Angela Vecchioli Staffetti

Angela, a widow, managed the bar at the dopolavoro (afterwork club) in Tornimparte (L’Aquila). Immediately after 8 September 1943, she began aiding escaped PoWs, «striving without rest nor concern for danger until the end of June 1944», by providing them with clothes, food, medical aid, and housing. 

In particular, she cared for nine months for the South African Pieter Labuschagne, who arrived in the area sick and malnourished:

On 21 September 1943, I arrived in the mountains above Capo la Villa with pneumonia. The widow Angela Vecchioli rescued me and took me in her house in the village where she put me into a clean bed. She faithfully nursed me without the aid of a doctor until I got out of bed on 15 December. I know very little about this period of illness, but I do remember when I was awake and was conscious, she was ever near the bed to see me.

In January 1944, as she heard about the Germans coming to the village looking for escaped PoWs, Angela moved Pieter and another three escapees to a cave in the nearby mountains, bringing them food, clean clothes, a mattress, linen, and blankets. When the Germans arrived in the village on 22 January, the woman rushed to the caves where roughly sixty escapees were hiding, warning them of the danger. Thanks to her intervention, only seven PoWs were recaptured. All the things she had brought them, blankets, linen, etc, were burned.

On 23 January, the Germans recaptured Pieter. However, thanks to Angela’s father, he managed to escape their surveillance and vanish into the bush. While searching for him, the Germans broke into Angela’s home to arrest them. However, the woman managed to escape before their arrival and went on the run for the following six months. Her house was ransacked and destroyed, and her bar was shot down.

Despite the danger, Angela continued to aid the escapees as best as she could, as many still pleaded with her for help. In June 1944, finally, Allied troops arrived in the area and Angela «broke up and cried like a child» for the emotion and the exhaustion she had experienced in the past months. 

Major Goschen, speaking about her aid work, stated that:

No woman in Italy has done more for Allied prisoners than la Signora Vecchioli. Her house lay on a prisoners “high road”, and no man was allowed to pass without receiving her assistance.

Angela’s activity, according to Roger Absalom, supported in this by the escapees’ testimonies, was not well-received by her townsfolk, who often spoke ill of her.

After the war, “her” PoWs took her at heart and pressed for a reward. The high esteem with which the Allies treated her and the fact that public opinion on her actions changed in the following years made her the object of popular admiration and a «pilgrimage destination».