The salvager trade
Once from necessity, today to preserve and remember
The First World War marked the end of a long, sad chapter in the history of Valle del Chiese.
Emigration stopped, but economic conditions remained difficult and even worsened.
The people of the villages located near no man’s land, which during the war extended from the Lardaro Barrier to town of Cimego, returned to their homes beginning in early 1919.
Upon their bittersweet return after some four years of displacement to other areas of Trentino, far from the border and the front, from Katzenau, Austria, where many were interned, and from Piedmont, they found only destruction and desolation.
A snapshot of what happened in this valley can be read in I danni della guerra nel Trentino e l’opera di soccorso del Consiglio Provinciale di Agricoltura (The damage of the war in Trentino and the relief work of the Provincial Council of Agriculture), February 18, 1919:
“Nearly all districts suffered immense damage due to the destruction and mismanagement of the forests. [...] The towns of Trentino that were most devastated by the war, partly due to looting and vandalism by Austro-Hungarian soldiers, are in the basins of Riva, Rovereto, Valsugana, and Chiese”
It was necessary to rebuild, reactivate the general economy, and start living again in a land that was again under a new “master”.
“Salvagers in Valle di Ledro, the sign reads: Parl Kaverne”, by Vigilio Giovanelli
In the aftermath of World War I, given the scarcity of food and work, an intense activity of recovering war material that remained scattered throughout the mountains gradually began along the entire 700 km of the Italian-Austrian front.
This is how the rugged, dangerous figure of the salvager gave rise to a new trade that complemented the traditional professions of these mountain people.
In the first months after the war, thousands devoted their efforts entirely to this trade, while others explored tunnels and trenches to round out their wages.
Entire families went into the mountains to the former battlefields and, with immense effort, brought tons of ferrous and explosive materials down to the valley every day. By selling them, they thus contributed to their family’s livelihood.
This salvaging of memorabilia led to real applicable skills:
- the father collected heavy materials and unexploded bullets that were cut with a hacksaw or detonated in small groups;
- the children saw to the smaller pieces: lead pellets of shrapnel shells and other bits and pieces;
- the mother provided for subsistence at high altitude by bringing meals. Upon returning to the village, however, she would use a cart or sled to bring down the 200-300 kilos of scrap metal collected.
To bring the precious materials down to the valley, the salvagers also used backpacks weighing 40-60 kg and the military cableways that were still in operation in the small side valleys, and then sold them to scrap dealers.
In the depots set up in the valley, they sold skeins of barbed wire, reels of telephone cables, frieze horses, brass casings, cannonballs, lead, sniper shields, sheet metal, beams and joists.
A major day-to-day problem for public safety were the unexploded bombs that could not be sold to the scrap dealer.
For this reason, many specialized in controlled detonation, which entailed breaking a projectile into large fragments using dynamite charges based on the type and caliber of the projectile found.