Pratovecchio Stia

Immediately after September 8th 1943, numerous groups of young rebels had sprung up throughout the province of Arezzo and gathered under the leadership of the Comitato Provinciale di Concentrazione Antifascista (C.P.C.A.). The partisan organisation needed to bring together a formation of their members in a single place and chose the hamlet of Vallucciole as a suitable location. Towards the end of September the hamlet became the base for operations and for the coordination of the armed struggle in the Arezzo area.
The choice of place was not accidental. The nearby forests of Monte Falterona offered a relatively safe haven from enemy raids, moreover the inhabitants of the municipality of Stia had always been hostile to the fascist regime’s policies. It is no coincidence that the first recorded partisan action in the Casentino occurred in the town of Stia, where on September 13th the first partisans from Stia and Bibbiena (led by Ferruccio Bartolucci, Tullio Cianferoni and Raffaello Sacconi) ransacked the arms depot of the Scuola di Addestramento di Allievi Ufficiali del Regio Esercito (Royal Army Officer Training School), hiding most of the weapons in the Vallucciole cemetery.
At the end of October, the Vallucciole Formation under the command of Major Aldo Caponi numbered about 150 members. Of these just over a quarter were former Allied prisoners of war who had escaped from prison camps in the Arezzo area (from Laterina in particular). They were supported by the Resistance during their arduous journey to safety from the provincial capital to Mount Falterona, where they joined the partisans.
They were well equipped with weapons: about 150 rifles, 5 machine-guns and numerous pistols and hand grenades. The fascist authorities of the 96th Legion of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (Voluntary Militia for National Security) and the Political Investigation Office in Arezzo, thanks to a well-oiled system of espionage and informants, soon became aware of the expansion of the rebel group. A carefully planned rounding-up operation was undertaken to clear the area permanently of partisans.
Major Caponi caught wind of this, partly because of the arrest of Bartolucci and Cianferoni. Misled by the double-dealing of a fascist infiltrator inside the band, at the beginning of November he had moved the bulk of the company to the north of Vallucciole, near the Pescine farm.
They were expecting a large supply of food on the 10th of that month at the hamlet of Molin di Bucchio. Consisting of a sufficient amount of flour and basic necessities, it would have enabled the band to survive the first snowfalls without being too much of a burden on the population of Vallucciole.

It so happened that the day the supplies were due to arrive coincided with the date chosen for a first undercover fascist patrol to visit Molin di Bucchio. The investigations of Sergeant Umberto Cerasi Abbatecola had clearly revealed the connivance between the inhabitants and the rebel formation but failed to discover where the partisans or their supplies were hidden.
Under pressure, but reassured by the enemy’s departure, around 11 p.m. on November 10th the Partisan Command decided to send a three-man squad to the mill. It was led by Pio Borri, a university student close to the Catholic Action movement, one of the first to come to Vallucciole from Arezzo. The squad reached the small square in front of the medieval mill of Bucchio (from which the hamlet takes its name). At around half past midnight on November 11th they were caught in a hail of fascist gunfire. Pio Borri was wounded and the other two squad members were forced to surrender. This was the result of a well-organised ambush of by about 50 men under the orders of the 96th Leg. MVSN (later GNR) commander Emilio Vecoli. Taken to the house known as “Casa del Cadorna” (it no longer exists, but its site is marked by a plaque near the Pio Borri Monument), the prisoners were brutally interrogated. Pio, who had been shot in the shoulder-blade, was tortured and left untreated for hours. Exhausted but still alive, he was carried out of the house and left to die in the snow, which was already a foot-and-a-half deep.
The autopsy certified that he died around 6 a.m. Despite hours of suffering and threats against his mother, he revealed nothing of the whereabouts of his companions.
His body was then transported to Arezzo and returned to his mother stripped of all belongings. In the meantime, on the morning of November 11th the Vallucciole formation disbanded finding it impossible to continue to fight. Their supplies had been cut off and the cover was blown of the entire southern Falterona partisan base.
In honour of Pio Borri, the first member of the Arezzo Resistance to fall, the main partisan brigade fighting in the province of Arezzo was later named the XXIII Brigata “Pio Borri”. It was commanded by Lieutenant Siro Rosseti.