«At the sound of the siren my mother violently dragged me for hundreds of meters, by one arm, up to the shelter. Then I only heard explosions .'
Giovannino Sotgiu was only 5 years old but he remembers very well the late afternoon eighty years ago, 8 June 1943 : it was just after 7 pm when the newborn coal city underwent its first Allied bombing (both clips of bombs than real bombs).
Today marks the 80th anniversary of that sad event.
"A warning against all wars - warns the mayor Pietro Morittu - we will try to make some of those memories like the air-raid shelter in via Nuoro a permanent site for guided tours and we will do so thanks to special funding obtained".
Among the witnesses of 80 years ago Luciano Mei, miraculously alive: «I was 18 days old and my mother had just taken me out of the cradle to show me to a neighbour, my three-year-old sister Anna remained at home: a few minutes later the bomb demolished everything and killed her». An episode that saved Luciano's life.
The terror also experienced in Bacu Abis is engraved in the memory where the then 16-year-old Dante Ennas lived, who later became a miner and well-known trade unionist: «A girl was wounded in the legs and then died. That day confirmation of the bombs on Carbonia and on the church of San Ponziano arrived: many of us moved to go and see the damage in piazza Roma and piazza Matteotti».
Carbonia experienced low-level clipping and machine-gun fire also in July and August, shortly before the armistice with the Allies on 8 September.