From Asinara, the letter from Fred, an Austro-Hungarian prisoner of the Great War

'My dear mother and brothers, you have not heard from me for a long time, but I hope this letter reaches you soon. I left Asinara but stayed in Sardinia. I do street work and sewage works.' Words written in his unpublished letter by soldier Fred Heidl, one of the Austro-Hungarian prisoners deported to the prison camp set up in Asinara during the Great War.

Fred, originally from Saxony, in his letter sent to his family tells of nostalgia, the need for money and food to survive, the request for cigarettes, the fear of malaria and Spanish for his loved ones. It was read by the scholar Giovanna Zichi of the cultural association "20 thousand steps in the wind" who oversaw the project "20 thousand steps in the wind: the echo of the passage of Austro-Hungarian prisoners on the island during the Great War", an initiative presented at the headquarters of the Asinara National Park Authority and commissioned by Paola Fontecchio, vice president of the cultural association A.gu.a.

By reading Fred Heidl's letters, it was possible to reconstruct his experience as a prisoner and the particular moments he lived first at Asinara and then in other places on the island. News that are intertwined with the stories received from the heart of Europe and those experienced by the soldier during the long period of captivity. The archival documents and the epistolary material presented by the speakers who attended the conference have allowed us to take a step back in history and to reconstruct unpublished pages on the drama of thousands of Austro-Hungarian prisoners who arrived at Asinara between 1915 and 1916, and on the extraordinary effort made in that place to prepare one of the largest prison camps, equipped to initially accommodate a few thousand internees who instead reached the figure of over 20 thousand.

The story of these men has been told in many books but few know some implications, included in those letters. Those boys, prisoners of war like Fred, left significant traces on Sardinian land, in fact they were also employed as a workforce, contributing to the creation of works such as the Santa Chiara dam in Ula Tirso. "I think Fred's voice can be considered the voice of the many men prisoners in all known places of internment," stressed Giovanna Zichi. In the presence of the director of the park, Vittorio Gazale, all the speakers, each with personal insights, sometimes exclusive, during the conference allowed, through narration, documents and images, to discover what of that story, in some cases, has not yet been told. From the causes that unleashed the First World War, illustrated by Lieutenant Colonel Pasquale Orecchioni, director of the Historical Museum of the Sassari Brigade, to the conflict in the Balkan area, with Serbia and its retreat to Valona, described by Davide Pegoraro, a historical guide who operates on Monte Grappa. Also present were Giuseppe Zichi, researcher in modern and contemporary history, Franz Brunner Pozzi, historical mountain guide who works on the Dolomite paths of the Great War, and Federica Puglisi, director of the Sassari State Archives.

Valuable contribution of the adjutant Antonio Ledda, in service at the Historical Museum of the Sassari Brigade, and Colonel Mauro Scorzato, former director of the Historical Museum of the Sassari Brigade who told of the great humanitarian operation of the Italian army. Those soldiers reduced to skin and bones were the veterans of the "death march" in the Balkans, after two months on foot in the snow from Slovenia to Vlora in Albania. The 24 thousand survivors of the 70 thousand captured by the Serbian army were transported to Asinara with the first humanitarian naval bridge of the Italian Navy.