A short but sentimental journey in the footsteps of Harold William Tilman: mountaineer, explorer and partisan
Text - Fabio dal Pan
Photos - Matteo Mocellin / Storyteller Lab
Pian di Granezza, 1,250 meters above sea level, southern edge of the Asiago Plateau.
It is the 7th of March, it is bitterly cold, and the rare patches of grass enduring heroically encircled by snow make us think that, perhaps, we should have been patient a little longer, exercising the cardinal virtue of prudence. Fortunately, it lasts only a moment; a puff of crisp air brings us back to reason, reminding us why we are up here and, more importantly, for whom.
Exactly here, shortly after midnight on August 31 eighty years ago, landed the parachute of Major Harold William Tilman, known as Bill. If this name does not ring a bell, all well and good, because it is one of the reasons why we embarked on this short journey. All well and good, but also quite strange because Harold William Tilman, known as Bill, was one of the most incredible characters of the 20th century. To make the point, the Wikipedia page dedicated to him reads: He can easily be called the last true explorer and romantic hero in the most nineteenth-century sense of the term.
To make the point even more clearly, Tilman was a middle ground--or rather, the synthesis--of Walter Bonatti (in 1936 he first climbed Nanga Devi, 7,816 meters, the highest peak ever climbed at that time, without supplemental oxygen), Ernest Shackleton (with a 13-meter wooden boat, the Mischief, he sailed more than 100.000 miles between Greenland, Patagonia and Antarctica) and George Orwell (he volunteered in both World War I and World War II, and thank goodness he left us many books, all written with a razor-sharp pen dipped not only in ink but also in a remarkable dose of that characteristically dry British humor).
En passant, in the early 1930s he also found time to cross Africa from east to west by bicycle, but that's not what we're going to talk about here (although, still, it wouldn't hurt to put that adventure on the calendar sooner or later, should our favorite magazine deem it a good investment).
If we are here - in early March, with a swine-like cold and a cyclocross world cup environment in Val di Sole - it is to follow in the footsteps of the H.W. Tilman partisan.
Our plan is quite simple: a three-day cycle-touring route from the Asiago Plateau to Belluno, via the Vette Feltrine and Cansiglio. Tilman at the time was a forty-six-year-old British officer and was sent (better, launched) here to act as a liaison between the partisans and the Allies.
With him were an interpreter, another British officer, and a radio operator; their mission was to make contact with local resisters and coordinate airdrops of supplies essential to carry on the war of liberation. Instead, there were only two of us, me and Moc, an adventurous photographer who, not too dissimilar to Tilman, participated in expeditions to the Himalayas, Africa and Arctic islands.
Pian di Granezza, we said. From there, we set off in the direction of Primolano (Scales of), soft ups and downs among beech and fir forests, villages that make up the 7 municipalities of the plateau, fog and low clouds from which, more often than we would have liked, signs appear on the wall bordering the road that praise the Veneto State of Independence.
There is one detail to take into account to better understand this whole story, Tilman's story in particular and the story of resistance in these places in general.
After September 8, '43, the Province of Belluno, along with those of Trent and Bolzano, became part of Alpenvorland, an area that Mussolini ceded to the exclusive and direct administration of the Reich. In short, the Fascists gave away a piece of their homeland to a foreign country. I'm not sure why it occurred to me now, thinking back to the writing on the wall, maybe it has nothing to do with each other, maybe it does, when in doubt since I've written it now I'll leave it.
At the end of the descent to Primolano we pass very close to a First War fortification, Fort Tombion. In June '44 the Tombion was the scene of one of the most internationally important partisan actions, a resounding sabotage conceived by Oreste Gris and carried out by Paride Brunetti, Commander Bruno. Two names that, as we shall see later, will both play an important role in Tilman's story.
But man does not live by accurate historical references alone, and in a short time we reach the Primolano Stairs, which proves to be one of the most Instagrammable places in the surrounding area, where the Moc finally feels at home. Partly because he really is, at home, which is ten kilometers downstream, but even more because the skies have opened up, he doesn't have to sacrament with rain, clouds and fog, and he can unleash all his technical-aesthetic expertise by freely maneuvering his paraphernalia of cameras/lenses/drones and god knows what else he has brought with him.
Having finished shooting we enter Valbelluna by back roads, keeping away from the valley floor, concatenating the various villages that form the piedmont belt with a kind of litany: Arten, Facen, Teven, Pedavena, Pren. And here the first similarity between partisans and those who ride bicycles, between the Resistance and cycling, jumps out. Even the partisans, even Tilman, avoided the busy streets. They to escape the lead or the ropes of the Germans, those who ride bikes to escape the bumpers or tires of cars. Both were and are a minority that must struggle to find their own space for survival, these and those with their own dead sacrificed for a certain common idea of freedom. The black wolf, on the other hand, unlike what fairy tales have taught us, always moves on the beaten path.
After landing at Pian di Granezza, Tilman and his men were supposed to join the Nannetti Division on the Cansiglio, where, however, a roundup was underway in those days.They then decided to change plans and joined the Gramsci Brigade on the Vette Feltrine, headed by Paride Brunetti, Commander Bruno of the action at Tombion.
We are also headed up there.
We embark on the San Martino Valley where the mountaineering part of the trip will begin, so to speak. We drop the bikes at the end of the dirt road, taking care of course to hide them properly, not even a patrol of German alpenjagers would have found them, I swear, I say this especially for the benefit of the sponsor who was kind enough to provide them for us.
We retrieve our backpacks and start walking uphill.
On this part of the route we are accompanied by Claudio, our friend, an excellent cook, and the soul of the Ciclofficina La Mente Comune in Padua. Like the GAPs (Patriotic Action Groups) that operated in the cities during the Resistance, La Mente Comune Ciclofficina is part of that archipelago of urban realities scattered around the world that every day organizes cycle mechanics workshops, meetings on sustainable mobility, evenings, critical masses, in short, all those people who are fighting so that the culture of the bicycle finds its own space in the cities and, before that, in people's habits and consciences.
In the first part of the trail we skirt a creek, I take a look at the map, Stien creek. I'm so soaked in 'it' that I read Stien but understand Sten, the British machine gun of the Second War that Tilman and his men carried over their shoulder and with airdrops had to get to the partisans camped somewhere over our heads. We arrive at the casera in the dark, beating track in half a meter of snow.
The next morning, it snows again.
The conditions in the mountains are not good, we knew that even before we left, maybe we should have waited, the cardinal virtue of prudence, I've already written that, haven't I?
The crossing on foot we had planned-going up from here to Malga Pietena, where the Gramsci Brigade command was; and then further up to Passo Pietena where on September 30, '44, Commander Bruno and Tilman saw the German roundup coming at them like a black tide, side by side, with the former holding the only machine gun at his disposal and saying, so the legend goes, Let's show the Germans how partisans know how to fight and die, and the latter replying, again according to the legend, "You'd better show them how they know how to save their skins, the partisans; and then maybe take a look at the north face of Mount Ramezza, where Tilman stayed hidden for three days under a blizzard with fifteen other men waiting for the Germans to leave, and then found a way to get everyone to safety, an episode recounted in a fine book by Marco Albino Ferrari, Il sentiero degli eroi - well this crossing, at least this time, will not happen.
Up we do not go, so we descend, retrieve the bikes and off we go, heading east.
In Menin, a hamlet of Cesiomaggiore, we pass by the house of Oreste Gris, the mastermind of the sabotage at Fort Tombion. Tilman in his book (ah yes because, I haven't mentioned it yet, but our Bill wrote a book about his adventure here, otherwise how could I have become so inscimmized about him, Men and Mountains it is called, published by the Alpine Documentation Center) talks extensively about Gris, describing the importance this figure had for him, for his mission and for the whole local movement.
I quote only one of the many passages in which he mentions it:
Over the next few months we would often stop in the vicinity of Cesio, or sneak by during the night, and this was thanks to a man with an extraordinary personality, who with passion and great energy had made that town an important center of resistance. That man's name was Oreste Gris, and he could always be counted on in difficult times.
At this point I will allow myself a personal anecdote, but I think not useless for the purposes of the story.
About Oreste Gris I had already heard long before I discovered Tilman and his book, from my maternal grandfather. He told me, my grandfather, that during the war one fine day two young partisans came to his house sent by Gris to requisition his father's red Guzzi 500 motorcycle, saying that it was for the liberation struggle.
They left a receipt slip and disappeared, and the motorcycle with them, and to get it back after the war they had to call the carabinieri and go and dig it up in the yard of a farmhouse. And that's all my grandfather had to say about Oreste Gris.
Then I grew up, I read Tilman's book and other things, and in short one afternoon when the subject came up again I had the temerity to answer him, "All right Grandpa, they stole your bike, we agree, it wasn't a good thing, but in Gris the Germans burned the house, not the bike, not the hay wagon, not the car, the house, because he housed and protected and coordinated the partisans, because in short he went out of his way, during the occupation, to make sure that we didn't live our whole lives under the fascists and the Reich, while my great-grandfather, as far as I know, he went about his life quietly, without giving too much away, he continued to do his job, and if it was up to him here now there were still the Gestapo and the SS." And from there hours of discussions, dialogues, confrontations, in which I would say mine and he would say his, without ever arriving at a real synthesis, and yet I don't know about him, but I learned something every time in those confrontations, in those dialogues, a piece of me stealing a piece of him, and he always willingly got robbed by me.
I was just in time to tell him about this project, I wished he would read it and from there have more hours ahead to talk about it, but nothing, he in the meantime decided that in this world there had been enough -- it counts as a farewell, adieu old man, and thank you, who knows how nice, arguing with the Saints, in Heaven.
While we are in Cesio by now, it would be madness not to stop at the Toni Bevilacqua Historical Bicycle Museum. Even more folly considering that its founder, Sergio Sanvido, as a very young man joined the Gramsci brigade and met Tilman. When the war was over, he returned to the village, opened a bicycle store and continued throughout his life to fix them, restore them, buy them, look for them, love them, you might say, until he put together one of the most comprehensive collections in Italy, some venture in the world. It includes, among others, Pantani's bike and Koblet's bike, those of Coppi, Bartali, Moser, and Gerbi, as well as a celerifero dated 1791, the oldest known proto-bike.
In 1997 he donated his great work to the municipality, which made it a public museum, a small democratic and popular jewel, because a museum dedicated to bicycles, Sanvido thought, could only be so.
Just below Cesio we pass a small monument built with his own hands by Oreste Gris to the memory of Ivan Kuznetsov.
Kuznetsov was a Russian soldier who after escaping from a prison camp was among the first to join the Belluno resistance, then joined the Gramsci Brigade and was killed by the Germans here in Serravella on February 22, 1945.
As we pause to take a closer look at it, one thing comes to mind, like a kind of short circuit. It reminds me that the resistance to Nazi-fascism was a great international phenomenon, in which women and men from every nation recognized themselves and fought for values that went beyond their home countries.
It also reminds me, writing where I am, that one of the reasons cycling is so extraordinary is precisely because of its universal force, the only sport in which (World Cup aside, but even there, with many exceptions) nationality is almost an accessory, in which we cheer who we cheer for an indefinable set of factors and circumstances that never, or almost never, can be enclosed within a boundary. Who knows if we can say, in 2024, that ideas such as Fatherland and nationalism are somewhat too narrow containers for such matters as the Resistance, cycling, and in general perhaps everything good in life.
And it was evening and it was morning, the third day.
The weather proves magnanimous, in the sense that in order not to mess up the mood of the photos again today low clouds, autumn rain, and under light water we set off toward Bolzano Bellunese. We stop in front of the church on Brigate Garibaldi street. In this area Tilman stayed almost a month in early '45 trying to organize material launches, which, however, between one thing and another, were slow in coming. To pass the time he decided to take a hike to the top of Mount Serva, the mountain overlooking Belluno.
An ascent that for someone who had been to 8,000 meters without oxygen clearly did not represent a great feat, but in those conditions, with a meter of snow, alone, his trip generated general amazement among his companions, 20 years younger.
We skim Belluno and aim for Cansiglio. Because Tilman eventually made it to Cansiglio, staying there for much of the winter and spring.Here the launches finally began to arrive with regularity, so that shortly before the end of the war the partisans of the Nannetti Division were among the best armed in all of northern Italy. It is an incredible place Cansiglio, with its endless forest that was the favorite timber reserve of the Serenissima of Venice, its central plain suddenly opening like a stage, with peaks guarding it. It seems like a little universe of its own to which one would want to move forever and just stay there, doing nothing but watching the rest of the world from above. We stop to greet the monument dedicated to Nannetti, right in the middle of the plain.
By now it is afternoon and we must descend toward the end of our short journey, which is then where Tilman's adventure in these parts also ended. We cross the Piave River at Ponte nelle Alpi and enter Belluno via Vittorio Veneto.The same route he took on May 2, 1945 when, after the last German columns had surrendered, he was among the first to enter the city he had seen so many times from afar in those months.
We arrive downtown and stop at Martyrs' Square.
Few people around, despite it being Saturday afternoon, and those who are there stay warm inside the bars. When Tilman got there it was still called Campitello Square.
It was given its new name after the war, in memory of four partisans who were hanged from lampposts in the center of the square on March 17, '45.
Much has been said in recent years about the Resistance and those who fought it, its excesses, its crimes.Things mostly said by those who were not there, or by those who chose to forget in what situation and for what values those boys fought.
That is why it is useful-perhaps today more than ever, looking around-to reread the last words of the book by Tilman, a British officer who throughout his life remained a conservative loyal to his king, but who also knew how to choose sides in history:
In judging the partisan movement, all this must be taken into account.
Although they did not have a Garibaldi to spur them on with his indomitable spirit, the men of northern Italy followed the path he himself would choose and on the conditions he would dictate: "I have to offer you neither pay, nor lodging, nor provisions: I offer you only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death." Exactly under those conditions the partisans struggled. The fact that they preserved a strong unity during the long, harsh winter and at the appropriate time knew how to give their best shows with what determination, spirit of sacrifice and ardor they fought for the cause of freedom."
This story might as well have ended like this, it would not have been a bad epilogue, with Martyrs' Square in front of my eyes and a phrase from Tilman about the Resistance in my ears.
But then we chose to give ourselves a little detour, a kind of bonus, and this piece and this trip we decided to go and close it somewhere else. From the square we went down to the Piave River just in front of Belluno, put the bike down and indulged in a ritual that Tilman often recounts in his books with childlike joy. Like the time that at the end of the Hielo Continental crossing he stripped naked and dove among the icebergs of Lake Argentino, in what he remembered as a truly unforgettable swim.
So here we are.
All around a crown of snow-capped mountains resembling the Himalayas.
In the center, a city Gold Medal for Resistance.
And we, in the middle of a river water.
Water that goes from here into the sea and then into the ocean, the same ocean that Harold William Tilman, known as Bill, decided to brave for the last time to go and celebrate his 80th birthday atop the summit of Smith Island in the Antarctic archipelago.
He never got there.
He disappeared with his entire crew somewhere off the Falklands, where he is still buried today, at the end of an incredible life.
The most alvento life I know.
Special thanks to:
Roberto Mezzacasa, first for devising The Tilman Route from Falcade to Asiago, so many years ago, and then for endorsing-he, the foremost expert on the partisan Tilman-this route, over a glass of red in a bar in Belluno; Teddy Soppelsa, the living version of Oreste Gris, mind and heart of Altitudini magazine, for unpublished material on Tilman, chats about Resistance, mountains, books, and other things worth living for.