

This is all in the Alps, and we all wore a red star because this guy, Tito, had sent guys in to form cells, Communist Cells. I remember that my dad said before I got up there that whatever I do, don’t join anything or any organization because when this thing is through, we’re going to go back to America, and so I did not, even though they tried to get me to join the Communist Cell and I said no I am not, I want to be neutral.

And what was the Red Star for?

It was because we were Communist.

But you wore a red star?

We wore a red star on our cap, but I did not join the party, so I was not a Communist. Of course at the end of the war they took over, and I remember one time when, the stupidity of America all the time, in the town that my folks lived when I went back, the American were sending food to us, through the planes and all that. But, the food was distributed by the Communists because they were in charge in the towns, so when we went over there they were giving out oatmeal, and it had the Quaker on them and so on, but on top where it said made in America, they put a big Red Star on it. They said that the Russians bought this from the Americans to give to you. My father said that was a lie, you know I don’t believe that, but most people did. See that’s why the Americans were stupid. We always give things to people but we don’t demand anything back, and that was a ridiculous situation. That’s all about I could tell you, really.

Did your family come back to America when you came back then?

In ’46, we came back as refugees, and the American government took us back.

Did they recognize your service?

No, it was not recorded anywhere because it was just guerillas and we went in the mountains and there were a lot of them you know. All we did really was keep three divisions up here where we were instead of putting them down there against the Americans, so we were guarding their back, and they couldn’t get supplies down there. That was our mission, and it was a good mission because we kept all those troops up there, so at the end, I did not participate because, I don’t know. But we caught a lot of Germans, and what some of these guerillas did to them was awful. There was so much hate, we hated them so much because they were rough with us, and if they found out a family, their son was there [in the Partisans], they’d eliminate that family, so there was a lot of hate. It was all cleared out, you know, and as I say when we came back to America, [I was nineteen then], I remember my dad and when he saw the Statue of Liberty, he said by God we are home, and we’re never going to leave our home, and that was it. It was an adventure, and I didn’t do it because I volunteered. I did it because I had to, and there was no other way of getting around.

Looking back, do you think you were lucky to get out of there alive?

At sixteen and a half you aren’t real sharp, you’re pretty dumb, but you were real quick. It was a fight for survival and what we did was set up a line of guys up here a line of guys back there, and when these troops would come up, we would shoot them. When things got a little rough, this guy moved back and the other guy moved in. We kept going back and forth until things got real rough and then we would all take off, but it was scary.

Was there a leader, or somebody in charge?

Yes, and one time I was put out on guard, forward guard at night, and the guy that was in charge was a sixteen-year-old. I was getting close to seventeen, but this kid had been there a long time, so he was pretty good. Our leaders were young people, young guys and we flew by the seat of their pants, you know.

Did you have maps to know where you were going or were you familiar with the territory?

[The maps were] all done by the OSS, they took care of where we were and where we needed to go because we were all in the mountains and lived in a farmhouse.

So you were given directions where to go.

Yes, and it was rough in the winter because it was cold and we didn’t have a lot of clothes. I remember close to the end that we came into Biella and we liberated Biella and caught all the Germans in the town. The town was between Milan and Turin, and I sent word home with one of the gals going back that I had an accident and spoiled my shorts, so I didn’t have any shorts, so I said to them to bring me some shorts, handkerchiefs, and some money. Well, my folks didn’t have any money, so my dad walked 20 miles along the railroad tracks, and came up along and gave me a pair of shorts, handkerchiefs, and a cross that my mother had given him. I said, “Where is the money?” and he said he didn’t have any but he had given me the cross and then the poor man had to walk 20 miles back.

Were you able to keep in touch with your parents?

Very, very little, because we were afraid that somebody would intercept it and find out, so they didn’t get much news from us. They knew approximately where we were but we always moved from one place to another and you could never say exactly where we were because we were always moving from town to town in farmhouses.

Do you feel like some of these things could only be done by young kids like you at the time?

Right, they could tell us to do anything and we would do it. You might think about it later and say, gosh, that was crazy, but you didn’t. We were mostly young, there was a few old guys in there but mostly young.

Even when I hear about these kids that enlisted who were seventeen or eighteen years old being bomber pilots but whom else would do such a duty?

That’s it, you know, and the same thing with death, these were all young people that ran away. The old didn’t have to run, and the very, very young didn’t have to go anywhere, but at sixteen and seventeen, they were picking us up. A lot of my friends got picked up [by the Germans] and taken to Germany to work on the railroads, and when the Americans were strafing the railroads and there they were working, and the Germans wouldn’t let them get away so it was terrible. I have lost that feeling, and as a matter of fact I married a German, and I lost that hate that I had. But at the time I hated them because some of my friends were really hurt by them. It was not a pleasant war, but war isn’t pleasant no matter what people say.

When you see war movies it’s the same feeling.

Well, all of these movies show the Germans being really stupid. They weren’t stupid though, they were pretty good and smart. But, toward the end, around January or February of 1945, there was a lot of old guys coming up toward us because they had run out of young people and now they were taking the older men and putting them in the Army. These guys really didn’t want to fight, they were thinking of their family at home, but they had to, so that was it.

So you were there into the end of the war.

Until the end of the war and then we came down to Genoa, and on a boat they took us back to the U.S. I was nineteen when I got back here.

So your family was there too?

Oh yeah, we all came back together and my brother was born over there in ’38. My dad got a little bit better and they had him, and [my brother) is ten years younger than I am. So, when he came over, he was only seven. He only remembers some of the things that were happening in the towns because the Germans kept coming into the towns and they tore the hell out of it. They would try to steal anything that was good, and they killed some people.

There were things still going on in Italy after the end of the war?

By the middle of May, the Americans had arrived in Biella, they were already up to that point and the Germans were barely still holding but they were trying to get away, and eventually they pushed them all into Germany. That was kind of the end, and the Americans took over, which was great. Then, after the war, we survived for about a year, and then they brought us back.

Were the Communists there after you left?

The Communist party was strong after the war, and eventually as I read the papers, after about ten years they dwindled down in Italy.

So they faded out on their own?

Yes, and it became all Christian Democrats. We went from Fascist, and at one time one brother could be a Fascist and one could be a Communist. You had two different factions of people that thought different. But now, for example, when I go back, the Italians, they don’t really care about politics, they don’t even want to talk about it. They just want to make a living and not work too hard, it sounds like American but that is the Italians. When I went back to the town that my dad was in, which was south of Turin, they had a lot of woods and forests around there so that meant a lot of Partisans. We used to come into town and the men would all go up in the vineyards and they had dug holes, real deep, and they would go into these holes and hide for a few days while the Germans were in town, then they would come out. These were the older guys and they hid all of their stuff because the Germans were looking for it.

When we talk about war now, the only ones that know about it are the veterans from Iraq and Vietnam. Those of us that are here we know nothing, because all we did was blow the hell out of buildings. When we were first there we lived in Turino, and when the war broke out in June of 1940. The following night, the English would come and bomb us. You know what they did, they didn’t bomb the whole city, all they did was come over with a couple of planes. That meant that at 10:30 the sirens would go off, and everybody would go all the way down, with no elevators, to the basement. My mom had my brother in her arms, and I was only about fourteen and a half. At 11:30-12:00, the sirens would go off and it was over with, so you’d go back upstairs and go to bed. At 2:00 a.m., a few more planes would come over and drop a couple of bombs. The sirens would go off again and we were back in the basement, and come back up around 4:30 or 5. Well, people couldn’t go to work anymore and you couldn’t go to school because you were tired, and nobody accomplished what they wanted to. So, that’s why we moved out of that town to my mom’s town, which was a small town.

So their mission was to disrupt the normal way of life for everybody.

That’s right, just disrupting everyone’s life, and so that’s what they did and they accomplished it because they were smart.

So the Allies were mostly bombing everything in that town.

The French were mostly bombing Italy, and sometimes toward the end of the war, we would see a flight go over consisting of B-26s from Sicily up going into Germany. I am not kidding you, there were at least 500 planes up there and they blocked the sun. I just thought if all those planes got over and dropped their bombs, my god, what is going to be left, and that’s how they won. The Americans won the war because of the equipment. I think every G.I. in Italy had a jeep, and the Italians were stealing their jeeps. The G.I.s would go in for a cup of coffee and when they’d come back out their wheels would be gone, and the G.I.s wouldn’t care because they could just get another one, so that would make America so great. We had the equipment and the resources were something else. That’s my story, and I didn’t want to go back [to Italy] for thirty years, I didn’t even want to hear about it, but then I finally decided that I should go back and see. It really hasn’t changed that much, the towns are mainly the same.

The Italian border didn’t change at all?

No, it was the same.

So you went back in the 1970s?

I went back in the ’70s, and I have been back five times since I left after the war. I still have some cousins over there, and I met some of the guys that were with me up in the Partisans, and we’re all old now, you know, but I still managed to see some of them.

I have another story, about my friend who landed at Normandy on the second day of the invasion, and he told me, “Mario, we literally walked over corpses on the way in. Bodies were all over, dead, and we lost so many guys there.” That was rough, but in a war, if you are in it, it’s not good, it’s never good.

Mario Natta

Interviewed 10/22/11