Gasperino and Rodolfo Fiadino

Rodolfo (left) and Gasperino Fiadino (Source: “Amici di Capracotta”)

After 8 September 1943, New Zealand sergeant Francis “Bill” Parker, PoW in PG 78, Sulmona, escaped from the camp with a group of fellow soldiers to reach the Allied troops recently landed in Italy. The escapees crossed the mountains and reached the village of Capracotta, between the German Barbara and Bernhardt defensive lines. 

They were immediately welcomed by three brothers: Rodolfo, Gasperino, and Alberto. The three men and their families lived on a farm near the small village. Two women from Capracotta, Pia Yaselli and her daughter Diana, also helped provide for the escapees.

The group was  split outside the village itself. One part was sheltered in the Fiadino’s home, the other in the San Luca hermitage, a cave deep within the woods. Parker visited the village once or twice a week to get news from Pia regarding the Allied advance, while the two women and the Fiadinos brought them food, clothes, and cigarettes.

In a letter to the Allied Commission, Parker recalled that:

«Later the Germans took over the village, after the fall of Campobasso in the Canadian sector. The day the Germans arrived, they billeted their officers on Mrs Yasselli, and she waited at this door we usually went to in the basement, to save us from being recaptured. The Fiadino brothers came to us with mules and helped us to shift our gear over the mountain into a disused shepherd’s hut about a mile from their home and up a steep mountain. I say this was a steep mountain  for I want to impress upon you the hardship these people went through to help us.»

Between the end of October and the first half of November 1943, the enemy committed acts of violence against the population of Capracotta. The Germans took away all food and cattle and captured all able men as slave-workers to build their defensive lines. On 30 October, Marshal Kesselring proclaimed that all towns and villages along the Sangro River had to be evacuated. Moreover, anyone caught helping the prisoners who had escaped from Sulmona was to be put to death.

Parker  wrote:

«One day, there came to us an English Padre, an English Sergeant and two American air force Officers and two civilians who – the Padre told us – were to guide them through our lines. One of these civilians was a cripple, it looked as though he had a club foot, from Sicily, I think.  This club- footed man’s friend said he was ill, so the Fiadino brothers  took him to their house. Next day, the party left us, and the so-called guide promised to come back for us if he got through safely. He came back all right, but he brought a German patrol with him.»

Pia Yaselli recalled how the three brothers, denounced by the spy, repeatedly claimed they knew nothing about the prisoners. However, when cornered, they were compelled to lead the patrol to the hideout and, in a bid to alert the Allied soldiers, they tried to buy time by going in circles, making a noise, and pretending not to remember the exact location of the hideout. Nonetheless, the prisoners were recaptured and sent to Germany, while the three brothers were brought before a kangaroo court of the German Military Tribunal in Villa Canale and sentenced to death.

Alberto, the eldest, managed to escape by jumping off the vehicle that was taking him back to Capracotta. Rodolfo and Gasperino, instead, were shot on 4 November 1943 in Sotto al Monte, in the presence of the village’s priest.

In 1999, Francis Parker, then 80 years old, returned to Capracotta to pay homage and express gratitude to his saviours. Since then, every 4 November, the municipality puts a New Zealand flag on the town hall to recall the murder of the two brothers. A plaque was also placed at the spot of their murder.