Manrico Ducceschi

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Manrico Ducceschi, called Pippo, was born on September 11, 1920 in Capua (Caserta) from Fernando Ducceschi and Matilde Bonaccio. The family comes from Pistoia, town where Manrico grows and completes his studies, until the choice to go to the university, at the Faculty of Licterature and Philosophy, which he brightly follows.

He is however forced to interrupt his studies due to the leaving military and the events of September 8, 1943, when it becomes dissolved the Italian army, brings him to come home from Tarquinia, where he is found at that time, afoot, avoiding the principal roads just to avoid the risk to be captured by the Germans.

Enriched of military experience by the Alpine Official Course, he immediately gets in contact with the Florence's group "Giustizia e Libertà" (Justice and Liberty) and he takes the appointment to form a mobile group of Patriots with the purpose to create difficulties to the Nazi army's military operations in Italy. Then, his exceptional abilities as commander makes to flow around him, always in greater number, teams of young people, being desirous to fight, so that it was possible to forme one of the most organized and combative existing Patriots formations in Italy. In fact, the 11th Military Patriots Zone is one of the few Formations of Partisan which enumerates victories and it doesn't suffer military defeats.

His position in partisan actions puts him at the top in the "most wanted" German chase list, putting in serious danger not only him, but even all his relatives, who are forced to disperse for the whole period of the war and to hide themselves. Once, to escape to a German raking, his mother and his sister need to hide in a funeral wagon, faking mother and sister of the corpse.

Loved by his people and respected by the enemies, Pippo (the fight name of Manrico) is one of the few to arrive in Milan with his group. He is decorated by the U.S. with the "Bronze Star", delivered in Building Santini, Lucca. Despite all his undisputed heroic enterprises, however, no medals comes from the political Party, having majority that time and subsequently has no recognition to the value in Italy, even the promise of a "post-mortem" monument in the town of Pistoia will be denied, despite his corp was moved from Lucca, where he died, to Pistoia, where he still lies.

On August 24, 1948 Pippo had to go to Rome but at his return, he already preannounced that he will report facts and circumstances concerning some partisan groups. His father finds again him, worried for the silence of his child, in the house, hung with the belt of his own pants and so it will begin the mystery related to his death.

A lot of inferences have subsequently been made but, even if the official version, will stay "suicide", many elements throw a great deal in a different light on this mysterious epilogue.

Further infos at the web site [[1]]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Carlo Francovich, Relazioni sull'attività militare svolta dalle formazioni patriottiche operanti alle dipendenze del Comando XI Zona dell'Esercito di Liberazione Nazionale, in Il Movimento di Liberazione in Italia - Rassegna Bimestrale di Studi e Documenti, a cura dell'Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, nn. 44-45, 46, 47, Milano 1956-57
  • Giorgio Petracchi, Intelligence Americana e Partigiani sulla Linea Gotica - I documenti segreti dell'OSS, Bastogi Editrice Italiana, Foggia 1992
  • Giorgio Petracchi, Al tempo che Berta filava - Alleati e patrioti sulla Linea Gotica (1943-1945)", Mursia Editore, Milano 1995
  • L.C., Due partigiani scomodi, in La Nazione, cronaca di Pistoia, 9 aprile 2005
  • Rolando Anzilotti, Una visita a "Pippo" - Manrico Ducceschi, un autentico capo senza gradi né spalline, in Documenti e Studi, Rivista dell'Istituto Storico della Resistenza e dell'Età Contemporanea in Provincia di Lucca, n. 25/26 ottobre 2005
  • Carlo Gabrielli Rosi, Ricordi di Guerra e di Pace, Tipografia Tommasi, Lucca 2006