Customized Kung Fu Uniforms

Gemionite Margaret (Rita Bertolini), on the Piave TV Maserada

Born December 20, 1903

Tape 1994 / 4 - Side A Saturday, April 23, 1994

my last name stems from the fact that my dad was un orfanello preso in ospedale. [...] Era nato nel 1871 e si chiamava Riccardo, detto Carlo. Era stato preso all'ospedale di Treviso, ma si diceva che fosse stato originario dalla provincia di Udine. Era stato preso subito, tanto che diceva sempre di non aver mangiato un centesimo dell'ospedale di Treviso, perché i nonni l'avevano portato a casa fin dal primo giorno, appena nato.

Mai saputo chi fossero i suoi veri genitori, e neppure voleva saperlo, tanto che a volte io gli chiedevo: «Se vien fora to mama, vatu trovarla?»

Lui rispondeva: "No, my mama to me that this is the lever."

My dad was very good and he died in 1918. He had gone during the war - eventually - with a lieutenant who taught him to put down the catwalk on the Piave. He took a fulminant peritonitis and died 24 hours even in the military hospital of Carbonera.

Our house was just beyond the first bank there and my dad had built a shelter nearby. [...]. It was on a slight hill, and then, even when the Piave was rising, the water never arrived there. [...] When the Piave River overflowed, breaking further up the side of the "local" up on the monuments of British Salettuol. It was a serious point of where the Piave was divided: one branch went to San Polo and San Michele and one going down Maserada. My father had built the shelter for the family because they told us there on the Piave was a "step".

Having seen what was our bank, after Kobarid, the first, which they call the bank of San Marco!

In this hospital we stayed three nights, all huddled under. Three nights after the arrival of the Germans across the Piave, until they came to send off the police.

Me pore pupa me even par de védarlo in janòcio, Cusina in front of the police. El ga ito "copéme here, the co fioi me, but I was away from here no vao" . [My poor dad I can still see him on his knees in the kitchen in front of the police. She said kill me here, with my children, but I do not go away from here].

The sergeant told him: "Just you go down the bank, in the first house, because here is a passage: the intention of the Germans is to go direct to the Po."

My poor dad says: «Cossa femo?» e mia mamma: «Carlo, ndémo de à de l'argine.»

Siamo andati verso la prima casa, dove c'è la Madonna delle Vittorie, dove fanno le sagre. Da là ci siamo uniti in tre famiglie e siamo andati sulla Postioma, sulla campagna del nonno di Cenedese, quello che ha le officine.

Eravamo in trenta. Noi bambine dormivamo assieme alla mamma nella stalla, con tre bestie e una mussa. A mia sorella che poi è diventata suora ed ora è morta my other sister and the owner of the house has a room for the son was a soldier.

the evening there was the offensive My mother said "Tose I come up with Stalevo» because the room was to the front, and came down to sleep. My sister sister has stayed on the crib and the other has stayed where it was made to convey the urine of animals, so that it found back in the morning with all the wet. And the two poor old sleeping with his head so, the extent to which the animals had to sit down.

the morning, that master of the house there - must be in hell, I keep telling myself when I think about it - at five o'clock in winter, was in stable to govern the beasts and we had ingrumàr all the straw in a corner, wake up and sit because he was to govern the beasts.

My mother said to him: "But Gigio, Pode do no more an hour late?"

I had a sister three years, then emigrated to Cuneo saying, "Mama, no to a macara mi, a mi no to Macario " . He did not want the masks - because they had distributed the masks [Gas] - but you always kept a crucifix in his hand "Mama, I have Jesus, I have Jesus."

In the house on Postioma to Varago, Luigi Cenedese (Gigio Piovesanèl) we were from Caporetto until Holy Week of 1919, together with the families Carraro and Rossetto, the three families who were near the embankment. [...]

*

three of us girls (me and two older sisters) we left for Tuscany Epiphany. Lancenigo The mill had been closed because the director had been called military, and the boss - Sigismund Piva from Valdobbiadene - she had another in Tuscany.

My mom, who had remained in a stable Piovesanel , lived "with the existence of the soldiers." Since in a nearby house was a slaughter of animals for the military to my mom was always out of something: the tripe, bones, pieces of leg from the knee down, and some more bread. My [...] mother's name was Maria Lucchese, she was born in 1871 and died in 1947.

[...]

Tape 1994 / 4 - Side B

The hospital that my father had done before leaving Beyond the house of the bank was covered by Talponia [ Talponia = local variety of white poplar - Populus alba ] were used as cover for admission. And just over Talponia fell two grenades.

The shelter has not been destroyed, so that the return - the war is over - we still find the stuff that my father had hidden in there in a basket: Murano glass that his father had been using a godfather who worked in glass.

them I still have these glasses, so that a relative of mine told me that if Murano Murano to know that I still have the glasses of the war of '18 'you the copa " , because the factories have to close down [if anyone breaks their glasses and change them]. [...]

My father was determined to make the shelter near the house now because he had seen soldài around par and the campaigns , with a backpack and the tin.

A side of the house had cement blocks and iron girders supporting networks. From block to block soldiers engaged all cookware, and my mom was put into it to eat in each one.

were all disbanded.

I with my younger sister - who had three years - when I go up to the bank and see how the ants. They were all these soldiers lying on the side of the sun and hear you calling, "Margaret Rissotto (because once I was all curly hair), Rissotto! "

I look and I see one I know," Marshall! "

He said," Go to your dad and dì a tua mamma che sono qua, e che mi faccia da mangiare».

Era un maresciallo originario di Caltanissetta, che veniva tutte le domeniche con la banda militare a suonare in piazza a Maserada, perché c'era il palco della musica in piazza e venivano ogni domenica a tenere allegro il paese. Mio papà aveva fatto amicizia con lui, che quando aveva finito di suonare veniva a cena da noi, magari a mangiare radicchi e un uovo, quel che trovava, per stare in compagnia.

Si chiamava Garofano Coppola e ho ancora la sua forbice per ricordo, una piccola forbice. Era maresciallo del 55 Fanteria - o al distretto, non so - a Treviso.

I went home and I said "Mom ghe some passionate Pink, Pink Mother ghe sull'àrden some passionate." [Pink is on the bank]. We kept it hidden for three days under the straw, did not want to go to the front. Then he left on foot to have shot down the street, of course. This will be considered a deserter.

We have hidden three days to see if it calmed the situation, if this ended up "passing" as we had told the police sergeant. Pink was also unarmed, while the others were all soldiers with a weapon addosso. Era un bell'uomo, ancora giovane. Quante volte, quando prendo la forbice in mano, ancora adesso mi chiedo: che fine avrà fatto?

[...]

Una mattina siamo nella chiesetta della Madonna delle Vittorie - è un santuario - e andiamo dentro per assistere alla messa. In quello inizia un'offensiva sul Piave. Noi avevamo un carretto: eravamo io, mia sorella più vecchia che è ancora viva e quella che sarebbe andata suora. Si andava nell'Istituto per mettere in salvo qualcosa dei quadri delle suore. In quello che entriamo in questa cappella che era aperta, vediamo una tenda in mezzo alla chiesa e degli scarponi fuori e un prete ufficiale, un chaplain, who said mass.

I stayed outside to guard the cart and I was leaning against a pillar in the [...] and a grenade went right over and I have found it long and straight. I went to church and I said "enough, enough, enough!". How much fear. And my sister said, "Given the time I left out."

Where is the bomb fall now have built a supermarket.

They found the water, how deep the grenade had gone. Had seen how much land has raised! And they all said it was a miracle, because if he hit the church ...

But the church has fallen only a sdrapnel. He made a hole in the ceiling and broke. There's still a niche that keeps the pieces. The rest of the church remained intact throughout the course of the war. But even if the parish church of Maserada escaped with little damage, unlike almost all the houses that have been destroyed.

At that time it was said: "A Maserada the Madonna was a refugee." In the sense that to avoid damage to the statue of the Madonna had been taken away at Salzano.

had seen the feast for the return of the statue in his church, the second Sunday in July 1919. First came the church of Varago, drawn by four white horses of the artillery, covered by drapes. All the people in a procession from Varago Maserada; have moved for the occasion all countries in the area, lots of people.

[...]

Tape 1994 / 5 - Side A

My father returned to his home, from Varago, every day. Why he went to see ...

To get to our house there was a real and guarded its front, there were machine gun in our house. There were two machine guns that looked at the mouths of the Piave, one of them was in the "house of chimneys" (hearth).

In the stable but had prepared a concrete station than light cannon which was also used against aircraft ... and that they had to undermine it, and so air is blown to the roof of the barn.

Our house was not affected, but only damaged. It was a stone house, very old. Now it's been changed, but is still in existence and of the bank is located just down the road that goes toward the Piave San Polo, on the right just a few meters ahead, you can see from the bank. It's a little 'ambush and a child of the new owner will also build another new house.

It is located far enough from the water of the river Piave, so that we never had water from the Piave in the house, because there was - in front - a "Basson,''a pocket where bagged water. And sometimes to go to work in spinning my sister, who had to go there, get up out of bed and took us out of the water waves on high, dry conditions of the bank.

The trenches were all around the house, but the opposite was true later.

[...]

The bulk of the Germans did not have time to come in here because the Lord blessed Italy, at that time. Why did this turn from our side all the water of the second Piave. It was a miracle.

happened that until 1918 before the Piave Maserada was divided into two "Ramona". At the height of the "Municipal", the two parted Piave. A Piave was to San Micieli and one was in Maserada, and ours was always the greatest. With the retreat, the Piave on the other side he turned and the Germans here found themselves with their feet dry, but it has reached our Piave found the great mass of water, so that the waves carried off the catwalk and had to stop.

The cavalry, horses, went down to hell. That was in June, the latest offensive, and before it had never happened. They all said: 'It was Madonna who made the miracle. "Because the two Piave, who were from the world, our old they had ever seen. The old could not believe their eyes and said, "I must be a miracle."

[...]

My dad one time we brought with us escaped to bunèa [la carriola senza sponde che si usa in stalla] su per l'argine. Ci siamo portati via solo le coperte e le lenzuola che erano sui letti. Poi mio papà è ritornato indietro e ha visto che i soldati erano già dentro la casa, con le mastelle di tela piene di vino.

Prima di essere costretti ad andarcene da casa abbiamo dormito per tre notti sotto il ricovero in cui era stata distesa un po' di paglia. Si dormiva su degli scabelli, raggomitolati, con le spalle appoggiate alla terra. Si dormiva seduti, appoggiati l'uno all'altro.

Sopra al ricovero, come copertura c'erano dapprima delle tavole e dopo dei travi di Talponia ; last in the earth clods. Down there, in the house, we found a place father, mother and ten children.

three nights we stayed there until it's marshal.

was an afternoon about three o'clock and I remember I warned my dad. "Popa ghe a marescial some passionate."

He came into the kitchen and said, "You are the master?"

"Yes"

"Get away, because it is a step, but it is dangerous enough that you go from there, down of the bank. "

Beyond of the bank had had time to bury the stuff. They had dug a hole under the floor of the kitchen and I had put in the bins. So did Joseph Carraro and Eugenio Rossetto, who lived across the bank, near the Oratory of Our Lady.

As soon as the sergeant told us to leave we left, leaving all but the blankets and sheets. We left the chickens, everything. Even those two three sausage preserved under the ashes put in a box under the stairs. (First you wrap with newspaper and then put in boxes, covering them with ashes. A row of sausages, a coat of ash. Thus keeping their fat.)

Those sausages we were able to save them later, when my dad came back for the second time. That year we had the pork, we had a good product with the pork last year that weighed over two tons. [...]

Once we walked down from the bank on foot towards Varago, and the "road Postioma. Only the Rossetto family has brought with her two animals which were then fed - you can say - with the bread of the soldiers, because vicino alla nostra casa c'era la sussistenza che quando aveva del pane vecchio avanzato lo dava a mia mamma per le bestie.

Siamo arrivati "sulla Postioma" [la romana via Postumia] da Cenedese, che era il nonno di quello che ora ha l'officina. Questo Luigi Cenedese aveva un figlio al fronte, tre figlie e un altro figlio che non aveva voglia di fare niente e si chiamava G.

Fra i profughi, gli uomini dormivano sulla tièda [fienile – deposito di fieno sopra la stalla] e le donne and girls slept in the barn, with Gigi at 5 am that winter was coming to feed the animals, and we had to collect and put the straw in a corner where we stayed. And my mother, sleep a bit to let 'the younger children, there would lie above, so as to cover it.

The old man brought out the manure, with the doors wide open, and we there in the corner ingrumài . It's the truth ... and yes he had nothing else to do.

When there was "scuffle in the air" we went under a haystack and you could hear all the balls that fell on the straw tec-tec-tec-tec, balls of lead.

Before leaving home we were not able to take a cioce [hen], a hen that was brewing 18 pitusséti [chicks]. And my mom always said "I Bastari ciaparme who that is, the."

My dad, who came home every day, said: "You know Marieta che i soldati hanno una gran cura della ciòca .» Ogni sera la cioca si preparava davanti alla porta della stalla, pronta ad entrare. I soldati la facevano entrare e l'avevano abituata ad andare dentro un cesto, lei e i pulcini; poi prendevano il cesto e con una fune lo alzavano verso il soffitto. In questa maniera allevarono 18 pulcini di un kilo e mezzo di peso e alla fine, per fortuna, siamo riusciti a mangiarli noi, perché mio papà è andato a prenderseli.

[Finita la guerra], quando we returned home we found a dresser drawer that had been adapted to season the pasta and my mom had to work hard to remove the fat!

The house was still standing [...] just that we had to change all the floors because it ruined by the continuous passage of the soldiers, who used the house as a lookout.

too close to the house on "Postioma" there was a signal post, [in places] Saltori, on two tall poplars. From there communicated with the existence and also felt that there was a duel in the air ... However, we realize it when the first shots came from our tower [of Maserada], because it was aluminum and the bit at night thinking. All the houses around there were damaged, the fault of the bell, so our soldiers have undermined, in agreement with the pastor at the level of the belfry. They blew up after dropping the bell because the bell was species with the moon, was used as a reference point. So much so that the pastor of Lovadina always said: 'When I come home at night I shave in the mirror of the bell tower of Maserada. "The bell was made, as now, only that [the peak] was polished aluminum.

We felt the soldiers on guard on poplars informed "you received a dispatch [?]". Even in the mill once, when there was the telephone, to communicate between the first and third floor is used a trumpet tied to a wire, a trumpet made of copper.

We will be away from the soldiers were on guard [the trees] a 500 meters.

One morning I wanted to go home too, along with my dad. Before reaching the embankment there was a field that had a "riveting" that marked the border. There I started to feel the "Barney in the air" and then I jumped headfirst into the riveting, as she had shouted to my dad: "Butate soto, soto butate. When they finished shooting - you could hear the balls falling all around - we went to our house to see the cioce .

Varago From our house to have been four kilometers, all on foot.

*

I am playing from Varago Epiphany of 1918 in Tuscany, near Arezzo Casentino Rassina where there was another mill of Mr. Piva.

The closest villages were Bibbiena and Ponte a Poppi. There I had a hard life. What if I think it reunites ga magna gato no lo magnaria [what we ate, I think the cat will not eat it], because the refugees was not used rice, but the laughed [rice waste], who had more Bissi [worms] and rice. Were Bissi small brown with the fins, and remained in that area in the soup prepared for us: no meat broth, but mixed with lard oil. In truth the oil was good.

I Bissi biggest remained on the bottom and then I went out for lunch with my plate. Outside the door there was a tub for dogs of director, I held up the spoon with the rice and drained down the broth with small worms and the bigger ones but I pulled them out with a spoon.

meat ever seen, gave me some fish which was a kind of mackerel [...]. It was a fish Bauco as el Squal [Chub, Leuciscus cephalus ], a red stuff, and what was once a twice a week. Or we buy fruit. The cheese was bad, it had a smell and you could not eat.
fruits there were in abundance.

After the soup is flavored with the occasional head of cabbage.
nun My sister was not able to eat the soup from the crap that was - I would not even think about it, how many Bissi we ate, "but they were dead, really - my sister ... just off the runway by spinning up all'ortolano who was there and came back with the next head of cabbage. That was her eat lunch, with bread without salt, and good olive oil.
He cut two slices of this bread from big loaves, there is sprayed a bit 'of salt, were anointed with the 'oil and then we ate.
And so the girls ate in Tuscany.

At the end of the season he found himself in the place where the working girls of the place so much salt that they brought from home with the cap,. Then [the girls Rassina] also ate the ' articiòco [artichoke] raw tociàndolo on salt as a snack, or leeks, even raw always dip it into salt. The cap, place them in boxes where the suction turned on to silk. Put them up there with salt cap, which sometimes melted, the heat and had to be careful that does not penetrate into the silk, which otherwise would be stained and ruined.
They also ate at work while we Veneto we left half an hour, as we had the dorm.

Quelle the country in half an hour for lunch did not go home, but they were inside in spinning and there tociàvano what had taken away from home.

Think Rassina screws that line the streets and were quite low so that you could easily take the grapes. Instead of the plane were all mulberry trees along the roads of the municipality. The local women (who had held a thimble of silkworm eggs) were born and bugs in the morning, before it was spinning in, gave him enough to eat that much leaf until noon when they returned home to give them again to eat. So could be a little 'cocoons of all for them.

There was no means of transport. We did our job and then nine hours in the evening it was a bit 'of recreation, they worked in iron and those who crochet, you did something for us.

I also found a friend, a good toséta [girl] who invited me. This toséta was still too small to enter the mill and so had to stay out of the door for a month and expect to achieve years. He was there with two of her sisters Lancenigo.

Nervesa There was also a girl, there were also from Cison and Alano di Piave. Families had been under the Germans and they could no longer return home. They were already spinning when it happened in the retreat. So we found the company of other Venetian, if only to speak the same language. Why such a girl Vasconcelos could not say a word it was an Italian.

The girls were also the place so dirty: they had lice at will. Pineta Maso (quella da Vascon) diceva loro che erano "brute passe [luride] e sporche" e loro ridevano perché non capivano la lingua. Io dicevo alla Pineta "devi dirle che sono maiale e sudiciose", allora sì che avrebbero capito. Così si facevano anche quattro risate. 
Erano sporche, e per spidocchiarsi si tiravano giù i pidocchi dalla testa una con l'altra mentre noi non avevamo i pidocchi. Si sapeva, noi, come "tenersi"! [come evitare di prendere i pidocchi].
Noi avevamo i nostri pettini combed and suited us well every morning. I just had the ambition to do it every morning, God help us if we had seen our director made his head ache.
There were [the market] combs fixed and once, in a shop, an assistant of [the mill] has bought a comb with teeth ravvicinatissimi.

A girl told her: "Teacher, I bet she has lice."

the assistant replied: "I hope not, you ensure that you have them there,"

"Well, I will have someone there too!"

But I've never taken them. Nun My sister had a passion to comb my hair! I had hair that my sisters were all envious.

[A Rassina] on the streets you could see so many blind from birth.

There campaner uncle, who was blind. I had become ten years ... and the streets There were so many dangers, many horses that went with the carts. The blind were farmers, but also not very accurate.

Those countries were poor, so poor. They were very poor, almost like a wedge. [...]