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Oral history recording with Agostino Crisaffi. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Part 1 of 4 (AV 11384-11387)

00:00:01 Agostino Crisaffi was born on the 20th April 1922 in Aldora Marina, Calabria. His mother, Cecilia Giordano [ph] was killed in a car crash. Agostino’s father was Domenico Crisaffi and was a small farmer. He explains that his father looked after the garden for a rich family in the town; they had a beautiful house near the beach. The town he lived in was small, and there is now a big mafia presence.

00:06:50 Agostino has been in Wales since 1947 and only returned to Italy three times so it is very hazy to him, when he doesn’t think about it he starts to forget things about Italy. Part of the reason is because he was so busy with his shop. In Italy his family didn’t had food and clothes but little money so he sent money over to them. Agostino worked on the railways in Italy before he joined the army when he was nineteen. He then went on to fight in the battle of El Alamein; he was taken a prisoner of war, sent to Scotland, Carmarthen and then sent to work on a farm for two years. He returned to Italy then back to Wales. He worked hard twelve hour days in Wales in his shop so didn’t socialise a lot with the Italian community dances etc.

00:10:20 Agostino didn’t have a lot of schooling, he preferred to work at the time, which he now regrets. He considers himself lucky to have been able to open and manage his own restaurant in Wales. He had a friend who was a paratrooper in the army. In Italy the division was called Bersagliere, Agostino volunteered to be a paratrooper as well and went for training in Rome for three months; it was hard work but well paid. He was sent to El Alamein with the Folgore division. He explains that had they known that he didn’t have schooling they wouldn’t have taken him on, but during the war they would take him on.

00:16:00 Agostino recalls his training as hard work, he recalls jumping out of the plane for the first time. He enjoyed the division. After the training he went to Greece and then by plane to Tobruck and El Alamein. He recalls the fear he felt during the battles in El Alamein. He was taken prisoner in Africa on the 6th November 1942 after having been on the front line for four months which he describes. He doesn’t like war, and felt lucky to be taken prisoner of war, many of his friends died in El Alamein.

00:23:10 He recalls being surrounded by sand, and nearly losing himself and the risk of quicksand. They would sleep in a hole in the sand, they wouldn’t shave, grew long hair. They have little water and food, he recalls having dry lips, as the supplies couldn’t get to the front line during battles- they might go for days without being brought food and water supplies. He didn’t wash for four months. Arms were supplied when possible, he recalls one friend of his being shot. When he was a prisoner he had no bullets left. The Folgore division used machine guns, there were canons behind them in another division, and he also describes the use of mines by the Fanteria division; which is how a lot of Italians died. They would have days where they would be allowed to collect the dead and fighting would stop.

00:35:20 He fought together with German soldiers in the war; he says that was a mistake by Mussolini. He recalls one soldier saying to him that the day after the English would lose the war, in fact he was wrong. The German soldiers seemed to have more food on the front line, whereas the Italians were always very lacking, and they had different approaches to fighting; Germans fought more to the end.

00:40:30 He recalls working in the farm as a prisoner of war at twenty, as one of the best times of his life. Every Sunday they were able to go the cinema in a nearby town. When he went back to post war Italy there were no jobs, so he wrote to his boss on the farm and that farmer sent a permit over. After working for four years there, under a contract, he worked in a restaurant which was better pay. He loved the job, he met lots of people.

00:45:30 The interviewer returns to talking about the war. At the beginning of the war Mussolini was well respected, but after the war he was killed. He talks of fear on the front line at the possibility that they wouldn’t see their families again.

00:52:40 When they were taken prisoner they spent two months in a camp near the Suez Canal, Camp 310 before travelling to Wales. Agostino talks about the British victory, which he owed to Montgomery; one of his friends saw him and they held a lot of respect for him. His division also received a lot of respect. Agostino describes the uniform they wore and goes on to describe his experiences and feelings of fear and adrenaline he had as a paratrooper. Some people would steal silk for their relatives; one friend has his parachute stolen and had to pay for a replacement. During the war in Africa they didn’t use parachutes; they were sent to the front line.