Sanderson , Theodore Ernest (T E)

Killed in action. At dawn on 25 April, in a large stone building known as Rendina Farm, situated high above the plateau of Castelluccio, about fifty partisans were sleeping peacefully, believing that the surrounding territory, which was covered in snow, would have made it very difficult for German vehicles to make their approach. Moreover, they knew that the German official in charge of the unit concerned and the Prefect of the Province of Perugia had negotiated a several days' truce with the partisans. A South African by the name of Nigel Frank Eatwell, who passed himself of as lieutenant but was only a private, and partisan Ignazio Mangio were the respective leaders of two partisans bands, one made up of escaped allied POWs and the other of Italians. At six in the morning someone, having heard noises outside, gave the alarm and woke the others, but it was too late because by then the farmhouse had been completely surrounded by a unit belonging to the Guardia Repubblicana Nazionale responsible for the area covering Cascia, Cerreto and Perugia and under the command of a man named Guido Sainas. Sainas was actually looking for the band of partisans made up of Slavs and commanded by 'Toso', who, according to information received, should have been in the farmhouse. Having arrived at the building and surrounded it on all sides with their men, armed with machine guns and other weapons, he gave the order to open fire. Close to the farmhouse, on the east, was a ravine which dropped down to the village of Arquata del Tronto. In order to save themselves the partisans had to try to get to the ravine and throw themselves down into it. The partisans ran out of the building, firing as they went, trying to break through the cordon, but two South Africans ex-prisoners Sanderson and Schutte, and an Italian, Paolo Schiavetti Arcangeli from Spoleto, were hit. Several of their companions stopped to try to help them but could only testify as to the death of one of the two South Africans. The other two, seriously wounded, were incapable of moving. Paolo shouted to his friends that they should save themselves as he was beyond assistance. After the war the public prosecutor of Spoleto sought to bring Guido Sainas and some of his men to justice accusing them of having tortured and then killed Arcangeli after having taken him prisoner. Three companions who had stopped to help him testified that when he was still alive he had been only seriously wounded in his left thigh. But when they returned following the departure of the Fascists both he and the South African who lay next to him were found dead with an identical bullet wound in their forehead A further partisan witness spoke of a wound below his left lung, signs that he had been shaken, the loss of an eye and a further gunshot wound to the nape of his neck. When the case came to court in 1950 Sainas had already been absolved for crimes committed in Umbria and Liguria for lack of proof and so the Judge ruled that he could not be tried twice for the same crime