Viewing page 78 of 150

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-77-

I can't imagine what the red bus our our Sfollati do when there is no time to move.
I hear that the last bombing of Siena harmed the central part of the town. It is unbearable to think of. 
Antonio's two brothers who live in Siena lost their homes and all their possessions. Italian families are all very attached to each other, Antonio shed tears. April 20th. Yesterday intermittently from eight to one o'clock there was terrific bombing at Pontassieve near Florence. Our old house trembled. Though many miles of railways were destroyed the Germans will have built them up again overnight. We hear from France that at Rouen the Cathedral was bombed, the old library damaged and hundreds of people killed, yet the very same day we read that the train left Paris and arrived at Rouen as usual though it was the very station that had been the object of the attack. 
In the afternoon, though there was an alarm on, we decided to go down to Florence to see what damages had been done. Florence is supposed to be an open city, but no one believed it. We took our chance at being forced to enter a refuge on the way. Things seemed much as usual though outside Palazzo Strozzi, Via Tornabuoni, many people sat on its steps ready to enter the deep subterranean refuge. On the way N. stopped to buy a pair of scissors. While she was choosing these a man