Reggimento Genio
Generale Alfredo Guzzoni
Commander-in-Chief, Sixth Army
Vincenza La Bruna
Civilian living in Regalbuto
Tenente-Colonnello Dante Ugo Leonardi
III° Battaglione, 34° Reggimento di Fanteria, 4° Divisione ‘Livorno’
Tenente Livio Messina
I° Battaglione, 33° Reggimento di Fanteria, 4° Divisione ‘Livorno’
Michele Piccione
Student sergeant, 4º Reggimento Autisti
Mario Turco
Civilian living in Gela
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Prologue
The Burning Blue
FRIDAY, 25 JUNE 1943. Morning, and another scorching day of soporific heat. Trapani on the western edge of Sicily was crowded with aircraft: two more fighter groups had arrived that morning. Major Johannes Steinhoff – ‘Macky’ to his friends – twenty-nine years old and in possession of a lean, gentle face, blue eyes and fair hair, had been up early, woken in the grey light of dawn and driven down to the airfield to join the rest of I. and II. Gruppen of Jagdgeschwader – Fighter Wing – 77. Already, mechanics were furiously working on their Messerschmitt 109 aircraft, desperately trying to get as many as possible fit to fly despite chronic shortages of parts – from simple bolts to electrical wiring to just about everything complex machines like these needed.
Trapani lay on a dusty, sun-bleached, small coastal plain, and by the time Steinhoff had planted himself in a chair in front of the wooden dispersal hut, the dawn light had been swept aside by the deep burning blue of the daytime sky. Beyond, past the edge of the airfield, lay the vast wine-dark sea. Crickets and cicadas chirruped. The heat grew palpably.
Steinhoff