“Move them,” Colonel Werner said waving his hand at the crowd, and his assistant did as he was told, pushing young and old Sicilians alike out of the way of his commanding officer. Werner and Lieutenant von Stöhl were walking through the Piazza Santa Caterina in the shadow of the Cattedrale dello Santissimo Salvatore and the senior officer didn’t like too much contact with these people.
Manfrit Werner, an officer in the forward detachment of the German occupation had arrived in Mazara to sign up local men to serve under him in the North African campaign. The Third Reich already had a large force of German soldiers in the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia but, for their plans to succeed, they wanted more men, preferably only lightly armed men who would stand and fight to survive, but whose actual
