This Project Week is a new initiative and as Dorde from Montengro explains «we got the idea after reading in our Italian class a novel by Ilaria Tuti called Fiore di Roccia that was truly inspiring». It describes the heroic selflessness of women who volunteered to carry food, medical and other supplies on foot to the Italian soldiers in the mountains of Carnia (Cjargne in Friulian) during WWI.
This was an area of great strategic importance and the Italian troops stationed there numbered 12,000. All men had left the villages in the valleys below to go to the front, while children, women and elderly people had been left behind. When the Timau priest announced that the army badly needed volunteers to travel on foot to bring much-needed supplies up the mountains, these women realised that without their help the soldiers simply would not survive. In the course of more than 2 years 1,500 girls and women were involved.
These women would place the supplies in very large baskets called gerle (see picture below) and carry them on their backs. The long walks to reach the soldiers on the Austrian-Hungarian border were exhausting and as they drew closer to the line of fire they used to sing in order to take heart and pay less attention to the frightful sound of gun shots and bombs. Some of them were injured, while Maria Plotzner Mentil – a 32 year-old mother of four – was killed by a sniper.
continues Dorde. «We thought everyone in the area was aware of them but when we approached the people in Udine – the main city in that part of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region – we were surprised to find out that only a few people had a vague notion of who the portatrici were and many did not have a clue. Fortunately, a local bookstore told us the book by Ilaria Tuti was among the top 5 most sold books, which means more and more people will read their stories».
Alongside Dorde, the project week group was formed by Alexandra (Slovakia), Laura (Hungary), Mahmmod (Palestine), as well as their Italian College friends Lorenzo, Giovanni, Caterina, Marta, Giuseppe, and Agata. They visited Paluzza and Timau and were struck by the fact that these beautiful but remote mountain villages are now mostly inhabited by elderly people, while local youth have left for the city. In Timau they visited the WWI museum where the Director Luca Piacquadio gave them the warmest welcome and went out of his way to show them around and introduce them to local people who could share interesting details about local history and culture.
On their return Lorenzo said he was
The group as a whole found their experience very inspiring and Caterina said «It was a privilege to speak to the elderly people we met and listen to their stories. I have come back fully aware of how rich the local cultural heritage is and what a crucial role individual people play in keeping it alive».
Marta also commented «Behind the beauty of the Carnia mountains there is the pain, resilience and altruism of the mothers and grandmothers of the people we met and spoke to. No history class, presentation or video could have been as effective. The stories we heard reminded me of the ones I’d heard from my grandparents about WWII. It is scary and frustrating to realise that all war experiences are ultimately the same and this is all the more terrifying in the current context of the war in Ukraine. Hearing about the portatrici carniche and the history of that area opened my eyes on the effect of war on civilians. In this sense, our project week has not only been useful for learning about the past and about the culture of my country but also in order to understand the present».
